IEN was featured in a full-page article in today's newspaper following our keynote address "Cost Savings in Green Buildings" at the recent 31st National Real Estate Convention with the sustainability theme of 'sustainable property sector from cradle to grave'.
Above is a screendump of the article, which is featured in The Star Property section (page 14, 5 April 2024); the article is also available online: https://www.starproperty.my/news/energy-efficiency-the-biggest-cost-saver/127959
IEN took the opportunity to share four diverse building case studies of how green is cheapest, namely:
A case study of how the open tender bid for a high rise green building was the cheapest bid
A case study a green office building after 12 years of operation has managed to stay energy efficient (only consuming 1/3 of ordinary office buildings) and how the Head of the Facility Management found that this green building was both easier and cheaper to maintain than ordinary buildings
A case study of a highly energy efficient retrofit of a university building
A case study of the biggest benefit of green buildings: Creating healthy, stimulating and conducive indoor environments for the building occupants to thrive (reduce sick leave and increase work productivity)
Below is the slide on the open tender, where interestingly, the most energy efficient bids were also the cheapest thanks to IEN's energy optimisation in the design stage, hence, avoiding the cost of over-designing the cooling-system:
Asked on the challenges faced for pushing for green buildings, Gregers (IEN) told the conference delegates that: “It is expensive not to go green. Once all benefits are factored in, such as providing a healthy and conducive indoor environment for the building occupants, the payback time typically drops to below one year. “The challenge is to raise
awareness about the benefit of green buildings and to put legislation and economic incentives in place that make green buildings the natural choice, both for new construction and for retrofits. We need to raise awareness and put in place economic incentives, so going green becomes the natural choice in the building sector”.