Review on green building rating tools used in Australia

The construction industry is one of the main contributors towards climate change. Therefore, green buildings have become a requirement and are no longer a luxury. With the development of green buildings, there are many assessment tools and rating tools developed for evaluating the performance of different criteria of green buildings. Certain tools evaluate one criterion such as water efficiency or energy efficiency of green buildings. Similarly, other tools evaluate some criteria, finally providing a star rating for the overall performance. There are also tools used to evaluate different options used for green buildings as well. In Australia, many green building rating tools evaluate the performance of green buildings falling into these categories. Therefore, this chapter aims to review the various green rating tools and incentives in Australia. There are different uses of various green building rating tools, and the state governments in Australia support certain tools such as building sustainability index (BASIX) and nationwide house energy rating scheme (NatHERS). However, these green building rating tools focus on different criteria. Apart from that, there are various green incentive schemes as well. After a thorough review of the current status of the green building rating tools in Australia, this chapter recommends developing government policies and regulations for promoting green buildings, government mandates on green building implementation, incentives to green building development, green building rating tools considering all criteria and including cost considerations for green building development in Australia.