Sustainable Finance

Green Star Buildings can verify the sustainability of the design and construction phase of a non-residential building. 

Green Star Performance can  verify the sustainability of a non-residential building in its operational phase.  

NABERSNZ is available for verifying the energy and water efficiency of office buildings and once NABERSNZ  certification is obtained, this can be applied to the respective credits in Green Star Performance. 

Green Star Communities applications can be used to guide the sustainable development of a large site, thinking about infrastructure, transport, community connection, and other aspects. 

Homestar certifications can be used to verify sustainability  requirements  for residential homes and apartment buildings. 

NZGBC’s sustainable finance guide is guidance about what the NZGBC rating tools offer in relation to what a lender may define as a “green building”. It is not legal advice and NZGBC does not provide endorsement of any particular lender or provide any assurance that finance will be provided in accordance with any guidance.  

For anyone seeking sustainable finance, we believe that our independent rating tools   set out market tested and achievable targets to aim for and to bring to your financier or investors.  

Within the Green Star Performance tool, credit 15 is the ‘greenhouse gas emissions’ credit, more commonly known as the ‘energy’ credit since it is only focussed on emissions from energy use in the building. This is a key metric in the NZGBC Sustainable Finance Guide. 

To verify the score (out of 20 for base building ratings and out of 23 for whole building ratings), the scorecard for the Green Star Performance rating should be requested. There, you will find columns related to each building in the portfolio, and you can scroll down to credit 15 where you can view the score for each building and if it was awarded. 

For office buildings, NABERSNZ is the first port of call. This can rate energy and water efficiency for office buildings only. If an office building is wanting to pursue a Green Star Performance rating, then the order of priorities with the energy and water credits is that a NABERSNZ rating is used to obtain points. However, this might not be the case if there is some reason that a NABERSNZ rating can’t be obtained. 

For buildings that don’t have a NABERSNZ tool available (e.g. warehouse buildings), Green Star Performance can be used to rate the energy and water efficiency of all non-residential buildings (if they are eligible). It can also rate more than energy and water – looking at transport, indoor air quality, policies and more. 

NZGBC does not have a position on this. Even though the requirement in our guidance steps up with each year band to incentivise increased ambition, it may be disruptive to a loan/bond structure to have the requirement move mid-term.

At this stage, the NABERSNZ website is only updated with current data periodically so it does not contain a live reflection of what is rated. We would recommend requesting the NABERSNZ certificate from the building owner or project team to verify. 

NZGBC recommends that new buildings that obtain sustainable finance using Green Star should verify the operational performance of that building in the following years, to satisfy the criteria outlined in the Guide. We recommend rating with existing building tools (NABERSNZ or Green Star Performance) as soon as possible before any deadline to understand how the building is performing which may reduce the risk of not meeting criteria.  NZGBC can only confirm an application or a final certification.  It is up to the party providing finance to determine financing deadlines and criteria.