Government regulations seen supporting further green building uptake

5th August 2016

By: David Oliveira

Creamer Media Staff Writer

  

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Sustainable development specialists and property analysts have urged all South African businesses and developers to embrace the reality of green building as government actively pursues legislation to enforce more sustainable construction.

Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University (NMMU) sustainable-building academic Chris Allen says government is developing a green building framework aligned to the Green Building Council of South Africa’s green star rating system to reap the benefits – lower operational costs through more efficient operation – in government buildings throughout the country.

On the back of these efforts to strengthen South Africa’s significant switch to using more sustainable buildings, triggered by the energy crisis of 2008, government is providing all the necessary incentives for the private sector to follow suit.

“You are going to see the private sector adopting green building practices more vigorously, with government starting to request energy performance certificates for its buildings this year, with the aim of asking the same of commercial buildings from 2018 and the private sector from 2020,” said Allen.

He

spoke at a regional South African Property Owners Association (Sapoa) meeting in Port Elizabeth, last month, together with sustainable solutions company Rhino Group MD Brian van Niekerk and Rhino Group company Rhino Lighting MD Heather McEwan.

Allen, an NMMU lecturer in building science at the department of construction management said that the real benefits to green buildings started to accrue in operational costs. “The commercial reality is that their running costs are 30% to 40% down on conventional developments,” he added.

He said that there were also similar improvements in the productivity levels of people working in green buildings, as a result of increased natural lighting levels, ventilation rates and even ways of commuting to green buildings.

A research report –‘African Energy-Plus construction: A case study of House Rhino’ – by Allen and fellow NMMU academic Katharina Crafford received the Chair’s Award at the Sustainable Ecological Engineering Design for Society conference in September last year.

The report was hailed at the conference, held at Leeds Beckett University, in the UK, because of the Rhino Group’s showcase House Rhino – an energy-plus home located at Crossways Farm Village, in Port Elizabeth – which the report is based on.

South Africa’s energy crisis over the past seven years has challenged preconceived ideas, resulting in the creation of attractive, affordable and energy efficient buildings that have become critical to offsetting massive cost increases in electricity, according the research report.

Van Niekerk said there were a myriad of avenues for corporates through which they could reduce their energy consumption without implementing major or costly energy savings systems.

“During our energy efficiency audits of major businesses and retailers, many of the buildings which we go into don’t meet basic energy efficiency requirements. By making simple changes in their daily operations, those businesses have saved tens of thousands of rands on energy costs.”

Businesses often neglected to optimally use the space at their disposal, noted Van Niekerk. Rhino Group has recently completed a 3 MW solar installation for a client in Johannesburg, using mounted solar panels with the dual purpose of creating undercover parking for the client.

It typically takes seven years for a landlord to cover the costs of solar installations, said Van Niekerk, adding that “it is a very good investment”. Landlords could, in terms of return on investment, protect themselves by producing renewable energy to cover costs in case tenants default on payments, and they are “greening the building for the tenant”, he explained.

McEwan, whose company also undertakes energy audits for major companies, said one recent audit revealed that a medium-sized retailer could save more than R12 000 a year or reduce their carbon dioxide emissions by 10 t simply by changing the setting on the air conditioning system from 18 ˚C to 22 ˚C.

Sapoa Port Elizabeth chairperson Mark Bakker said, while the perceived cost of developing a green building had always appeared to be prohibitive, as direct savings need to be taken into account as well as the indirect benefits gained through higher achievable rentals, as well as longer-term and happier tenants.

Edited by Martin Zhuwakinyu
Creamer Media Senior Deputy Editor

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