Singapore’s Building and Construction Authority (BCA) has published the country’s first report on the energy use of commercial buildings.
Building owners in the city-state can now compare their buildings’ performances against their peers, and use the information to improve their energy efficiency.
Launching the report at the International Green Building Conference on Monday, National Development Minister Khaw Boon Wan said the report “provides an objective assessment of [Singapore’s] green building efforts, based on robust evidence of our energy efficiency performance”.
It follows a landmark legislation introduced in 2012 which requires existing buildings to submit buliding and energy related information.
In a statement in the report, BCA chief executive, Dr John Keung, noted that Singapore’s building sector consumer up to 38 per cent of the nation’s electricity. To monitor and improve the sector’s energy efficiency, BCA targeted commercial buildings comprising offices, hotels, retail buildings and mixed developments as they are the higher energy consumers within the building sector.
The agency received 954 submissions, of which 884 buildings accounting for a gross floor area of 18.6 million square metres were analysed.
The study, which focuses on electricity consumption of commercial buildings, confirmed that Singapore’s commercial buildings have become more energy efficient in the past five years, and that Green Mark commercial buildings are more energy efficient. Green Mark is the country’s green building rating scheme.
The study also profiled the top 10 better energy performers of each commercial building category to showcase building owners’ efforts and to highlight the strong business case for green buildings.
Notably, the report showed that tenant and occupant activities within a building take up as much as 50 percent of the total electricity consumption of the buildings.
This is why BCA’s third green masterplan, also unveiled on Monday, features a range of initiatives to foster greater awareness among tenants and occupants, including a new $S50 million incentive scheme for existing buildings which will support efforts by building owners and tenants from small and medium enterprises to adopt sustainable initiatives.
“By proactively changing their energy consumption behaviour and practices, tenants and occupants can be part of the solution rather than the problem. Through the initiatives launched today under the 3rd Green Building Masterplan, we hope that more owners of existing buildings and tenants will recognise the important role they play in helping to shape a more sustainable and future-ready built environment for Singapore,” said Keung.
Our special event coverage of the International Green Building Conference 2014 is brought to you by City Developments Limited (CDL).
