The building and construction division of CSIR, Boutek, has rolled out its Green Buildings for Africa (GBFA) programme in the public domain in an attempt to clean up South Africa's commercial buildings.
This follows a two-year pilot phase and the launch of the project's showcase partnership programme this year, which is aimed at involving commercial and retail undertakings in the project.
GBFA, which was launched by Boutek in 1998, aims to create an enabling infrastructure to promote the environmentally-responsible use of buildings by property owners and tenants.
It involves the promotion of efficient use of non-renewable resources; sustainable use of renewable resources; adopting environment-conscious policies, and healthy and comfortable indoor environments.
'The main reasons for the project, are to make South African companies more competitive in the global environment by reducing their resource consumption, as well as attempting to minimise the effect of these resources on the global environment,' says GBFA project manager Neil Oliver.
He adds that the venture achieves its objective by providing facility owners and managers with information on new and improved technologies and maintenance procedures after a comprehensive study on the building has been undertaken.
The study involves assessing the way in which a building is used and operated, the way in which water and energy is managed, and waste generated by the structure and its occupants.
Buildings that were studied during the pilot phase of the programme include Old Mutual Centre, Sanlam's Sancardia centre and CSIR conference centre in Pretoria.
The flagship pilot study of the project is Eskom's four-storey Megawatt Park in Midrand, Gauteng, where a significant saving in energy costs was achieved, after energy-related upgrades.
'What the pilots have revealed is that there are certainly economic benefits to participating in the programme.
'Megawatt Park, for example, has managed to save about R2,2-million a year on energy costs alone through a number of initiatives implemented since 1991 up to now, with one fairly big thrust in 1998, which involved a complete upgrade of the lighting and air- conditioning plants.
'The total saving from when they first embarked on the project up to now accumulates to about R9-million, with the total capital cost of the upgrade around R1,5-million,' says Oliver.
Some of the alterations on the building include an upgrade of the building-management system, installation of energy-monitoring meters; optimisation of the operating hours of the air-conditioning systems; automation of the lighting-control systems, upgrading the pneumatic control of the air-handling plants to direct-digital control and the replacement of the lighting system with a more efficient system.
It is believed that, by reducing the energy consumption of the building, large quantities of sulphuric acid, carbon dioxide and nitric acid emissions, resulting from the coal-fired power generation process have also been reduced.
'This is equivalent to removing 7 000 vehicles from South African roads; avoiding the discharge of ten fuel-tanker loads of sulphuric acid and seven tanker loads of nitric acid into the atmosphere.
'Imagine if this could be achieved on all 250 000 of South Africa's commercial buildings,' he enthuses.
To date, Old Mutual has indicated its commitment to the project by enrolling its 166 000 m2 Cape Town head office complex on to the showcase partnership programme.
Oliver reports that environmental assessments and facilitation workshops at the building have begun and may be expanded to include a new component of the study, which involves assessing the indoor environment of the building – a factor which is believed to have a significant effect on the productivity of the inhabitants of a building.
This section of the study takes into consideration components such as the lighting, air-conditioning amenities and workspace of the building.
'Consider a megabuilding housing about 5 500 people.
'If we had to look at the annual wage bill being paid to employees working in that building, it would probably amount to R550-million a year.
'If we can make a performance improvement of around one per cent by improving the indoor environment, we are looking at a R5,5-million a year impact on the bottom line of the company,' says Oliver.
The programme has also seen the development of an assessment tool, known as the building environmental assessment rating system, which measures the effect buildings have on the environment, as well as the various indoor components of the building.
It is a South African clone of the UK's British research establishment environmental assessment method.
GBFA represents South Africa's involvement in the Green Buildings Challenge (GBC), an international project aimed at developing a universally-accepted method of assessing a building's impact on the environment.
GBC was spearheaded by Canada and is being backed by more than 14 countries, including the US and Japan, with GBFA representing South Africa's involvement in the project.
Oliver explains that the GBC assessment tool is based on a spreadsheet programme and involves asking more than a hundred questions related to the design and operation of the building, as well as questions related to the indoor environment and life-cycle economies.
The project team has also been appointed by the Department of Minerals and Energy (DME) to assess its South African energy demand and efficiency standards – a set of guidelines being developed by the DME for electrical and mechanical installations for commercial buildings.
'We are testing them to see if they are suitable for the South African environment, and these will then be passed to the South African Bureau of Standards (SABS) for the generation of new SABS standards,' says Oliver.
GBFA is partially funded by the CSIR parliamentary grant, with the majority of funding being generated from the showcase partner programme, strategic partners and contract research.
Strategic partners include Eskom's Elektroserve and Rode & Associates, the Institute of Waste Management and the Joint Acceptance Committee for Water Installation Components (Jacwic).
The steering committee consists of the Department of Water Affairs, DME, Department of Public Works, Department of Environmental Affairs and Tourism, Eskom, SABS, South African Property Owners Association, International Institute for Energy Conservation, Federated Hospitality Association of South Africa, the Jacwic, Boutek and the Institute of Waste Management