The green mindset spreads to 1,000 developers, 30 countries

By: Tessa R. Salazar
Philippine Daily Inquirer

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PROUDLY GREEN. Tan Chuan Jin, Minister of State for national development and manpower, is flanked by several green proponents. Singapore was ranked first among major cities in Asia Pacific for its environmentally sustainable building policies. Photo by Tessa R. Salazar

SINGAPORE—One color has been changing the way buildings and their components are now being made. It is, undoubtedly, green. But whereas before that color represented money and unbridled profits, and which had ironically cast a gray pall over the environment, today’s green stands for environmental sustainability.

And for just a conference and an exposition being held in the Lion City, this new “identity” assigned to the color which traces its roots to the Old English verb “growan” (to grow) can still also mean making a good, clean profit.

The International Green Building Conference 2011 and the green products exhibition Build Eco Xpo Asia were held at the Suntec Convention and Exhibition Center from Sept. 13 to 16. The conference gathered green building councils from various countries as well as an estimated 1,000 developers, architects, engineers and urban planners, while the exhibition had brought in 250 companies from 30 countries, attracting an estimated 8,000 visitors, and by the exhibit’s end, generated nearly $90 million in business transactions, as claimed by the expo organizers.

These events were held within the Singapore Green Building Week, and essentially offered to the public a new universe of environmentally sustainable building practices and technologies conceived by renowned industry think tanks, and made real by innovative organizations, engineers and industrialists from all over the world.

Ecologically responsible

The various symposiums on eco-cities, the tropical and subtropical green building councils’ alliance and sustainable construction pushed the envelope on ecologically responsible industry practices.

AUSTRIAN Fritz Oettl makes his home base for international consulting for sustainable architecture in Pakistan, Montenegro and Indonesia. Photo by Tessa R. Salazar

Christopher C. Dela Cruz, president of the Philippine Green Building Council and one of the speakers in the conference, told the Philippine media that PhilGBC’s mission in the building industry has primarily been to transform the market. “Berde is now positioned to be the rating system of choice of the property sector. More and more developers are using the scheme to illustrate leadership in environmental stewardship,” he said.

Berde, which stands for Building for Ecologically Responsive Design Excellence, is the first green building rating systemdesigned by Filipinos.

Dela Cruz also said the Apec-Asean joint workshop on green buildings, which was held here at the start of the week, “endeavors to harmonize standards in the region. We are working with the national Green Building Councils to create solutions in the property marketplace,” he said.

Dela Cruz’s counterpart Tai Lee Siang, the president of the Singapore Green Building Council, signed a strategic partnership with the Beijing Construction Decoration Association, Housing andDevelopment Board, the Building Research Institute, Jurong Town corporations and Singapore Business Federation.

Products of green minds

Simultaneously, at the expo, hundreds of enterprises proudly showed how green their minds were:

• One showcased its lightweight wall planting modules.

• Another displayed efficient hoisting machines with regenerative drives, thereby cutting energy consumption of building elevators by up to 50 percent.

• A monitor showed real time consumption of electricity, water and gas.

• Another group showed its sustainable lighting technology to reduce energy consumption.
  
  

  THE WALLBOARD is of volcanic ash. Photo by Tessa R. Salazar

• Another explained a new vertical farming solution with integrated biological lighting.

• A window film with high clarity and low light reflection that blocked harmful UV rays demonstrated the potential of nano-ceramic technology.

Architects like Fritz Oettl, known for the “green building” design of the Austrian Embassy in Jakarta, were seen hobnobbing with the audience, answering questions on sustainable architecture in hot and humid climates.

At the exhibit opening, BG (NS) Tan Chuan-Jin, Singapore’s Minister of State for National Development and Manpower, announced the Building Retrofit Energy-Efficiency Financing program that would provide loans to building owners and energy services companies to enable them to carry out energy retrofits on their buildings starting on Oct. 1.

Greening target

Singapore, a city-state of just under 700 square kilometers, has set an ambitious target of greening 80 percent of its buildings by 2030.

Since April 2008, the Building and Construction Authority (the government agency responsible for the built environment and green building policies in Singapore) had required new buildings to meet a minimum environmental sustainability standard. The Ministry of National Development is set to amend the Building Control Act to extend the minimum Green Mark standards to existing buildings as and when they are retrofitted, making Singapore one of the first few countries in the world to mandate such standards for existing buildings.

DRAINAGE modules have high-volume water capture and transport. Photo by Tessa R. Salazar

Besides meeting minimum standards, Singapore’s buildings are required to operate at the optimum performance level to reap the most benefits out of their retrofits. Thus, owners would be required to conduct a thrice-yearly audit on their buildings’ cooling systems.

