Sustainable+CBD+Buildings

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toc __**Sustainable Buildings in Melbourne**__

=Buildings= Melbourne has many sustainable buildings, however, we have just focussed on a few of the purposes of this page, they are shown on the map below.

Map
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=Ratings= There are numerous rating systems available for business owners to use to rate how sustainable their building is.

Green Star
Green Star, launched in 2003 by the Green Building Council of Australia, is a set of comprehensive rating tools that can be used to evaluate the sustainability of a building, there are different options depending on the building. It is the most widely used rating system in Australia and 11% of Austrlian buildings are Green Star certified.

Green Star ratings will give a score between 0 and 100, but only scores of 45+ are shown on their website for their corresponding star ratings.
 * Score 45-59: 4-star, signifies 'Best Practice'.
 * Score 60-74: 5-star, signifies 'Australian Excellence'.
 * Score 75-100: 6-star, signifies 'World Leadership'.

Green Star uses nine separate environmental catagories, they are:
 * 1) Management
 * 2) Indoor Environment Quality
 * 3) Energy
 * 4) Transport
 * 5) Water
 * 6) Materials
 * 7) Land Use & Ecology
 * 8) Emissions
 * 9) Innovation

National Australian Built Environmental Rating System
NABERS is a rating systems the uses a scale of 1-5 stars to show efficiency for energy, water, waste and indoor environment with 1 being 'least efficiency' and 5 being 'best practice', the current average is 2.5. NABERS measures buildings in regerds to the way their operations impact the environment.

Australian Buildings Greenhouse Rating
AGBR is a volantary rating system to give building owners help to rate the sustainablity of a building, it counts the CO 2 emissions per square meter using one year's worth of data on energy consumption, operation hours and the number of people and computers. It can be used for base building (central services), individual tenancies or a whole building. AGBR uses Greenstar and NABERS to cover energy ratings.

=Glossary=

Carbon Offsetting
Carbon offsetting is when you do something to help the environment to counter the carbon emissions that you produce, you can also buy 'carbon credits' where you pay and that money goes towards the environment.

Ozone Depletion Potential
The ozone depletion potential (ODP) of a substance is how likely it is to cause harm to the ozone layer in relation to trichlorofluoromethane (R-11 or CFC-11)

Carbon-zero
Carbon-zero is when a building averages out to using no energy.

Carbon-neutral
Carbon-neutral is when a building averages out to using no energy including energy used during construction.

Ammonia refrigeration
Ammonia refrigeration is an environmentally friendly way of cooling where a liquid is changed to a gas which absorbes heat which is then channeled out of the area.

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