The relevant authorities need to look at the existing building regulations to ensure that all new housing, commercial and industrial buildings take into account the need to be energy efficient, especially in the tropical climate, social activist Datuk Seri Ang Soon said today.
He said techniques for constructing efficient buildings were becoming well established, with well-known examples in Australia, such as the passive solar design apartments in Windsor; the “carbon neutral” Urban Hotel in Shanghai, China that opened in 2008 and the American town of Greenburg, which was destroyed by a tornado in 2007 and rebuilt to high environmental standards incorporating solar panels and wind generators for energy self-sufficiency.
“It does not require much imagination to envisage the saving in energy consumption that can be achieved by simple methods such as natural ventilation, building orientation and solar shading while cross ventilation designs are quite effective,” he said in his Earth Day 2012 message here.
He also suggested that all levels of government, in all countries, should have a role to play in supporting such a move by encouraging both vendors and purchasers of these items with appropriate government incentives.
“On Earth Day, should we not be asking what more can be done to promote and support more use of solar water heating and solar panels for producing power for our existing buildings?” he asked, adding that both were now recognised as making a very useful contribution to reducing power consumption and, thus, made a useful contribution to reducing carbon-dioxide levels in the atmosphere.
On a global level, he said, it remained to be seen whether there would be a positive outcome from the controversial decision at the 2011 Durban Nations United Climate Change Conference to make a legally binding agreement involving all countries by 2015 to reduce the global temperature rise from emissions to two degrees Celsius to be implemented by 2020.
