The complex yet rewarding path to greening the built environment

BUILDINGS play a crucial role in the global campaign to avert a climate crisis and develop a more sustainable economy.

With the built environment generating more than a third of the world's carbon emissions, decarbonising it is believed to be one of the most cost-effective ways to mitigate climate change.

But the path that needs to be taken to decarbonise the built environment can be a complicated one, and many aspects have to be considered.

Greening buildings

The built environment, which encapsulates all man-made structures, such as buildings, parks and supporting infrastructure for cities, is responsible for 38 per cent of total global energy-related carbon emissions.

That's according to a 2020 report from the Global Alliance of Buildings and Construction, which is part of the United Nations Environment Programme.

The same report also said that electricity consumption in building operations accounts for 55 per cent of global electricity consumption.

"There is urgency for more to be done," says Charles Lim, leader, South-east Asia, at Johnson Controls, a multinational building efficiency and global workplace solutions provider.

"To achieve net-zero carbon by 2050, direct emissions from buildings need to be halved by 2030 - less than 10 years from now," he adds, referring to the International Energy Agency's published estimate. "This is while the global building floor area is expected to double by 2060, driven by urbanisation."

Wong Heang Fine, group chief executive officer of Surbana Jurong Group - a global urban, infrastructure and managed services consulting firm - says that 7 billion people are projected to live in cities around the world by 2050, which means the pressure to intensify land use will increase.

"The pressure on services and infrastructure will mount. If we collectively take concerted action to reduce or zero-ise emissions in every piece of real estate we build, the impact on decarbonisation across cities will be tremendous," he says.

Global real estate services company JLL believes it is therefore essential to ensure that cities are sustainable, if 60 per cent of the world's population is projected to be living in urban areas by 2030.

With the built environment being the foundation of cities, it says green buildings would be paramount for their long-term sustainability.

"The building sector has the most potential for delivering significant and cost-effective emission reductions. In fact, it wouldn't be wrong to say that countries will not be able to meet their emission-reduction targets without supporting a shift towards green buildings," says Kamya Miglani, director of research, Work Dynamics, Asia-Pacific, at JLL.

A green building, as defined by the World Green Building Council (WGBC), is a building that, in its design, construction or operation, reduces or eliminates negative impacts, and can create positive impacts, on the climate and natural environment; green buildings preserve precious natural resources and improve the quality of life.

Yoon Young Kim, cluster president, Singapore, Malaysia and Brunei, at Schneider Electric, a multinational energy and automation digital solutions provider, says that green buildings use energy and resources in an efficient manner.

"They also use pollution- and resource-limiting technologies and keep the carbon footprint minimal, all whilst encapsulating an overall design and structure which is considerate towards the changing environment of today's world. By having more green buildings, a country can lower its carbon footprint substantially, and provide a healthy, liveable and sustainable environment for generations to come."

Yoon points out that green buildings represent a substantial investment opportunity, with the WGBC having said that this would be a US$24.7 trillion market by 2030.

"(This) highlights the tremendous demand and potential to drive sustainability in urban built environments in countries."

Old vs new builds

But not all buildings are created equal. Greening old builds tends to be a more complex task than constructing a green build from scratch or even that of greening a newer build.

For example, the need to incorporate more retrofits makes greening older buildings more challenging than greening newer ones, Yoon says. He adds that modernising an ageing facility provides many benefits, including reducing one's carbon footprint, increasing one's resiliency in the face of climate instability, and giving one the ability to collect, analyse and proactively act upon key energy consumption data.

"While there are costs involved in greening buildings, there is a need to think long-term, factoring the potential operational savings that can be reaped over time, and how a green and sustainable facility can be a more attractive investment," Yoon says.

Surbana's Wong agrees, saying that most asset owners tend to focus on the capital expenditure instead of the whole life-cycle cost. "In reality, operations and maintenance costs typically account for 65 per cent of the overall life cycle cost, and capital cost the remaining 35 per cent," he says.

