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1.3 International Review
Green building market driver initiatives in a
number of major cities have been reviewed.
They are Singapore, New York City, and
London.
The
Singapore
Green Building movement is
characterised by a comprehensive level of
Government leadership and coordination,
the main coordinating body is the Building
Construction Authority (BCA) that has the
task of setting and policing performance
standards and regulations, administering
Green Building Assessments, funding and
incentives, and educating for both general
public and professionals.
The Singapore framework is of particular
relevance to Hong Kong because the two
cities face similar climatic challenges (hot
summers with high solar heat gain and
humidity). The high density and intensive
land use also means that the GFA (Gross
Floor Area) incentive figures prominently in
both cities.
The
New York Ci t y
Gr een Bu i l d i ng
framework is managed by the Office for
Long-Term Planning and Sustainability
(OLTPS, part of the New York City Mayor’s
office). The overall coordination revolves
around the Greener, Greater Buildings Plan
(GGBP) which consists of 4 key pieces of
legislation: LL84 Benchmarking, LL85 NY
Energy Conservation Code, LL87 Energy
Audits and Retro-Commissioning, LL88
Lighting and Sub-metering. The plan is also
supported by a financing entity called the
New York City Energy Efficiency Corporation
(NYCEEC).
An important reference for Hong Kong is
New York’s framework for dealing with
existing buildings. The legislation requires
all buildings larger than 50,000 square
feet to undergo mandatory benchmarking,
energy disclosure or retro-commissioning/
retrofitting if they fall beyond a certain
percentile. A particular reason for why
such a regulatory approach is effective in
the high density environment of New York
City is because while the catchment of the
legislations only accounts for 2% of the
total building stock, and hence a relatively
manageable size, it accounts for more than
45% of the total GHG emissions.
London
is one of the earliest cities to
actively address the issue of building
energy efficiency. The UK Government
has set targets to achieve zero carbon in
as early as 2016 for domestic buildings
and 2019 for non-domestic buildings. To
achieve these extremely ambitious targets,
the city of London has introduced a number
of financing mechanisms (the Green Deal
and RE:FIT) that aims to create a self-
sustaining ecology of energy efficiency
retrofits, that partially or completely
remove the burden of capital cost from
building owners or operators.