IEN had the pleasure of presenting our low-carbon building recommendations report to the city council of Kuala Lumpur and other cities in the region at this C40 workshop on Building Decarbonization. Our report focused on the energy consumption, commuting energy and embodied carbon of office buildings and apartment buildings.
Over the last six months, we managed to collect a full database with detailed building information for:
40 office buildings with 40 different building parameters
21 residential apartment buildings with 35 different building parameters
Working with Dr. Nofri Yenita Dahlan and her team at UiTM, we used multiple regression analysis to establish Energy Use Intensity, EUI (kWh/m2/year), formulas and calculators for both office buildings and residential apartment buildings.
On a 50-year timescale, we listed out the submissions that the city council should request for, both during the planning and building plan submission approval process, but also during the operational phase of the building:
We proposed a list of mandatory prescriptive building performance parameters to met by the submitting parties to the city council. We also proposed progressively more stringent requirements to be met by 2025, by 2030 and by 2035. Hereby, the city council can send a clear signal of its low-carbon building trajectory to the developers. And a consequence, some developers may choose to design to meet the future more stringent design requirements, as a way of future-proofing their developments.
We also conducted a comprehensive stakeholder analysis on the topic of how Kuala Lumpur can transition to becoming a zero-carbon city. Frequent stakeholder responses included:
Mandatory energy performance requirements for buildings
Mandatory annual building performance reporting
Economic incentives for enabling the zero-carbon transition
From the National Low Carbon Cities Masterplan, the capital city of Kuala Lumpur is placed in the group of Malaysian cities that first will become carbon neutral, namely by 2050:
As such, Kuala Lumpur, a C40 city, is becoming a de facto role model city for the transition to zero-carbon. We look forward to continuous collaboration with the city council and C40 in the zero-carbon transition quest that requires bold and imminent action.
Some photos from the C40 workshop and the subsequent dinner at the heart of Kuala Lumpur:
- - -
We would like to thank our direct collaborators for this project, UiTM, BtrLyf and C40. As well as expressing our sincere thanks to the following key stakeholders: Steve Lojuntin (SEDA), Chin Hong Tan (IGB Properties), Jacqueline Wong (Sunway), Ahmad Zulhilmi Harun (ST), Philip Gan (SkyWorld), Aida Rosyani binti Harun (TNB) and Nabil Ersyad Bin Noor Eddie Putera (TNB). A special thanks to Datin Nor’Aini binti Mohd Kassim and her DBKL team members with whom we worked the most closely, Cik Nurul Hidayah binti Zawawi, Fauziah Ghazali and Mohd Yushanizar Md. Yusoff.
The publishing rights of this study belongs to C40, hence, no details are revealed here.