Sustainability in the built environment

Our mission is to transform the way buildings and communities are designed, built and operated, enabling an environmentally and socially responsible, healthy, and prosperous environment that improves the quality of life.

The ULI Center for Sustainability and Economic Performance is dedicated to creating healthy, resilient, and high performance communities around the world. Through the work of its Greenprint, Building Healthy Places, and Urban Resilience programs, the Center provides leadership and support to real estate and land use professionals to invest in energy efficient, healthy, resilient, and sustainable buildings and communities.

The Association of Energy Engineers® (AEE®), founded in 1977 by Albert Thumann, is a nonprofit professional society of over 18,000 members in more than 100 countries. The mission of AEE is “to promote the scientific and educational interests of those engaged in the energy industry and to foster action for Sustainable Development.”

Currently in draft form, this plan outlines the key steps and actions necessary to reduce embodied carbon of the buildings we design, construct and operate. It has been spearheaded and informed by ownersCAN, a working group of engaged building owners, developers and operators who are committed to taking action.

Nareit is the worldwide representative voice for REITs and listed real estate companies with an interest in U.S. real estate and capital markets.

GBCI drives implementation of the LEED green building program. For more than a decade, with a trusted, commitment to impartiality and quality, rigorous third-party certification and customer centric focus, GBCI has proved instrumental in ensuring LEED remains the world’s most widely used green building program.

The Center for Resilience is a USGBC initiative housing all of the organization’s resilience activities. We know that addressing and emphasizing resilience through green building and infrastructure certifications can help ensure a more resilient future for all. 

The International WELL Building Institute™ (IWBI™) is leading the global movement to transform our buildings and communities in ways that help people thrive.

Fitwel is the world's leading certification system committed to building health for all®. Generated by expert analysis of 5,600+ academic research studies, Fitwel is implementing a vision for a healthier future where all buildings and communities are enhanced to strengthen health and well-being.

THE ILFI's mission is to lead the transformation toward a civilization that is socially just, culturally rich, and ecologically restorative.

Build It Green’s mission is to help accomplish that by providing credible and accessible resources to develop regenerative communities. We envision, and are committed to creating, a healthy housing ecosystem that fosters the well-being of individuals, communities, and the natural world. 

BREEAM is the world’s leading sustainability assessment method for master-planning projects, infrastructure and buildings. It recognizes and reflects the value in higher performing assets across the built environment lifecycle, from new construction to in-use and refurbishment. 

The National Green Building Standard® (NGBS) is an ANSI-approved, third-party certified, residential building standard that provides a flexible and affordable way to verify your green construction practices in your single-family, multifamily, remodeling and land development projects.

TRUE is a whole systems approach aimed at changing how materials flow through society, resulting in no waste. TRUE encourages the redesign of resource life cycles so that all products are reused. TRUE promotes processes that consider the entire lifecycle of products used within a facility. With TRUE, your facility can demonstrate to the world what you’re doing to minimize your waste output.

ENERGY STAR certified buildings save energy, save money, and help protect the environment by generating fewer greenhouse gas emissions than typical buildings. To be certified as ENERGY STAR, a building must meet strict energy performance standards set by EPA.

The Green Buildings Career Map is a highly interactive tool that explores an industry exploding with job opportunities across four major sectors of the green buildings and energy efficiency industry, charting possible progression between those occupations, and identifying the sorts of credentials necessary to do them well.

The U.S. Green Building Council is committed to supporting the green jobs market, to ensure that people who are passionate about sustainability can apply their skills and talents to a rapidly growing workforce.

BI works to identify, research, analyze, and promote commercial and multifamily buildings that are leaders in low and zero energy. NBI maintains the most comprehensive list of zero energy (ZE) commercial and multifamily buildings across North America. This interactive tool puts NBI’s Getting to Zero Buildings Database at your fingertips and allows you to generate customized maps, lists, and charts.

The goal of this assessment tool is to promote best practices that protect the health, safety, and welfare of the public,  by providing strategies for reoccupying buildings and businesses that are in the process of transitioning from being fully closed to fully open. 

Created by Nareit and GeoPhy, the REIT ESG Dashboard identifies and tracks environmental, social, and governance (ESG) key performance indicators for the U.S. REIT industry.

The CARE Tool estimates the operational and embodied carbon emissions associated with reusing and upgrading an existing building or replacing it with new construction.

EHPP's EPIC design tool is an easy to use carbon optimization tool that provides early phase insight into operational and embedded carbon impacts. 

The Ecosizer is a free tool for sizing central water heating systems based on heat pump water heaters (HPWHs) in multifamily buildings. The tool is designed to support the building industry to adopt HPWHs to improve energy efficiency and reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

 Cradle to Cradle Certified® is the global standard for products that are safe, circular and responsibly made. (This link contains access to a search and filter tool for a listing of materials that qualify towards LEED credits).   

Database listing of specific product manufacturers that list products that qualify towards multiple third party rating systems, including: LEED, WELL, Living Building Challenge, CHPS, BREEAM and Green Globes. 

Today the HPD Open Standard, a voluntary, stakeholder consensus standard, has become established as the leading industry standard for reporting building product content and associated health information.  It is incorporated as a reporting tool in many leading certification programs, such as LEED v4 and WELL, and is also the foundation for industry harmonization efforts to establish a single method that can simplify reporting – and also improve the accuracy, consistency and reliability – of information about building products and health.

Declare is a platform to share and find healthy building products. Manufacturers voluntarily disclose product information on easy-to-read Declare labels, which are accessible on a free database used by leading designers, real estate owners, and conscientious homeowners to specify products they know they can trust. 

Products that earn the ENERGY STAR label meet strict energy-efficiency specifications set by the U.S. EPA helping you save energy and money while protecting the environment.