What does "Platinum" mean? Reflections on the development of sustainability assessment methods

The current political discussion on climate change is heavily biased towards CO(2) balance, energy consumption and energy costs associated with rising energy prices. The good news is that the German Government covers sustainability in the construction sector including - and indeed going far beyond - energy conservation. To this end the German Sustainable Building Council (DGNB) was formed in 2007, although it is worth noting that Great Britain introduced a relatively advanced sustainability assessment method referred to as BREEAM as early as 7990, an enhanced version of which was released in the USA in 1995 under the name of LEED. This article tries to show "rootstocks" for the sustainability assessment to set up a classification system for criteria, and to derive consequences.