1) Green Building in Malaysia

“To become a world-class city, Kuala Lumpur must also be sustainable. To do that, the city must learn how to reduce its carbon footprint by using natural resources more efficiently, re-use resources and reduce waste. One way of doing this is by designing buildings with minimal negative impact on the environment.” [The Star (Central); 21 July, 2009]

I’m totally disagree with the above statement. Just to become a world-class city we need to be sustainable, not because the environmental itself. Although I’m not an environmental activist that against development, I do care about environmental issue as a normal human being living in a world name Earth. “What should we do to sustain all this things for a better tomorrow in the meantime to fulfill our need for a sake of a better living?”..that is the thing that all of us supposed to consider. Let me brief you about Green Building definition itself to clear the cloud.

Green Buildings (Sustainable Buildings / 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. The World Green Building Council in the US that rates Green Buildings has developed standards and a rating mechanism to certify such buildings (LEED standards) with Platinum, Gold, Silver or Bronze based on the number of points or credits in line with the recommendations in the ratings standard. [The Star (Health); 7 September, 2008]

Recently, Malaysia has introduced its very own Green Building Index (GBI) on May 21, 2009 as Malaysian Institute of Architects and the Association of Consulting Engineers Malaysia jointly develop a rating system (GBI) to rate and monitor green building. There are two (2) sets of the index, one for residential projects and the other for commercial buildings, which the buildings will be rated, and certified depending on their criteria with Silver, Gold and Platinum. The GBI also is a certification tool that provides guidelines for sustainable development and environment-friendly construction.

The idea was to provide opportunities for developers, and building owners to design and construct green, sustainable buildings that could provide a healthier indoor environment that would save on energy and water.

We must understand that going green with energy recovery improves air quality as well as saves 50% of building energy costs. People spend 90% of their time indoors (in the office, at home, inside cars etc) and indoor air is 10 to 100 times more polluted than outside air. Inadequate quantity of outdoor fresh air in most buildings results in a building becoming “sick” and the indoor air has become more polluted through the furnishings in the room. The occupants of such buildings have no specific illness or identifiable cause of discomfort, but show irritating and nagging symptoms. All these things could affect the productivity of the company as it affecting the performance of the people. "People cannot perform well in their task/work when they sick."

Therefore, I totally agree with the Green Building concept as it cater both, on environment aspect (building energy cost saving), and also health of human being (improves indoor air quality). And we could start from now with doing simple tasks such as changing light bulbs to energy- efficient, or doing away with paint, or installing solar heaters for buildings and offices. [Chief Minister Lim Guan - The Star (Nation); July 26, 2009]. However, Government should involve seriously in green building implementation in Malaysia. Government could enforce a law or give some benefit to promote green building for the residential projects and commercial buildings as it really a good method/step towards a sustainable development, not only to satisfy our greedy need to become a-world class city .

Ref ;

1) GBI standards proposed for upcoming projects in Penang
News [The Star (Nation); July 26, 2009] The Star

2) Greening KL’s buildings
News [The Star (Central); July 21, 2009] The Star

3) Promoting green buildings
News [The Star (Business); April 1, 2009] The Star

4) Green building.
News [The Star (Health); September 7, 2008] The Star