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Building a better future
It’s becoming increasingly clear that humans have a substance abuse problem that is going to be very hard to kick. Construction and development will play a major role in cleaning up our act, and industry guidelines are becoming available, says Alex Frew McMillan
Residential real estate accounts for around 9.9 percent of global emissions, with another 5.4 percent coming from commercial real estate. So reducing those figures will help tackle more than 15 percent of the world’s total.
Simon Carter, the Head of Sustainability for the Asia Pacific region for Colliers International, says, “We are using fossil fuels like a heroin addict uses heroin, and we are going to have to cold turkey very soon.”
Carter is trying to do his part to mother the real-estate industry through its withdrawal process. In July, he visited Hong Kong to introduce a new guide, r.e.Design. Rather surprisingly, the company distributed the report in tons of print copies – although the paper is recycled and non-chlorine bleached. But the report acts as a handy primer giving an overview of the latest in green real-estate practices in Asia, and how to apply them.
Carter, who worked as an architect before taking his current post, likes to note that carbon considerations even influence his diet – he favours New Zealand lamb over Aussie beef because beef churns out some 52 grams of carbon dioxide per kilo, compared with just 14 grams for lamb.
However, Carter admits he isn’t exactly carbon neutral himself – and his profile hasn’t been helped by a recent travel schedule that has seen him jet to India, the Philippines, China and Vietnam to introduce the new report.
The problem is that the key is ‘location, location, location’ even for green construction and buildings. There isn’t an easy set of rules that can be transplanted from one part of the world to another – what works in Scandinavia’s long winters is highly unlikely to work in Southeast Asia’s heat and humidity.
“Quite often, I am asked questions like, ‘What is the simplest green-building solution?’ And I have to say there is none,” explains Carter. “There are different buildings in different climates, occupied by different people.”
This can cause problems. One of the most confusing aspects of the current push for green real estate is the plethora of different rating systems that have come on the scene, with a different system springing up in each country.
The world’s first green-building rating system was the Building Research Establishment’s Environmental Assessment Method (BREEAM), which was introduced in 1990 in the United Kingdom. That was first set up for offices and industrial property but now has a counterpart for residential property called EcoHomes.
BREEAM was followed by the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) system, which was introduced in the United States in 1998 by the US Green Building Council.
The Green Building Council Australia then introduced the Green Star programme, adapting both the BREEAM and LEED systems, and the Aussie system has since caught on in both New Zealand and South Africa.
The World Green Building Council was set up in 1999 and now counts members from not only the UK, US and Australia but also Brazil, Canada, Germany, India, Japan, Mexico, New Zealand, Taiwan and the United Arab Emirates. Its task is to try to coordinate all the green councils around the world, support rating systems and share those best practices.
Needless to say, the picture is confused. In Asia, China, India and the Philippines have all started using systems based on LEED. Both Singapore, which has set up the Green Mark Scheme, and Hong Kong, which has developed the Building Environmental Assessment Method (BEAM), have their own independent systems that haven’t yet joined up as part of the World Green Building Council.
It is telling that the website for the Hong Kong system, www.hk-beam.org.hk, notes that the BEAM Society is both the founder and owner of its rating system, suggesting that it’s seen as a nifty money spinner as much as a rating tool.
While countries like Australia and New Zealand have an almost evangelical fervour about going green, Hong Kong real-estate developers and landlords aren’t likely to move in that direction unless they smell cold green cash. Tenants and owners alike won’t buy in unless they know they are saving money.
Carter laments that Hong Kong does not show the same kind of public discussion about greening its real estate that he has seen in India and mainland China. But he says a few more forward-looking landlords such as Hongkong Land are starting to look at improving their portfolios.
Even in Hong Kong, Carter believes the “green = money” message is slowly getting through to developers. He says case studies in Australia show that new green buildings are achieving up to an 85 percent reduction in energy use, as well as massive cuts in construction waste.
“With new buildings in Australia, green has become the standard, so it’s hard to say that is a saving,” Carter says. “One of the big leaps forward comes when the tenants really start to understand it. The real value proposition is not how much extra rent you will get, it is how much rent you won’t lose when the market tips and green buildings become the standard.”
That has happened in cities such as Adelaide, where there had been little development for the last two decades. When Caversham Property launched its huge City Central project, it was determined to build a tower that could command new rent levels in a market that had been notoriously slow.
It developed City Central I so that it could qualify as a five-star project under Australia’s Green Star programme. It put in chilled-ceiling technology and designed bigger floor plates, with lots of open areas that use natural instead of artificial light.
Then the developer effectively ‘greenmailed’ the South Australia government into occupying it, since State Premier Mike Rann has long been advocating green construction. The Department of Further Education, Employment, Science and Technology, as well as the Department of Transport, Energy and Infrastructure signed on as anchor tenants.
Companies such as Deloitte & Touche followed suit, the building created a trendy brand identity for itself, and leased all its 323,000 square feet over 21 floors before it was complete, despite their being more expensive than anything else on the market. Now most major new buildings in Adelaide also shoot for five-star status.
It is not just new buildings that deliver results. Landlords are seeing significant savings in adapting their existing building stock to make it more energy efficient.
“The experience from Australia is that, on a two to three year payback, you can typically get a 20 percent to 30 percent reduction in energy consumption from an existing building,” Carter notes.
The property developer Stockland went through that kind of renovation when it created a new head office in Sydney. For instance, it took an existing building but cut 540-square-foot openings through seven consecutive floors, to let in light and create a ‘vertical highway’. Employees now often prefer to take the stairs instead of using an elevator. The company also put in high-performance light systems and used environmentally friendly materials like recycled timber wherever possible.
It’s also important to get the measuring system right so property managers can tell the blessings from the bluster. Everyone sells their property as green nowadays if they have any sense – but not everyone delivers.
Clearly, the gap between predicted performance and actual performance is one of the biggest challenges of the green building movement.
Property promoters want to make sure that what is promised actually happens. “We put stuff up on hoardings, so we want to know that what was promoted for a development is actually going to be delivered,” Carter says.
It is not necessarily a question of deception. Sometimes it just takes a while to adjust a building’s energy use and energy saving features to their best.
“It can take a year of fine tuning to get a building to optimal performance,” Carter notes. “Many factors hinder performance. For instance, there are control systems that are put into buildings but not switched on properly. Tenants can influence the base building rating to some degree – a tenant that puts in a huge trading floor that has a big effect on the heat load will affect the rating.”
And while it may be relatively easy to assess the performance of a new building, it can be much tougher to adjust, monitor and measure changes in an existing building that the owner is trying to make more green.
More Asia-specific advice and ideas for best practices need to be put in place, as green construction develops in the region. But the bottom line is that green building is catching on fast. It matters little whether the trend is being driven by economic pragmatism or a new-found social conscience – sustainable buildings are here to stay.
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