Within rank three the US case studies outperform Asian case studies on Energy & Atmosphere and Indoor Environmental Quality categories. Higher utilization of green power in the US case studies have attributed to indicating higher percentage in Energy & Atmosphere category. Analysis of credits within IEQ category didn’t indicate any remarkable performance differences between the US and Asian cases studies. Therefore a possible conclusion with regard to better performance in IEQ at third ranking level may be possibly due the adaptation of IEQ operational & management procedures rather than other technological approaches.
2.4. Under represented categories and credits 2.4.1. Material and Resources credit performance
According to our data Material and Resources category in overall can be considered as an under represented category particularly in the US case studies. Certain credits such as building reuse and resource reuse have been least scored by both the US and Asian case studies. These indications will lead to question the relevance of these credits for new construction projects and hence the allocation of 5 credits which is 39 percent of the overall credits assigned to M&R category. Although building reuse and resource reuse credits might be applicable to major renovation projects, presence of these two credits for new construction projects will negatively affect the overall credit achievement. However within the M&R category, credits for sustainable construction waste management practices, material with recycled content and regional material credits seem to have been well represented among Asian and also the US case studies.