94% of researchers rate our articles as excellent or good
Learn more about the work of our research integrity team to safeguard the quality of each article we publish.
Find out more
REVIEW article
Front. Built Environ.
Sec. Sustainable Design and Construction
Volume 11 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fbuil.2025.1550733
This article is part of the Research Topic Advancing Circular Economy in the Construction Sector for Sustainability View all articles
Evaluating Sustainable Building Assessment Systems: A Comparative Analysis of GBRS and WBLCA
Provisionally accepted- 1 University College London, London, United Kingdom
- 2 Mace Group Ltd, London, United Kingdom
This comprehensive review examines sustainable building assessment systems, focusing on Green Building Rating Systems (GBRS) like BREEAM and Whole Building Life Cycle Assessment (WBLCA) approaches in the context of achieving the UK's climate targets.The study highlights significant limitations in GBRS, particularly their inadequate focus on embodied carbon emissions and alignment with national climate goals. WBLCA emerges as a promising solution, offering a holistic methodology for quantifying environmental impacts across a building's entire lifecycle.The research explores the integration of advanced techniques such as Building Information Modelling (BIM), automated data collection, and artificial intelligence to enhance WBLCA's effectiveness. While WBLCA shows potential in driving the built environment sector towards climate targets, the study identifies challenges including methodological issues, data quality, and the need for standardisation. This article emphasises the importance of aligning building assessment systems with national climate targets and carbon budgets. It concludes by calling for a paradigm shift from static, point-based rating systems to dynamic, quantitative approaches in sustainable building assessment, highlighting the need for interdisciplinary collaboration and education to support this transition.
Keywords: Green Building Rating Systems (GBRS), whole building life cycle assessment (WBLCA), Embodied carbon emissions, Climate targets, Building Information Modelling
Received: 23 Dec 2024; Accepted: 13 Feb 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Anyanya, Lettieri, Paulillo and Fiorini. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence:
Paola Lettieri, University College London, London, United Kingdom
Silvia Fiorini, Mace Group Ltd, London, United Kingdom
Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.