Advancement of Whole Building Energy Efficiency
The Green Building Initiative (GBI) has partnered with the Global Electronics Council (GEC) to integrate the EPEAT® ecolabel into GBI’s Green Globes® and Ascent™ certification systems. This collaboration creates a direct link between sustainable product selection and overall building performance, particularly in the rapidly growing data center sector. EPEAT, a globally recognized ecolabel for electronics, enables architects, builders and facility managers to evaluate and choose energy-efficient and environmentally responsible ICT equipment. By including EPEAT as a pathway within GBI certifications, project teams can more easily achieve measurable sustainability outcomes while reducing the environmental and energy impacts of technology-intensive buildings.
As data centers’ energy consumption continues to rise—currently accounting for about 1.5% of global electricity use—the partnership between GBI and GEC provides a proactive solution to help the industry address this growing challenge. The collaboration encourages the use of EPEAT-registered products such as servers, solar panels and office electronics, all verified for sustainability, circularity and responsible supply chains. Together, GBI and GEC are driving a more integrated approach to green building by combining product-level and building-level standards, empowering owners and operators to create high-performance, low-impact environments across commercial, institutional and data-driven facilities.
