Orient - The Official Magazine of the British Chamber of Commerce Singapore - Issue 71 April 2019
Focusing on positive impact
Green buildings have a lower carbon footprint, or generate a smaller amount of waste, when compared to other buildings. Accordingly, the discussion around green buildings often revolves around limiting these types of negative impacts on the external environment.
The above approach is reflected by the Urban Land Institute, which defines green buildings based on the efficiency with which they use resources while reducing their impact on human health and the environment during the building's lifecycle, through better siting, design, construction, operation, maintenance and removal.
Rather than solely focus on reducing negative impacts, however, the discussion must evolve to focus on the positive aspects of green buildings too. Positive impacts include, among others, improved internal air quality and water specifications, through self-energy generation or conservation, increased productivity, improved health and wellness and better customer experience.
By focusing on the positive impacts, the tangible benefits of green buildings – and their central role in a dynamic and evolving workplace – can be brought into sharper focus.
The World Green Building Council has adopted an even broader definition, which emphasises the role that green buildings play in achieving the 17 Global Goals for Sustainable Development (the “SDGs”) pursuant to the UN’s 2030 Agenda, which include the promotion of global prosperity and well-being. The linkage with the SDGs could, among other things, unlock attractive financing for green buildings under the various integrated financing platforms which have been developed to fulfil them.
Improving workplace productivity
According to Harvard’s Center for Health and the Global Environment, we spend about 90% of our time indoors. As such, green buildings have a unique ability to positively or negatively influence our health.
Through a study in an environmentally controlled office space, participants were exposed to enhanced ventilation and artificially elevated Co2 levels, among other things. As a result, cognitive function scores were 61% higher in green building conditions, and 101% higher in enhanced green building conditions.
The researchers concluded that the findings have far-reaching implications for worker productivity, student learning and safety. These results are highly promising and in line with previous studies, many of which have been carried out in the US. The industry needs to get behind this line of research and conduct further analysis on consequential enhancements to strategic performance and organisational success through enhanced occupant productivity, so as to ensure that occupiers can be fully convinced of the potential. This will require all relevant built environment stakeholders to get behind the initiative, ideally on a global scale.
Some researchers, such as Dr. Judith H. Heerwagen, suggest that one way to conceptualise green building benefits is to adopt a framework used by organisations to evaluate their performance, such as the “Balanced Scorecard”. Using the BSC framework, the links between sustainable design features and organisational performance outcomes can be characterised in terms of financial outcomes, business process outcomes, stakeholder relations and human resource development.