Higher Education Sustainability Rating System Organizations and Tools
- AASHE (The Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education) empowers higher education faculty, administrators, staff and students to be effective change agents and drivers of sustainability innovation. AASHE created a global sustainability standard for higher education called STARS. AASHE is comprised of over 900 members across 48 US states and more.
www.aashe.org
stars.aashe.org - ACTS – Australasia: Australasian Campuses Towards Sustainability: a non-profit member based organization representing higher and further education institutions within Australia and New Zealand. ACTS primarily targets to promote and reinforce the change towards best practice sustainability in education sector.
www.acts.asn.au - AISHE - Assessment Instrument for Sustainability in Higher Education – Netherlands : was founded in 2000 by DHO Dutch Foundation for Sustainable Higher Education.
AISHE is an assessment instrument, as its name indicates. At the same time, it is also a strategic tool for the development of an ESD (Education for Sustainable Development). In latest years, AISHE 2 was developed by an internation group of universities which has a modular structure. - Environmental Association for Universities and Colleges, EAUC - United Kingdom: The EAUC is the institution managing sustainability campaigns for universities and colleges in the UK. EAUC aims to promote sustainability to higher education.
Tool: Sustainability Leadership Scorecard
www.eauc.org.uk - Sustainable Campus Assessment System – Japan: is developed by a sustainable campus of hokkaido university and is the first tool to evaluate sustainability for higher education in campus life.
- UI Green Metric
https://greenmetric.ui.ac.id/
UI GreenMetric is a ranking on green campus and environmental sustainability initiated by Universitas Indonesia in 2010. Greemetric possess 39 indicators in 6 different criteria.
Green building rating systems
Green building rating systems can vary in their approach to measuring a building’s performance. Some are prescriptive based and specify minimum or maximum values for various elements in construction. Others are performance based where the desired outcome is modeled in a software and compared to a baseline. And also there is a push towards otucome based verification that measures the energy usage of the final occupied bulilt project over a year period to validate that a building meets the requirements of the rating system.
There are five fundamental areas that all green building rating systems:
- Location and site: where a building is located has a direct effect on many of the other aspects of a building’s performance. The local climate, the shading, solar access and orientation of a building on a site have direct impacts on a building’s energy, ventilation and lighting needs.
Most rating systems encourage construction on sites that are brownfields, sites that are contaminated that would enhance the natural environment through their environmental cleanup.
Greyfiled sites that have previously been developed with more than 20% impervious surfaces and infill, vacant lots within previously built areas. All these types of sites restrict the spread of the built environment into the natural environment by preventing construction on Greenfield sites. Forests, protected natural areas, or near to wetlands where rainwater runoff from the built environment could adversely affect these delicate ecosystems.
- Water: Fresh water makes up just 2.5% of the water available on our planet with an even smaller percentage accessible for human consumption. With the Earth’s population growing and as water becomes more scarce, the ability to effectively use water becomes more incredibly important. Every rating system looks at how water usage can be reduced in a building’s construction operation and its surrounding site. Alternatives to using drinking water to flush toilets and irrigate landscapes, ,such as onsite rainwater harvesting and closed loop systems that recycle and reuse water are recommended.
Saving drinking water and reducing wsate water is synergistic with the building site and location and with reducing energy. - Energy efficiency and consumption are the main focus areas of all rating systems. By reducing energy consumption and generating onsite energy, a building can achieve a net-zero or even net-positive energy consumption. Eliminating a building’ contribution to climate change has always been the primary focus of green building rating systems. A net-zero or net-positive energy building eliminates its operational CO2 emissions to the atmosphere.
- Materials: the types and amounts of materials used in construction can have huge impacts on the planet. The amount of greenhouse gas emissions produced by transporting the materials throughout the world is halfway around the world from China to Istanbul would create a huge carbon footprint. Thus locally sourced and sustainable materials are a priority. The toxicity and off-gassing of materials also plays a considerable role. Some materials are already banned for their polluting attributes.
- Air: On average humans spends likely 90% of their time indoors. Sick building syndrome is a well-documented phenomenon realted to harmful indoor air environments. General aim of the rating systems is to supply optimal indoor air quality and environments free of aggresive agents.