New Think Tank on Benchmarking formed

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The SBCI Benchmarking Think Tank met for the first time in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia on November 2nd, as part of three days of roundtables aimed at assisting governments and the building industry to respond to global issues such as climate change and sustainable development. The new SBCI Benchmarking Think Tank will provide intellectual leadership in the process of defining global benchmarks for Sustainable Building and Construction.

Several countries have embarked upon national efforts to promote and support a sustainable building agenda. However, in most countries the significant opportunities afforded by improving the sustainability performance of buildings over their life span are yet to be realized. Key to this is a lack of performance benchmarks that enable the benefits of sustainable buildings to be identified, quantified and promoted. Without such benchmarks, the costs and savings for constructing sustainable rather than business-as-usual buildings can not be quantified, nor public promotion for such innovation provided.

These issues will be tackled by the SBCI Benchmarking Think Tank, a partnership between private, public and community sector representatives, established to develop global benchmarks on sustainable buildings and construction (SBC).

The Think Tank is chaired by Professor Volker Hartkopf, Director at the Center for Building Performance and Diagnostics at Carnegie Mellon University and currently includes 24 members, representing a wide spectrum of stakeholders from 4 regions and 16 countries around the world.

“I shall work hard with my colleagues in the Think Tank to develop well-informed policy instruments which can generate positive solutions to our resource and environmental challenges.” Professor Hartkopf said.

Over the next five months the SBCI Benchmarking Think Tank will develop performance benchmarks for buildings that:

• Support and encourage countries lacking SBC standards to develop their own national SBC standards.
• Support financiers for building projects to identify sustainable buildings and to quantify the long-term economic benefit from investing in them (compared to other buildings).
• Support greenhouse gas trading schemes to quantify potential emission reductions from emission reduction projects in buildings.
• Provide input to public reporting initiatives and labelling initiatives in the building sector

If you would like more information on the ongoing work of the think tank please email Professor Hartkopf:
hartkopf@cmu.edu