For energy monitoring purposes, BCA would also require utility companies and building owners to submit energy consumption and energy-related data. In 2009, BCA launched a $100-million Green Mark Incentive scheme to encourage owners of existing buildings to upgrade their equipment and carry out retrofits in order to achieve the Green Mark certification.

Chuan-Jin said Singapore’s building sector constitutes about a third of the country’s total electricity consumption, second to the industry sector which accounts for 40 percent of the total electricity consumption. He also said Singapore’s existing buildings make up more than 95 percent of Singapore’s building stock, and that there is much potential to improve their energy efficiency to contribute to Singapore’s carbon abatement.

He added that energy costs constitute 20 to 40 percent of the total operating cost of a typical building. “The more energy is conserved in our buildings, the lower the operating costs, all other things being equal.”

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Sustainable development seen by ‘going green’

By: Theresa S. Samaniego
Philippine Daily Inquirer

ARYA Residences is the country’s first residential development that is registered to US Green Building Council’s LEED.

PROPERTY DEVELOPERS are one in believing that the good years are back.

With increased investments and economic activity, demand for office and residential space continued to surge, largely fueling the growth of the real estate sector—a movement seen by industry observers as the start of the so-called “up-cycle.”

CB Richard Ellis Philippines president Rick Santos, for one, shared this belief as he commented that the robust growth being currently enjoyed by the property sector is not just a “bubble” as there was real demand, not only in the Philippines, but also across the entire Asia-Pacific region.

“Things look very good now. The government looks stable, so many new players are coming in for the BPO and the knowledge process outsourcing companies,” added Jose Luis F. Matti III, executive director of CB Richard Ellis Philippines, in an interview.

Go for green developments

But for the Philippines to keep its position as a favored spot for investments and for the real estate industry to sustain this momentum, CBRE Philippines is strongly urging local developers to go for “green developments.”

Currently the buzzword among companies and developers, “green development” is the designing, constructing, operating and maintaining of a building in an environment-friendly manner.

“Green development, from being a fad, must now become a standard for most developers… (Putting up a) green and efficient building is the new trend that prospective tenants are now considering in their space requirements,” company officials said.

Investors, according to CBRE, are now more intelligent in choosing their office and residential space as many would see green buildings benefiting not only the environment, but also the developers and end-users alike.

THE ZUELLIG Building is a LEED Gold pre-certified office space.

“They know that a green building is a better place for work. In fact, in a study conducted by CBRE US, they found out that in green buildings, there’s an average of almost three days less absences per employee, so that’s a big factor when you consider the output of your workforce. It’s generally healthier so the productivity is there,” Matti explained.

He also pointed out that most companies nowadays are pushing to, whenever possible, locate in green buildings, as part of their environmental advocacies or corporate social responsibility (CSR) programs.

Savings

Admittedly, the cost of going green may not be that easy on the pocket.

Matti however pointed out that green buildings, if well-planned, would not cost more than a regular building in the long run. Savings, he added, can be gained once the building starts its operations and will more than offset the additional costs required in a regular building.

Asked how is it possible that a green building is cheaper than an ordinary building, Matti replied, “Green buildings earn almost 8 percent more in terms of rent than a regular building and surprisingly, for sales purposes, they can go as high as 16 more than conventional buildings. So whatever small investment you give is offset by the additional income.”

Developers who would want to adopt the green mantra, however, should be prepared to face the challenges of putting up a green development.

“Some materials like wood have to be sourced from commercial forest, meaning forest that’s designed for harvest and is renewable. Insofar as recycling and waste control is concerned,  we don’t have companies that can help us with waste disposing and recycling,” he noted.

Helping make one’s dev’t green

REAL estate advisory firm CB Richard Ellis’ chair and chief executive Rick Santos and Jose Luis F. Matti III, executive director

Still, the benefits of a green building far outweigh the difficulty of facing these hurdles. Matti tells developers of some of the basic things that would help make one’s development “green”:

Green developments should use less water, energy and makes use of construction materials efficiently.

In terms of energy efficiency, the developers must find ways to use as less electricity as possible by, for example, getting the best type of air-conditioning system that uses less power but performs similarly as the other systems.

If your glass can block out heat, then that’s another advantage because it makes the aircon use less power. Also if you have a lot of glass, you’ll also need less light because all the sunlight come in. During construction and operations, recycling of all the materials should be done, nothing should go to waste. Wood and paper waste must be properly recycled into other forms of reusable materials.

Replace all the greeneries that was lost during construction by putting a roof garden or planting somewhere else to compensate for what you took out form earth.

As it is, the Philippine office and property sector already have the best fundamentals because of the lower rental rates and skilled workforce but by going green they can provide further premium on their developments.