This post was written for the Ground Floor by C.Y. Leung, chairman Asia Pacific of the Urban Land Institute.
Editor's Note: This article was adapted from an opinion piece originally written by Leung in his role as Patron Chair of Hong Kong’s Climate Change Business Forum for the South China Morning Post, which published on April 2, 2010.
It has become clear that the climate is changing faster than humans are changing to adapt or prevent it. That must change. For Hong Kong to retain its place as an economic and cultural leader, we need to think strategically and act practically. We can start with buildings. Hong Kong buildings consume almost all the electricity generated for the special administrative region--a full 89 percent. Thus our opportunity for reductions in the real estate sector is enormous.
With oil prices fluctuating broadly, and coal bearing costly environmental and climate concerns, our best bet is to increase energy efficiency.
Unfortunately, it's easier to design an energy-efficient building from scratch than to retrofit an old one. Our existing stock of millions of square feet of real estate thus defines our challenge.
The barriers to investing in energy-efficient buildings are well rehearsed:
- Regulations made in times when smart-building designs were unheard of;
- Poorly planned buildings are not conducive to easy upgrades;
- Inadequate information--without smart meters, it's hard to know where and when excess energy is being consumed;
- A lack of urgency among building owners, users and professionals;
- Fragmented incentives or even disincentives for designers, developers and managers to invest in sustainable features;
- Absence of financing or incentives to make a positive return on investments over the medium and long term;
- Lack of a price signal to motivate energy efficiency; and
- A mindset of waiting for others to act instead of embracing opportunity--slowing both adoption of existing technologies and the development of new ones.
But the solutions are equally well known. After all, property development is one of Hong Kong's key competencies. In fact, while other cities struggle to reduce emissions in their transportation sector, Hong Kong can focus on what we do best and become a world leader in retrofitting buildings. But to achieve our targets, we need better collaboration between the business sector and government.
The Urban Land Institute has been engaged in sustainable development issues for many years. ULI’s recent Retrofitting Office Buildings to be Energy Efficient book is a great tool to jump-start our efforts. ULI’s Energy Exchange website is a new tool to share individual case study examples which represent industry best practices for owners and public officials alike. Across ULI, members are exploring ways to work with the public sector to innovate professional practices and find new ways of structuring finance tools to significantly scale-up the building retrofit marketplace. Working together with government will bring better results to this effort in two ways.
First, Hong Kong needs a regulatory regime that both requires and motivates better energy efficiency. The government's proposed new building energy-efficiency standards could play an even more important role, if they were upgraded to current best international practice.
Second, government procurement can lead market evolution. Carbon should be weighted as a positive design element that commands payment--from embodied carbon in building materials and greenhouse-gas emission during construction to energy efficiency in building operations. These energy efficiency factors must be quantified in a way that can be integrated into ongoing business activities so that the private marketplace can give them a monetary value.
Markets, like people, need to be informed, motivated, and occasionally inspired. A trusted building-rating scheme would provide important information on buildings' actual energy efficiency.
Smart meters, displaying energy use by function and time of day, could demonstrate how energy is being used--or wasted--thus motivate owners and tenants to achieve potential savings. Incentive schemes that help identify and cofinance upgrades would pair nicely with a regulatory regime that imposed credible, transparent, and increasingly stringent standards.
Government and market players together should work to reverse the "circle of blame" that has designers, contractors, developers, financiers, owners, and tenants all unwilling to make investments in energy efficiency because they cannot reap the rewards.
This leads us to the last necessary ingredient: inspiration. Other great world cities have been inspired by a carbon "stretch goal," and have united as business and civil society groups to achieve it. We have proven to the world many times over that Hong Kong can compete on the vast global stage; let’s do it in energy efficiency as well!
In December, I called for Hong Kong to establish a carbon target as part of an overall vision for a green, low-carbon future of our own making. This call is now being echoed by business and nonprofit groups throughout the city. That echo deserves an answer.
It has been said that the best time to plant a tree is 100 years ago. The second best time is now. We need to plant both trees and the seeds of a low-carbon, smart-energy economy. Only then can we ensure prosperity for our children.












This Just In...From the World Cities Forum
"A country without a past is like a man without a memory." So writes ULI Senior Resident Fellow Ed McMahon, noting the alarming rate at which historical buildings in Shanghai are being torn down and replaced with new high-rises. McMahon is one of 100-plus participants at ULI's second World Cities Forum, being held this week in Shanghai. Below, he shares some insights on development in the city and surrounding area during a tour just prior to the event:
"Shanghai really blows the mind: 20 million people, 6,000 skyscrapers (all built in the last 25 years). On the positive side, they [private- and public-sector officials involved in land development] are building new housing, roads and other infrastructure -- all on a scale that Americans can't even imagine. Yesterday, I went on a tour to the historic city of Suzhou and afterward visited a "new city" of 600,000 people, built in about five years. Everything here is on a mammoth scale and the drive to transform China is occurring at breathtaking speed.
Continue reading "This Just In...From the World Cities Forum " »
Posted by Trish Riggs on April 17, 2007 in Asia, Commentary | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)