A property developer says the Jakarta administration must provide incentives for the construction of more environmentally friendly buildings.
Rudy Margono, chairman of the Jakarta chapter of Real Estate Indonesia, said the city should offer up tax breaks and make licensing requirements easier if it wants developers to invest more in green buildings.
“Will we get incentives in terms of tax or something else? Because it costs a lot to invest in green buildings,” he said.
The city is preparing to issue a gubernatorial regulation next month that would require certain types of buildings to comply with more stringent environmental standards drawn up by the administration.
Under the regulation, all office, commercial and apartment buildings with floor space of more than 50,000 square meters would have to meet green building specifications.
Also affected are all hotels and health care facilities with floor space of more than 20,000 square meters and education facilities of more than 10,000 square meters.
New buildings will have to meet criteria in five areas: construction management, land use, energy efficiency, water conservation and air quality. Existing buildings will be assessed on the latter three points as well as operational management.
Rudy said it was unfair to apply the green building criteria to existing buildings. He cited the Sarinah department store on Jalan M.H. Thamrin, which was completed in 1967 and which he argued would have to be completely revamped to meet the stringent new rules.
But the city is adamant that new and existing building alike must comply with the regulation, which the Jakarta Building Control and Monitoring Office (P2B) said had been in the works for a long time.
“We’ve been discussing this issue for quite a while now. It’s just that the regulation hasn’t been issued yet,” said Pandita, the head of planning and monitoring at the P2B.
“We’ll begin implementing it in April.”
The administration has argued that in addition to the contributions to water and electricity conservation and improved air quality, the drive to increase the number of green buildings in Jakarta is crucial to helping the city reach its stated goal of reducing carbon dioxide emissions by 30 percent by 2030.
Greenhouse gas emissions from buildings account for 40 percent of total emissions, according to a 2007 report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the United Nations body tasked with evaluating the impact of human-driven climate change.
While the upcoming gubernatorial decree will be the first mandatory policy on green buildings in the country, a voluntary scheme for developers to get their buildings certified green already exists.
The Greenship rating system, drawn up by the Green Building Council Indonesia, certifies both new and existing buildings that adopt energy-saving measures.
The GBCI, which advocates more environmentally sustainable building management, introduced the rating system just for new structures in June 2010.
It expanded the system in January 2011 to include existing buildings, requiring that they meet stringent criteria in energy efficiency, water conservation, material resources, recycling, environmental management, indoor health and comfort.
Rana Yusuf Yasir, GBCI’s director of ratings, told the Jakarta Globe in January that drafting compliance criteria for existing buildings was much harder than for new ones.
“It’s very important to focus on existing buildings because they account for 95 percent to 98 percent of all buildings in the country,” he said at the 2010 World Green Building International Congress in Singapore.
“Of Jakarta’s 700,000 buildings, only 18,000 are built every year, so the older ones are the ones that we need to focus on.”
