Systems for rating the environmental performance of buildings will play an important role in the construction industry soon, but how demanding and comprehensive should their criteria be? International teams came to the Green Buildings Challenge conference in Vancouver to grapple with these and other questions.

Ralph Goodale, Canada's Minister of Natural Resources, opens proceedings at the Green Buildings Challenge conference with a taped message.

On most summer days in Austria, it was enough simply to open a window in a home and let in the breeze in order to stay cool. Enough, that is, until the European Commission issued an energy directive to encourage house designs with walls well sealed to save heat losses and that would fully exploit solar gains. As south-facing windows in new houses became larger, the thermometer inside rose. Many homes built according to the supposedly energy-saving rules are now using mechanical air-cooling systems to maintain comfortable temperatures.

There are people in the construction industry who seize with glee on such stories of green building programs go wrong. They see them as examples of how misguided energy efficiency and other green building initiatives can be, and continue to build in the old ways. The same people--often developers and building owners--are very wary of attempts to introduce standards for green buildings, believing they would just add one more band of red tape to restrain their business activities and one more huge cost to

their bottom line.

But to Susanne Geissler's audience the story held a very different message. Geissler, of the Austrian Institute for Applied Ecology, told it to teams of environmental experts and designers at the Green Buildings Challenge '98 conference in October. To them the example of the overheated Austrian homes shows how complex environmental issues are, and precisely why it is important we put more energy and attention into studying environmental building methods. Only with more research and evaluation, they believe, will we be able to avoid mistakes and more accurately predict results.

The delegates at the Green Buildings Challenge conference came from 14 different countries--everywhere from Australia, to Japan and the United States--to discuss a system called GBTool for assessing and rating the environmental performance of buildings. The system has been developed over the past two years under the sponsorship of Natural Resources Canada and is largely the brainchild of two people: Nils Larsson of Natural Resources and Professor Ray Cole of the University of British Columbia.

Larsson is only too aware that they face resistance from developers and owners in their attempt to introduce environmental performance standards to the building industry. "We just have to find a positive way of having everyone see this as value-added," he says. "The trick is how to implement a system [a green labelling system] without alienating building owners who may see it as just another burden."

• green building, sustainable building

1. Canada Life environmental room