dendrite studios

The ‘Building well’ seminar series concluded on Tuesday 16 October with a session entitled, Getting Practical. It was indeed a fitting way to end, as this series opened up all participants’ eyes as to the urgency of designing more sustainable (session 1 & 2) and the possibilities of how to do so (session 3 & 4).

The evening’s first speaker was Glynn Morris, the founder and managing director of Agama Energy. As a qualified engineer Glynn has worked in the field of energy consulting and renewable energy for almost 20 years.

“Energy is a cross-cutting issue and consequently every decision is an energy decision”. This bold statement opened Glynn’s presentation and 15-minutes later he had convincingly laid out his reasoning for why energy decisions are so paramount.

The main reason is that a realisation of energy’s impact allows us choices and choices are important at a time when decision have to be made about our energy future. According to the 2006 World Energy Outlook the two competing visions of our energy future are under-invested, vulnerable and dirty or clean, clever and competitive.

The latter option is no pipe dream and clever world-play but can be the outcome if we make a series of correct decisions going forward. These decisions mainly relate to: energy efficiency, renewable energy, on-site generation and energy management.

Energy efficiency is about getting more done (or at least the same done) with using less energy. Much efficiency improvements have been made for example in vehicle fuel efficiency, compact fluorescent light bulbs and more efficient heating and cooling techniques. A statistic that Mark Swilling mentioned in the 2nd session is extremely insightful: Current energy use by household refrigerators in California is only 20% now of what it was in 1974.

The second intervention to ensure a better energy future is to increase the portion of more sustainable energy in the primary energy mix. While recent talk on this topic has been dominated with electricity generation from sustainable sources such as solar, hydro or wind our thinking should begin with how sustainable energy sources can directly meet our needs. This includes in the building environment making optimal use of natural light and passive thermal design. A seemingly obvious but often forgotten concept is that what we require is not more electricity to power the light bulbs in our buildings, but a certain amount of lumens for a given period of time. And this light can in principle be provided by various sources, with natural sunlight the cheapest and most sustainable at all. Harvard marketing professor Theodore Levitt expressed this as follows: “people don’t want to buy a quarter inch drill. They want a quarter inch hole.” This also ties in with another concept that Mark Swilling mentioned which is to ‘decouple’ growth from material production. Glynn’s explicit focus on sustainable energy in the primary energy mix is thus crucial, and goes way beyond how we generate electricity.

This ties in with the concept of on-site generation and conversion. Currently a significant portion of energy gets lost in transmission between Mpumalanga where it is generated and Cape Town. A much more rational approach is therefore to maximise on-site or local generation. This is where technologies such as photo voltaic panels, heat pumps, solar geysers, bio-digesters producing ethanol etc. are important. Glynn was at pains to point out that although some of these technologies are a bit more expensive than the traditional approaches, the options are already available and is all a matter of choice. Just as the BP head office chose to invest in PV panels instead of fancy external cladding, home owners can opt for these technologies instead of more expensive finishes or kitchens. An example is a house in Red Hill near Simons Town that achieved complete energy self-sufficiency (not connected to the grid) at a cost of R80 000. This is what some people spent on a designer kitchen – so it is a matter of choice.

The fourth aspect that requires attention in order to achieve a desirable energy outcome is energy management through planning, metering and feedback. The old axiom ‘you cannot manage what you don’t measure’ is as true for energy as it is for finance. Only with systematic metering and analysis can you plan the energy supply effectively. Tying in with what Stef Raubenheimer said in the first session, much work still needs to be done locally in terms of base-line measurements and usage patterns.

In the final part of his presentation, Glynn highlighted some examples where innovative energy decisions have been implemented. A 1998 solar geyser project in Lwandle outside Somerset West is still providing hot water to residents of this informal settlement at a cost of only R24/month. The success and financial implication of BP Head Office has been highlighted before and remains the benchmark for high-end commercial developments. The Kuyasa project in Khayelitsha involved retrofitting houses with solar geysers, insulation and CFLs at a cost of R9000. A big portion of this was recouped by registering the project for carbon credits under the Clean Development Mechanism. It was one of the first such project in SA.

