Building sustainability objective assessment in Estonian context and a comparative evaluation with LEED and BREEAM

Common practice building regulations are not that far reaching as are required by sustainable building assessment schemes. At the same time, regulations over a number of indicators can be onerous even without sustainable considerations. We compared indicators and their levels from Estonian regulations against LEED and BREEAM requirements. The differences and gaps between the best practice requirements were shown with the focus on the indoor climate, energy and transport categories of the sustainability assessment schemes. Five best practice buildings were positioned in LEED and BREEAM certification levels. The results show that the current regulations of indoor climate and energy indicators in Estonia form a solid base for high scores in these schemes. Indoor climate class I and class A energy performance achieved at least the second highest certification level in LEED and BREEAM. Thus, the gap between the current best practice and the highest score of a sustainable building scheme was not large. To make the comparison possible in a systematic way the Estonian building sustainability assessment scheme indicators were proposed and their compliance with LEED and BREEAM was quantified. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.