- The latest SmartMarket Report by Dodge Data & Analytics indicates that while green buildings are on the rise, property developers are choosing to build their projects without ‘green’ certification.
- The report is based on a global survey of more than 2,000 industry participants.
- Global demands, environmental regulations, social and health concerns will be top triggers for green building over the next three years.
According to the latest findings of the World Green Building Trends 2018 SmartMarket Report by Dodge Data & Analytics, property developers are choosing to build their projects without ‘green’ certification. The report is based on a global survey of more than 2,000 industry participants including architects, engineers, contractors, owners, specialists/consultants and investors from 86 countries and its main objective is to analyse the level of green activity in the sector.
The report highlights that green building activity is on the increase with 47% of respondents declaring that they will build the majority of their projects more than 60% green. However, the gap between those wanting to build green and those seeking green certification will get significant wider between 2018 and 2021. This comes on the back over the credibility and cost of the majority feature based certifications on offer.
South Africa’s green building certifications have been dominated by the Green Building Council SA Green Star rating system will allocates points to specified green features. The model is a direct import from the Australian Green Building Council model with some local context adaptation. Less than 400 buildings in South Africa have been certified by GBCSA and other rating organisations.
The sharp decline expected in green building certification is partly due to the fact that green features are common knowledge and the cost is a big barrier. Moreover, the immediacy of climate change mitigation has leap frogged the movement to adopt the concept of the High Performance Building (HPB). HPB’s offer performance based outcomes on energy and water use, carbon emissions and indoor air-quality. There is also metrics to measure worker productivity and health in high performance buildings.
The SmartMarket Report also indicates that those using certification will do so more strategically on the back of the high performance building concept.
Global demands and environmental regulations will be top triggers for green building over the next three years. Recently South Africa’s Energy Minister has gazetted into law building energy performance certification and reporting for both public and private sector buildings. The laws will come into effect some time in 2019.
The report makes reference to South Africa regarding the need to make buildings healthier as a trigger in green buildings. In South Africa there has been a spike in buildings declared uncompliant and ‘not fit for human occupancy’.
Author: Bryan Groenendaal
