SA Affordable Housing January / February 2018 // Issue: 68 | Page 24

FEATURES
The Village in Centurion, a typical popular product which IHS develops.
Defining the Edge
The industry has seen a trend of projects going green and being certified
green for Excellence in Design for Greater Efficiencies (Edge), we chat to
the International Finance Corporation (IFC)’s Lenore Caincross, to find out
why this is and why the sudden move to go green affordably?
By Ntsako Khosa | All images courtesy IFC
E
dge is a green building programme and certification
initiated by the IFC. It predicts what the performance
of the building will be. “It was created as part of the
World Bank’s Group pillars for their overall strategy.
Climate features prominently and Edge was created out
of that climate initiative,” says Edge Africa lead,
Lenore Caincross.
Climate impacts heavily in developing or emerging
countries and those households contribute about 20% of
their expenditure towards utility bills. With Edge they can
reduce this expenditure, which directly links to low income
homeowners. “Edge was born out to democratise green
buildings and provide something especially for emerging
markets,” she says.
Going green in the past was perceived as expensive and
only for the elite, however the Edge tool breaks those
barriers showing that being efficient in terms of water,
electricity and building material doesn’t necessarily have a
huge price tag. Cairncross says that this perception has
also been fuelled by the current green building standards.
“Most standards are for commercial buildings, it’s been
for these huge corporate companies, so people haven’t
perceived that it can be applied to a house or an apartment
occupied by regular people,” she elaborates. Moving to
green homes reaches a larger amount of people as
opposed to just a small portion of society.
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JANUARY - FEBRUARY 2018
AFFORDABLE
SA HOUSING
GREEN AFFORDABLE HOMES IN SOUTH AFRICA
The IFC is a global company and the Edge tool is a global
standard focused in eight countries all over the world.
“We’ve reached 130 countries where the tool is currently
being used but the focus countries are Vietnam, the
Philippines, Indonesia, India, Columbia, Ghana, South Africa
and Costa Rica,” she says.
South Africa was one of the first countries where Edge
was introduced in terms of the global programme. “We’ve
seen that Edge has helped many developers to go the
green route where it may not have been possible before in
terms of costing and accessibility. It’s also helped them to
create an enabling environment for going green,”
Cairncross says.
Selecting countries that could go green was done by
looking at construction industry growth as well as if there
was a growing demand for green projects and an existing
organisation that could assist in implementation.
Cairncross shares that the biggest uptake within the
housing sector is in the affordable housing industry.
A large construction industry coupled with a huge
demand for housing and the Green Building Council of
South Africa (GBCSA) saw the tool coming to our shores.
“When we were first discussing it with the GBCSA there
was a need on their side to have a rating tool that speaks
specifically for the residential side as well.