Singapore’s building stock has gotten much greener in the last six years. It has greener schools, office buildings, malls, industrial parks, public housing, factories and even greener demolition sites. Behind the republic’s surge in green buildings and sustainable construction are efforts by the Building and Construction Authority (BCA), a national agency charged with ensuring the republic meets its target of greening 80 per cent of its building stock by 2030.
BCA’s achievement in that relatively short period, however, was no easy feat. Its chief executive John Keung describes the agency’s journey as a bumpy one.
In an email interview with Eco-Business, Dr Keung shared: “Behind the success story of the BCA Green Mark scheme lie many deep-seated challenges that we had faced and overcome in the initial years.”
He was referring to the BCA’s flagship Green Mark certification scheme, launched in 2005, which set minimum standards for buildings on environmental factors such as energy efficiency, environmental impacts, waste management and water efficiency.
While the agency partially modeled Green Mark on similar building rating systems developed in the United States, the United Kingdom and Australia, BCA worked to cultivate a system that was unique to Singapore’s tropical climate.
“BCA has developed the first ever innovative rating system to suit our tropical environment and local context,” said Dr Keung.
In its first year, only 17 buildings made the cut, he recalled. Lacklustre response from developers and the larger building industry meant that at the end of two years, the total number of buildings awarded the Green Mark was a paltry 34.
“What we needed to do was change mindsets. Industry needed to be persuaded to make environmental sustainability a cornerstone in their construction, operation and management of buildings. While there was a price tag to green when the scheme started in 2005, we needed to convince them that going green made business sense,” he said.
To change the status quo, BCA formulated a Green Building Masterplan, a roadmap that set out specific initiatives to green Singapore’s physical landscape.
Dr Keung said that the Green Mark was designed to be integrated with the environmental initiatives of other agencies to create a holistic green building assessment system.
The scheme uses the energy performance benchmark from Singapore’s National Environment Agency, and the water efficiency standards from PUB, the national water agency.
A dynamic target
Far from being a static target, the Green Mark standard has evolved into a dynamic platform that continues to challenge Singapore’s foremost green developers, while at the same time providing support to industry players new to the green building movement.
BCA has achieved this through a tiered system: builders can opt for the basic certification of their projects, or they can challenge themselves to achieve a higher rating, such as the Gold, Gold Plus, or Platinum – the highest accolade. The agency has also customised green mark standards for different uses, rather than applying a blanket approach to all buildings.
Former president of the Singapore Green Building Council (SGBC), Mr Lee Chuan Seng, told Eco-Business that the certification standards were deliberately set to a level that was high, but not unreachable. Mr Lee, who has served on BCA’s Green Mark advisory committee for the past six years, noted that the government provided initial grants totalling S$20 million to help ‘first movers’ - developers who took the lead in adopting such green standards - which in turned helped to develop a local market for green building supplies and the necessary skills for the industry.
Over time, the standards were upgraded – version four was released last year – in such a way that there was no disruption to the industry, added Mr Lee, who is also chairman of the global engineering consultancy firm Beca Asia.
The Green Mark advisory committee revisits the system every 12 to 18 months to keep pushing the envelope. “Projects that are innovative one year will become merely good in their second year. By year three, those projects are business-as-usual,” said Mr Lee.
Existing buildings have not been overlooked. BCA has a number of blueprints in place to encourage retrofits of existing buildings to increase energy efficiency and sustainability, including a S$100 million fund to assist building managers with the upfront costs of energy efficiency improvements.
By 2020, under Singapore’s second Green Building Masterplan, all new and existing government buildings must achieve a green building rating of Gold Plus or higher.
To support the scheme, the government introduced regulations in 2008 that required all new buildings to be constructed to the minimum Green Mark standard.
Currently, schemes are in place for both new and existing office and other commercial buildings, public housing buildings, landed residential properties and schools. More recently, BCA has branched out into other projects by coordinating with other agencies on projects in urban infrastructure, transport, parks and district-wide planning.
Mr Lee said that BCA’s collaborations with other agencies, such as Singapore’s Urban Redevelopment Authority (URA), the Land Transport Authority (LTA) and National Parks, were significant factors in the Green Mark scheme’s success. He described an incentive programme jointly devised by BCA and URA to grant additional floor space to developers who achieve high Green Mark ratings. “As a result, over the last few years, developers of large new buildings have found it worthwhile to go for a platinum rating,” he noted.
To increase the skills and technical expertise needed to implement Singapore’s green building ambitions, the agency has implemented training courses at its BCA Academy. By 2020, BCA plans to train 18,000 to 20,000 people in the development, design, construction, operation and maintenance of green buildings.
Exporting know-how
Having spread its knowledge throughout many sectors within Singapore, BCA has begun exporting its expertise and its Green Mark scheme abroad. According to the agency, developers of more than 120 projects in 10 different countries have applied for Green Mark certification.
Mr Lee noted that SGBC and BCA receive a regular stream of visitors from surrounding countries, including Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, Vietnam and the Philippines, interested in learning about Singapore’s holistic approach to green buildings.
To encourage greater dialogue and sharing of best practices, BCA is organising the upcoming Singapore Green Building Week, now in its third year. This is where BCA’s experts and managers can share their experience and further engage with other experts to drive green building efforts in Asia.
A core part of the event, to be held at Suntec Convention Centre from 13 to 16 September, will be the BCA-hosted International Green Building Conference (IGBC) 2011, a series of workshops to address issues such as green buildings in the tropics, sustainable construction, eco-cities and waste management within the construction industry.
“We all know that there is a critical and urgent need to build green and retrofit existing buildings into more energy-efficient and environmentally-friendly living spaces,” said BCA’s Dr Keung. “For this very reason, the intention behind organising IGBC was to enable industry practitioners to take action, not just sometime in the future, but now,” he added.
International experts and organisations at the IGBC will include the American Society for Civil Engineers, the China Green Building Council, the Singapore Green Building Council (SGBC), the Waste Management and Recycling Association of Singapore (WMRAS), the World Green Building Council (WGBC) and the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP).
The green building week will also feature a regional dialogue among policy-makers on green building within the region, the second time such an event has been held. At workshops hosted by the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC), Asean and the US Department of Commerce, senior officials and green building experts will discuss trade barriers on green building products and examine green building standards in Asia Pacific.
The IGBC and APEC conferences will be hosted alongside Build Eco Xpo Asia (BEX Asia), an annual forum for companies within the green building sector to network and showcase green building products and solutions.
BEX Asia organisers said this year’s exhibition is expected to attract some 8,000 participants from about 250 companies and more than 25 countries.
Dr Keung said this year’s green building week will bring together some of the world’s leading experts who will share their innovative yet proven approaches to green buildings, including real-world examples here in Singapore.
“But we have to act now – hence this year’s conference theme is ‘Build Green. Act Now’. IGBC 2011 can be declared a success if every single participant takes one step, no matter how small, to invest in, design or retrofit a building using the green building solutions presented and discussed during the conference,” he concluded.
For other news from Singapore Green Building Week, including the International Green Building Conference 2011 and Bex Asia 2011, click here.
