.: Green Technology : Help, Save Our Planet :.: Green Building

By Ahmad Firdaus bin Ahmad Fuad
Environmental Analysis Group, Malaysia

Green Buildings are eco friendly, reduce operating costs, increase marketability of the building and enhance the owners’ corporate image as they also increase productivity of the occupants and reduce potential liability resulting from poor indoor air quality problem.

Green building is the practice of increasing the efficiency with which buildings use resources — energy, water, and materials — while reducing building impacts on human health and the environment during the building's lifecycle, through better siting, design, construction, operation, maintenance, and removal.

Green buildings are designed to reduce the overall impact of the built environment on human health and the natural environment by:

Efficiently using energy, water, and other resources
Protecting occupant health and improving employee productivity
Reducing waste, pollution and environmental degradation

Studies of people working in green buildings have reported productivity gains of 16%, including reduction in absenteeism and improved quality of work. Essentially, Green Building designs incorporate positive environmental, economic and social elements that benefit all building stake holders, including owners, occupants and the general public.

Green Buildings, sometimes referred to as “Sustainable Buildings” or “Environmental Buildings”, are designed to enhance energy efficiency, promote renewal energy, reduce air-conditioning costs and improve indoor environment quality (both temperature and relative humidity), and in the process, enabling owners to reap financial incentives under the Kyoto Protocol’s clean development mechanism.

While some countries in the region like India, Singapore and Australia have developed their own Green Building Councils and Rating Standards derived from the LEED in the US, Malaysia is still in the process of forming a Green Building Council, while even countries like Vietnam have taken a lead.

Malaysia needs to hasten the process to catch up with the world as many countries have gone even further.

Many countries have developed their own standards of energy efficiency for buildings. Above some examples of building environmental assessment tools currently in use: