Different stakeholders from Asia’s green building industry convened last week in Singapore during the International Green Building Conference 2015. Light has been shed on some new trends in the market, including green building’s focus which now has been extended towards its effects on people.
The global green house gas emission could double by 2030 from the already concerning current level – if we continue business as usual without any change. Terri Wills, the CEO at World Green Building Council (WorldGBC) stated during her speech that to stay within 2 degrees of global temperature increase, we need two things : net zero buildings and deep retrofits.
Health and wellbeing of green building
Gone are the days where building’s focus is put merely on energy efficiency – although of which value is not diminished.
Now taking health and wellbeing into account, the WorldGBC considers these two factors crucial not only to weigh in inescapable moral duty for the people by providing proper working/living space, but also to validate the business sense of building sustainably/green.
The WorldGBC assesses a number of metrics to measure health and wellbeing of green building such as : revenue, medical complaints, physical complaints, medical costs, staff turnover/retention, and absenteeism.
An ideal condition of which a green building aims to provide would then be translated into increase of revenue, and minimum medical/physical complaints, medical costs, staff turnover, as well as absenteeism.
How can green building/office benefit its tenants?
The WorldGBC’s Terri Wills further explored the actual effects caused by a number of “green” factors in an office building, namely as follows :
All of the above factors, among some others, once adopted can eventually be quantified to result in actual increase of revenue and retention rate, as well as reduction of medical/physical complaints, medical costs, and absenteeism.
The Asian region is now seeing not only visible growth rate of green building adoption across the countries, but also improvement of how the practice is being valued, and better learning (in terms of perspectives, process, technologies) from its neighboring global regions. (AGB.com – SA)
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