He points out that the costs of retrofitting a building to meet sustainability standards have come down substantially; and that the digitisation of building design processes and the management of built environment projects are giving stakeholders greater control over their productivity and costs.

There are schemes and incentives to blunt the cost. Within Singapore, there are schemes that can aid building owners in their efforts, such as the Green Building Innovation Cluster programme for energy efficient technologies, and grants to encourage companies to make an early switch to water-cooled chillers using lower global warming potential refrigerants.

"Collectively, (all) the targeted schemes make significant improvements in the greening of buildings," Wong says.

Businesses also need to realise that there is a cost to not greening an older building, Lim says, and that investments will pay back in time in terms of energy savings.

"There are many other intangible benefits too, such as the better well-being of occupants, higher productivity, better attraction and retention of talents, as well as a better reputation.

"Interestingly, the pandemic has accelerated the need to change, tenants are increasingly prioritising health and wellness of their employees who are coming back into the office. This is playing a major influence in the design, construction and retrofit of the buildings in terms of providing healthy workspaces, clean air programmes, safe access programmes, healthy facility systems and disaster response," Lim adds.

Miglani notes that leaders, regulators and people across the world are already holding buildings to a new standard.

"The real estate industry is experiencing a reset in what is considered a 'best-in-class building': it is now green, net zero carbon, healthy and resilient to climate change."

Complexities of decarbonising

The decarbonisation of urban cities and buildings, however, requires a rethink of how infrastructure is designed, built, operated, and maintained over time, says Yoon.

Hor Mei Peng, sustainability director, Asia-Pacific, at Johnson Controls, adds: "The reality is that switching from brown to green practices is not easy and will take time. Livelihoods are involved and developing countries are already struggling with the economic impact from the ongoing pandemic."

She also points out that, even though capital is readily available for deployment, it is not easy to find attractive and de-risked projects, and that the deal structure lacks consistency in the private sector. "In general, across the Asia-Pacific, private-sector companies have passed over efficiency and sustainability projects with attractive - that is, 3 years or less - paybacks, because of a lack of internal goals or approved funding mechanisms to procure the projects," Hor says.

Miglani says the process of decarbonising is complex not just because of its scale, but also because of the ecosystem of partnerships that need to be forged.

"The magnitude of the climate-change challenge and the urgency with which we need to create a significantly decarbonised built environment requires society-wide buy-in and the mobilisation of resources across multiple stakeholder groups," she says.

"No single stakeholder group, whether in the public or private sector, has the resources or capabilities to accomplish decarbonisation on its own ... (there) needs to be a shift towards a partnership approach."

She has noted that there is a sense that administrations in top-tier cities are not doing enough, and says that real-estate occupiers should not have to shoulder the entire burden for reducing carbon emissions.

"With good reason, they expect support from landlords and city governments to help them make more significant progress. Equally so, investors and occupiers would like to see clearer and stronger incentives that bring about the right behaviours."

Active collaboration between the public and private sectors can help define the right balance between incentives and encouragement versus regulation, penalties and taxes.

City governments should also lead by example by decarbonising their public building stock, and help influence market transformation. In this, Miglani says, Singapore has emerged as a model for planners and developers across the region.

Wong says consumers and the wider community must also keep advocating positive change in the use of sustainable materials, decarbonisation and other environmental, social and governance (ESG) concerns.

"The public sector must exercise its political muscle to facilitate real change, through regulatory mechanisms, fiscal and monetary policies. It needs to be able to provide a robust ecosystem that will help all players in the whole project life cycle - from suppliers, to contractors, to developers and ultimately the asset owners and consumers - appreciate the value of sustainable development."

Yoon concludes: "Decarbonisation is a constant work in progress with different stakeholders, including government, developers, operators and building owners, working in tandem and closely with one another, to see through the necessary standards, measures and technologies, in order to effect greater change in decarbonisation efforts."