The trend towards green building and the concept of greening existing buildings have been slow to take off in South Africa, as these are voluntary exercises, says property investment holding company Growthpoint Properties utilities management head Essop Basha.

“There is not a massive demand for green space and, generally, the perception is that, although there should be a demand for green space, it has not happened yet in South Africa,” he says.

However, Growthpoint’s strategy is to lead in this area and this is demonstrated by the fact that the company is a founding member of the Green Building Council of South Africa (GBCSA), adds Basha, noting that the building industry has to find a balance between being financially prudent and using enviroment-friendly products and designs.

Shawn Theunissen, head of corporate social responsibility and manager of Growthpoint Properties’ enterprise development programme, Property Point, believes that many more people are considering green building and expects that this building trend will become the norm, as it will drive cost reductions. Currently, the capital needed to green a building is still high, but as greening becomes more ingrained in the South African business environment, this demand will offset costs dramatically, he says.

Growthpoint has adopted a holistic ‘cradle to grave’ approach, whereby developers review every aspect of the construction process. This includes the nature of the materials sourced, how they are sourced and how they are eventually disposed of.

“For green building to succeed, we need to focus on matters like localisation, which is a core element of a green economy. The main challenge we currently face is that most of the great technological advances in green lighting solutions, for example, are coming from abroad,” says Theunissen.

To counter this trend, in 2008, Growthpoint initiated Property Point, a programme that mentors small businesses and links them to larger companies by promoting their services in the property sector, including green building projects.

However, Basha notes that establishing a local manufacturing process on the back of such initiatives remains a challenge and it is hampering the industry, with the consequence of significant costs being added to green projects.

“Green building also has difficulty in challenging the perception that green means higher costs.”

Basha acknowledges that there was concern about the quality of certain green products, owing to the use of substandard materials and technologies in the past and that, over the years, greening has earned a bad reputation. As a result, Growthpoint has invested significant resources in the research and development of solutions to ensure that the required standards with regard to safety and durability are met.

Growthpoint has established working partnerships with State-owned power utility Eskom, piloting the testing of green technologies. Other partners include various local and international lighting companies.

Basha highlights that Growthpoint worked with a local solar project developer in 2011 to provide and install solar panels at Lincoln on the Lake, in Umhlanga Ridge, KwaZulu-Natal (KZN). The initiative was profiled that year at the seventeenth Conference of the Parties, an international environmental and climate-change conference in Durban.

In mid-February, the company received its first six-star GBCSA rating for the new No 1 Silo office building at Cape Town’s V&A Waterfront.

This success follows Growthpoint’s completion of Lincoln on the Lake and Mayfair on the Lake, also in Umhlanga Ridge, KZN, in the last two years. Both buildings received four-star GBCSA ratings in 2012 in the As-built and By-design categories respectively.

“The path to the greening of buildings can be arduous and can, at times, contain many pitfalls,” says Basha, who remains positive.

“Green building allows for long-term sustainable building, which will reduce the total costs of occupancy for our tenants through the correct implementation of genuinely green technologies,” he concludes.