Singapore needs more funds to build green towers

Singapore’s building regulator is seeking more funds to support landlords who upgrade systems used to power and cool structures, which account for a third of the nation’s electricity consumption.

The Building and Construction Authority wants more money after exhausting $100 million allotted in 2009 to help property owners make their developments more environmentally friendly, Chief Executive Officer John Keung said. It needs the funds to offer incentives and programs to help owners of older properties upgrade, he said.

“New buildings isn’t a problem, our bigger challenge is existing building because retrofitting can disrupt existing operations,” he said in an interview in Singapore. “So we are helping fund part of the retrofitting to get them to go green.”

Singapore is aiming to have 80% of its properties meet its green standards by 2030 as buildings make up a fifth of its land area, a city-state that’s smaller than the size of New York City. The authority said a recent study of 36 commercial properties that upgraded cooling systems showed energy consumption fell 16%.

The government agency is using the funds to match expenses by landlords for upgrading their facilities to meet green standards, capping the grant at $3 million, Keung said. The authority will also help fund an energy audit to track the efficiency of the air-conditioning plants. Only 21% of the city’s buildings meet its green standards now, it said.

GREEN STANDARD

Singapore’s property owners made 1,650 buildings environmentally friendly since 2005 when the authority introduced the green standard, Keung said. The additional cost for a new property to meet its certification would raise expenses by as much as 5%, which could be recovered through energy savings in 2 1/2 years to 6 1/2 years, he said.

The city’s floor area per capita for green buildings, or the amount of space in those properties compared with the number of occupants, was 8.7 square meters (93.6 square feet) last year, according to data from the authority. In California’s four biggest cities including Los Angeles and San Francisco, the ratio was 3.8 square meters, according to data from U.S. Green Building Council.

California was ranked first in the U.S. with 6,438 commercial buildings meeting the widely used Leadership Energy and Environmental Design, or LEED standards.