Green Buildings

In promoting green buildings, we pay increasing attention to adopting green features in the building design. In addition, we enhance the overall built environment through adopting energy conservation measures, manage indoor environmental quality, control carbon emission resulting from the building operation, implement waste reduction and water management and conduct building environmental performance assessment.

Green Roofs

Since 2001, we have included roof-top greening whenever practicable, in capital works projects like schools, crematoria, hospitals, offices, community centres, etc. and a total of 27 such projects have been completed since 2006. We have also included green roofs as retrofit projects in existing Government buildings with a further 18 projects completed since 2006.

New General Specifications on Green Buildings, GS.

We have raised the standards of the building environmental performance and provided more updated environmental-friendly specifications (specifically for energy efficient installations) in our latest General Specifications which became effective in September 2007.

We keep track on the latest developments regarding the changes in British Standards, developments of the Construction Industry and initiatives from Bureaux including various Green Building and Green Procurement initiatives. We would consider them further in the next review of the General Specifications for Government Buildings of the HKSAR. Some issues being considered include the followings:

• Proposed updating of British Standards to Euro Standards / Eurocodes;
• Updated requirements of specifications in civil and building construction works;
• Inclusion of new equipment/materials that perform better from the advancement of technology related to sustainability;
• Sustainable development/green building practices including use of green building materials, recycling and re-usable products etc.

Building Energy Code

Since the launch of the HK Energy Efficiency Registration Scheme for Buildings in 1998 to promote the application of the Building Energy Codes (BEC), we have registered a number of building projects with this scheme. BEC stipulates the minimum design requirements on five areas of installation including lighting, air-conditioning, electrical and lift & escalator installations.

To adopt a more proactive approach, we raised the baseline for calculating the estimated energy saved from our completed projects by making reference to the BEC 2007 edition. Though the majority of the completed projects in 2008 were small in scale, the energy saved was still encouraging. We continue to explore more advanced energy efficient strategies in order to reduce our carbon footprint even further.

We are committed to make concerted efforts with bureaux and departments to achieve their energy-saving targets as far as possible. To help us do this, we will improve the accuracy of our estimation on energy consumption and enhance our communication with stakeholders including clients and utility companies for future building projects.

Carbon Audit of Buildings

In response to global trends on climate change, we have joined an inter-Government department working group in order to develop a set of Carbon Audit guidelines which provide a scientific approach towards auditing of greenhouse gases emission from buildings in Hong Kong. The "Guidelines to Account for and Report on Greenhouse Gas Emissions and Removals for buildings (Commercial, Residential or Institutional Purpose) in Hong Kong" was launched in July 2008. We are planning to conduct a Carbon Audit on the Tamar Development project upon completion in 2011 in order to support the Chief Executive's 2008-09 policy address. Meanwhile, we are preparing some of our engineering staff with Certified Carbon Auditor Professional qualifications so that they can offer technical support and advice to our client departments prior to their projects' handover.

Construction Waste Management

Waste management is a strategic part of our operations and a key issue with respect to green buildings and so we have planned and implemented strategies to minimise the generation of construction waste at sites and waste disposal at public fills and landfills, and to maximise the use of recycled materials.

With the data collected from past projects and guidance from experienced colleagues, our project teams were able to make reliable estimations on construction waste which were needed for Civil Engineering and Development Department, CEDD, to assess the intake capacities of present public fill reception facilities (PFRF).

In view of the shrinking capacities of the PFRFs managed by CEDD, we have increased our efforts to encourage contractors to further reduce at source both inert and non inert construction waste. Through comprehensive project planning, contractors are encouraged to practice cut-and-fill balance which would allow the reuse of inert construction waste at alternative sites across the region and this would directly alleviate the burden of PFRFs.

Over the past five years, the construction waste disposed of to landfills has been decreasing (overall 26,833 tonnes in 2008). However, due to the ongoing construction of some mega projects such as the Tamar Development project, the waste sent to public fill areas for reuse has increased (overall 839,097 tonnes in 2008).

Indoor Air Quality

Indoor air quality (IAQ) is one of the environmentally friendly measures we are pursuing and we aim to achieve the "Excellent Class" of the IAQ Objectives in new projects where practicable. Upon completion of a project, we provide technical advice on the certification process and facilitate our clients to register their certificates with the IAQ Information Centre. We have set up a team of competent IAQ assessors and our IAQ Inspection Unit has, since September 2008, been accepted by Hong Kong Accreditation Service (HKAS) to be an Accredited Inspection Body under the Hong Kong Inspection Accreditation Scheme (HKIAS). Our in-house IAQ Certifying Inspection Body (IAQCIB) is capable of carrying out IAQ assessment and certification of government buildings upon request by our clients. In 2008, two existing buildings (APB Centre and part of the Queensway Government Offices) obtained Good Class IAQ Certificates.

 

Ref Link:

• The "Guidelines to Account for and Report on Greenhouse Gas Emissions and Removals for buildings (Commercial, Residential or Institutional Purpose) in Hong Kong".