One intervention that is affordable and economically viable for all households are solar water heating systems. Discounted over a 20 year period the cost of hot water using this system works out to 2,4 - 4,7 cents per litre or as low as R59 per month. And the cumulative effect can be massive. Glynn estimates that if all households in Cape Town switch to solar water heating systems, the saving in electricity would be equal to the output of Koeberg.

An investment in renewable energy is thus affordable, offers a far greater level of predictability and is very much a choice. One that hopefully more and more people will make.

Mainstreaming green building

The evening’s second speaker was Bruce Kerswill, newly appointed chairman of the Green Building Council of South Africa (GBCSA). Bruce has played a pioneering role in establishing the GBCSA and is also Managing Director of Spire Property Services, a leading property management company in Cape Town.

Bruce’s presentation focussed on the establishment, goals, structure and progress of the council and on the adoption of a green building standard.

GBCSA got its start after Bruce went to Australia to investigate their green building rating system. The message he got there was that you cannot implement a rating system in isolation, their needs to be a coherent drive to promote green building. Hence the GBCSA has its stated mission as: “To drive the adoption of green building practices in the SA property industry, and move the industry towards sustainability through market-based solutions.”

The GBC is very much driven by the commercial property industry. The reason for this is twofold: Firstly as the largest owners of property in the country, getting commercial property companies on-board the green building agenda can make a big difference and secondly they have just been the people picking up this ball and running with it.

According to GBCSA a green building is one that significantly reduces or eliminates its negative effect on the environment and its occupants and is energy efficient, resource efficient and environmentally responsible. Green buildings can have a significant impact on greenhouse gas emissions, water scarcity, pollution, peak oil and the unsustainable pattern of development.

The message that the council tries to convey is that green buildings

• Do not necessarily cost more
• Save on operation cost, especially on a life-cycle basis
• Create a healthier work environment
• Result in increased productivity for workers
• Can command premium rentals
• Represent ‘global best practice’

The council is registered as a Section 21 company with directors drawn from a broad range including property practitioners, professionals, contractors and suppliers and government. Their operational focus is to promote green building, make knowledge and resources available, educate people about green building and establish a green building rating system.

The rating system is the tool to differentiate between normal and green buildings and to establish how green a building is. It works by identifying different categories in which a building’s environmental performance can be improved, pinpointing specific initiatives that would improve performance, awarding points for implementing these initiatives and then awarding a rating based on the overall score.

The Australian Green Star framework for example looks at management, indoor environmental quality, energy, transport, water, materials, land and ecology, emissions and technology. Under materials there would be things such as recycling waste storage, reusing facades, amount of recycled material used, PVC minimisation and sustainable timber. For recycling waste storage a building can then get 2 points if it provides a dedicated, adequately sized storage area with good access for building occupants. According to overall scores buildings are classified from one star to six stars, with the latter requiring more than 75 points.

Green Star is only one of the rating systems in use around the world. The USA has LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) and the UK BREEAM (Building Research Estimates Environment Assessment Method.

While the GBCSA hasn’t officially decided on a rating system they don’t want to develop their own system, but rather adapt an existing one. Green Star is a leading candidate because it was developed for Southern Hemisphere countries and is a second-generation system thus incorporating lessons from previous standards.

Despite only being launched earlier this year, the GBCSA has already made very good progress. They received great support from the SAPOA convention in May, they have appointed a full-time CEO, they have already ran Green Star accredited professional courses and they will open for membership in the first quarter of 2008.

The Green Building Council of SA has an informal slogan that green building “is good for business and good for the soul”. It was our core belief in developing this seminar series that sustainable design is not only needed in response to a fundamentally changing climate, but that building well can be really good for us a society. Rethinking how we design our buildings can do much in reshaping our communities and ensuring greater prosperity for all.