Background
In early 2019, a ‘Re-inventing Green Mark’ taskforce was formed under the Singapore Green Building Masterplan 2020 to:
- Review the scope of current Green Mark scheme to focus on outcome-based indicators, e.g. energy and carbon to address climate change, and possible add-ons to cover wider sustainability scope, e.g. healthier workplaces and maintainability,
- Streamline the Green Mark certification through digitalisation efforts for a more streamlined and efficient process.
The taskforce has proposed to streamline and consolidate current GM NRB:2015, GM RB:2016 and GM ENRB:2017 into a new all-in-one Green Mark 2021 Framework. Other building typologies such as data centers and rail transit system will be added in subsequent phases of GM: 2021 framework.
What is Green Mark 2021
GM: 2021 framework has evolved from our previous Green Mark framework to become:
- Simple – We have removed many pre-requisite requirements, re-structured our criteria to two broad categories: 1. Energy Efficiency (the only pre-requisite) and 2. Other Environmental Sustainability covering Intelligence, Health and well-being, Whole-of-life Carbon, Maintainability and Resilience.
- Sustainable – We have aligned GM: 2021 criteria to be aligned to meeting the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (UN SDGs), pushing the EE envelope to mainstream Super low energy buildings, and recognising the future requirements from various sustainable finance taxonomies.
- Smart – The GM: 2021 had digitalisation efforts in mind to facilitate easy, seamless and secure certification processes.
In addition, the GM: 2021 aims to be:
- Owner-friendly - meet building developers’, and owners’ needs for sustainable operations and environmental social and governance (ESG) reporting and demonstrating their leadership
- Cost-effective – Pushing the boundaries of sustainability with a value driven approach, including environmental value, social value and economic value based on a Life Cycle Cost (LCC) approach
- User-friendly – a robust yet flexible framework, that brings all buildings into the same ecosystem of GM: 2021.
The GM: 2021 certification Framework covers 3 types of project, (1) New developments, at the design and completion (as built) stage, (2) Existing buildings in operation with no previous Green Mark certification or (3) A building with major retrofit.
For Existing Building projects applying for re-certification without major cooling system change, GM: 2021 (In-Operation) will be applied, which is a simplified version of GM: 2021.
Why Green Mark 2021
Green Mark provides a robust and leading method to assess and verify buildings for their environmental performance, assisting project teams and building owners to deliver and demonstrate high performing, sustainable buildings. Green Mark is built upon best practices, climate science, analysis of large building performance data sets and global thought leadership. GM: 2021 aims to further stretch buildings’ outcomes to substantially reduce the environmental impacts focusing on whole life carbon, health and wellbeing, resilience, intelligence and maintainability. GM provides a national and globally recognised green building performance rating.
Green Mark 2021 Pilot
Green Mark 2021 (For new and existing buildings) is now ready for piloting. The criteria and scoring framework can be downloaded below.
Please email benjamin_towell@bca.gov.sg or tracy_Liu@bca.gov.sg for any enquiries/comments on Green Mark 2021.