Green Policies, Regulations & Standards

The California Green Building Standards Code (CALGreen) is California’s mandatory statewide green building code and Part 11 of Title 24 of the California Code of Regulations. It establishes sustainability requirements for building design and construction covering areas such as water efficiency, material conservation, indoor environmental quality, electric-vehicle infrastructure and embodied carbon. The current 2025 CALGreen Code took effect on January 1, 2026.

The Global Protocol for Community-Scale Greenhouse Gas Emission Inventories (GPC) is an internationally recognized standard for measuring and reporting greenhouse gas emissions at the city and community level. Developed by the World Resources Institute (WRI), C40 Cities and ICLEI, it gives local governments a consistent methodology for identifying emissions sources, establishing baselines and tracking progress towards climate targets. First published in 2014, the current GPC 1.1 was released in 2021 and aligns with the 2019 Refinement to the IPCC Guidelines for National Greenhouse Gas Inventories.

The Critical Entities Resilience (CER) Directive — Directive (EU) 2022/2557 — requires EU Member States and designated critical entities to strengthen the resilience of essential services against a wide range of threats, including physical risks arising from climate change. For affected organizations, this means assessing risks such as extreme weather and natural disasters and taking measures to ensure that critical infrastructure and services can withstand, respond to and recover from disruption.

The SBTi Forest, Land and Agriculture (FLAG) Guidance provides a science-based framework for companies to set greenhouse gas reduction targets covering emissions and removals associated with agriculture, forestry and land use. Developed by the Science Based Targets initiative (SBTi) with support from WWF, it addresses emissions that are not adequately covered by conventional energy and industrial decarbonization pathways. The Guidance was first published in September 2022 and is currently in Version 1.2, released in March 2026. It requires companies in designated land-intensive sectors, and companies whose FLAG emissions meet a specified threshold, to set separate FLAG targets alongside their energy and industry targets.

My Green Lab Certification is a voluntary global certification for sustainable laboratory practices. It helps labs reduce environmental impacts across energy, water, waste, chemicals, procurement, equipment, cold storage and user behavior. My Green Lab Certification 2.0 is the current program version referenced in public materials, and My Green Lab partners with Impact Laboratories to independently verify certification results. The program is relevant to academic, healthcare, biotech, pharmaceutical, research, and industrial laboratories. It is voluntary unless required by institutions, buyers, partners, grant programs, or corporate sustainability policies. It does not replace lab safety, chemical, biosafety, hazardous waste, occupational health, climate disclosure, or green claims rules.

ACT Ecolabel is a voluntary global ecolabel for laboratory products, managed by My Green Lab. ACT stands for Accountability, Consistency, and Transparency. It provides third-party verified information on environmental impacts for lab products such as consumables, chemicals, and equipment. ACT Ecolabel 2.0 provides a standardized framework and enhanced scoring system for communicating sustainability attributes to scientists and procurement teams. ACT is voluntary unless required by lab procurement policies, universities, hospitals, pharmaceutical companies or green lab programs. It does not replace product safety, chemical, laboratory safety, waste, electrical equipment or green claims regulation.

The Scottish Credit and Qualifications Framework, or SCQF, is Scotland’s national qualifications framework. It uses 12 levels and credit points to describe and compare the difficulty and size of qualifications and learning programmes. The framework supports learners, employers, education providers and training organizations by making academic, vocational and workplace learning easier to understand and compare. SCQF is not global and is not a sustainability law. It is Scotland-specific, but it may be relevant to NZC where energy transition, decarbonization or sustainability training programmes are credit-rated or mapped to Scottish qualification levels.

Greenroads is a voluntary third-party rating and certification system for sustainable transportation infrastructure, especially roadways and bridges. It uses a points-based framework with required criteria and voluntary credits to assess areas such as environment and water, materials and design, construction activities, access and livability, and utilities and controls. Certification levels include Bronze, Silver, Gold, and Evergreen. Greenroads is not a law and is not fully global, but it is used in the U.S. and internationally. It is relevant for public agencies, engineers, contractors, municipalities and infrastructure investors seeking credible sustainability recognition for transport projects.

The FAST-Infra Sustainable Infrastructure Label is a globally applicable voluntary label for infrastructure projects. It evaluates sustainability and resilience performance across Environmental, Social, Governance, and Adaptation and Resilience dimensions, with 14 sustainability objectives. The label is designed to create a credible and comparable market signal for sustainable infrastructure finance. Global Infrastructure Basel Foundation serves as Secretariat and Bloomberg L.P. as Data Repository. FAST-Infra is not a law and does not replace permits, procurement rules or engineering standards. It is relevant for infrastructure developers, investors, lenders, development finance institutions and public authorities seeking sustainable infrastructure evidence.

SuRe, the Standard for Sustainable and Resilient Infrastructure, is a third-party-verified global voluntary standard developed by the Global Infrastructure Basel Foundation. It integrates sustainability and resilience into infrastructure development and upgrade projects and provides a common language for project developers, financiers, and public-sector institutions. WEF materials describe SuRe as comprising 61 criteria across 14 themes. It is not a law and does not replace permits, procurement rules or engineering standards. SuRe is relevant for infrastructure developers, governments, investors, lenders and sustainability teams seeking verified evidence of resilient and sustainable infrastructure performance.