QuinnRoss Energy - Energy & Sustainability Consultants

What are BREEAM categories?

BREEAM covers several categories that address sustainability factors including lowering carbon emissions, low impact design, design durability & more. Each category is divided into different categories with their own aims.

Energy:

Within the energy category the objective is to measure & improve a buildings operational energy. It is encouraged to create solutions & systems that will promote the sustainable use of energy throughout the building life span, including during the construction. In addition to these solutions others include efforts designed to:

Enhance the buildings energy efficiency
Reduce a buildings carbon footprint
Support management of sound energy

Land Use & Ecology:

This category aims to assess various measures that encourage & promote sustainable land use & its protection. Developers are encouraged to improve a buildings/sites long term biodiversity and the biodiversity of the surrounding land. This category actively encourages the reuse & development of brownfield sites & areas of low ecological valve. To achieve a high rating builders are advised to develop a system for unstainable biodiversity alongside procedures to improve local ecology.

Water:

This category encompasses the importance how water is used efficiently & sustainably during the construction & operation of projects. Builders are encouraged to identity ways to reduce consumption of potable water & prevent losses through leakage throughout the building’s life span.

Health & Wellbeing:

Although this includes environment impact BRE also recognise how a buildings design can affect heath and wellbeing of its occupants. Under this category builders are encouraged to develop measures that ensure health, safety & comfort of residents or visitors. This category also assesses systems designed to improve the quality of life within the building.

Pollution:

The objective of this category is to measure & evaluate efforts to prevent & control pollution. The aim is to minimize the effect of a development impact on the local area and neighbouring communities. Developers are advised to find solutions that will help to reduce a buildings impact including light pollution, noise pollution, flooding and land, water & air emissions.

Transport:

With traffic increasing on the roads the transport category looks to increase sustainable transport options for residents & visitors. This category measures how accessible to the building is to forms of public transport & determines whether it offers alternative transport solutions i.e. cycling facilities. This category also looks at the design & provisions available for sustainable movement of infrastructure within a building.

Materials:

This category looks at materials used within the design, construction, maintenance & repair of a building. It is encouraged that responsibly sourced materials are utilised focusing on materials that have a low impact throughout their life cycle, including extraction, processing & recycling.

Waste:

With the focus of preventing more materials from ending up in landfill, waste focuses on sustainable management & refuse of a building’s construction & operational waste. Developers are encouraged to make their projects more climate friendly & implement ways to reduce future waste materials.

Innovation:

This category offers builders the opportunity to demonstrate through performance and innovation in areas that go beyond the requirements of specific credit criteria. This includes innovative processes in which developers can claim an innovation credit. However, this will need to be approved by BRE Global Ltd. first.

At QuinnRoss Energy we can help with providing assessments for the following BREEAM services: