As we have a definition of green buildings, a system is needed to evaluate what buildings can be classified as “green building”.

At present, there are more than one hundred green building assessment methods and tools in the world. Figure 1 summarizes some green building assessment systems used in some countries/cities. (Figure 1; Source: https://www.researchgate.net/)

Some examples of commonly used green building rating systems are listed below:

Country/City	Green Building Rating System	Abbreviation
U.S.	Leadership in Energy & Environmental Design Building Rating System	LEED
UK	Building Research Establishment Environmental Assessment Method	BREEAM
China	Green Building Evaluation Label	China Three Star   (Note: The industry refers to this system as “Three Star” as the system is rated from 1 to 3 stars, with 3 stars being the highest rating)
Japan	Comprehensive Assessment System for Building Environmental Efficiency	CASBEE
Singapore	Building and Construction Authority Green Mark Scheme	Green Mark

Hong Kong Green Building Rating System

For the answer to this article, I believe readers with good eyesight have already found it in Figure 1 (give you ).

Yes. Hong Kong does have its own local green building system and called the Building Environmental Assessment Method (BEAM).

Background:

The Hong Kong Building Environment Assessment Method was established in 1996 and is a voluntary rating scheme. In 2010, there was a major update to the system and then renamed to “BEAM Plus”, which had versions 1.1 and 1.2 respectively and are still in use today. In 2019, version 2.0 of the new building was launched.

The certification body is the Hong Kong Green Building Council (HKGBC) and the assessment body is the BEAM Society. The assessment is divided into two stages: Provisional Assessment and Final Assessment.

Assessment tools:

There are basically FOUR Green Building Assessment Tools in Hong Kong, including BEAM Plus Neighbourhood (ND), BEAM Plus New Building (NB), BEAM Plus Existing Building (EB), and BEAM Plus Interiors (BI).

The following figure 2 clearly expresses the stages of application of each assessment tool (Source: HKGBC):

Assessment Rating:

There are Four levels of certification to evaluate the environmental performance of a building, including Bronze, Silver, Gold and Platinum, plus “Unclassified” certification (if the project meets all the “prerequisites” in listed in BEAM Manual but the overall score of Bronze is not reached, the result will be called “Unclassified” for version 1.2 or “Prerequisites Achieved” for version 2.0). The following Figure 3 is an example of the BEAM certification plaque (Source: HKGBC):

Discussion:

In addition to the above rating system, do you know other green building assessment methods and tools? Welcome to leave a message to discuss.

References：

Website

Hong Kong Green Building Council：https://www.hkgbc.org.hk