The " Green Building " market has occupied a tiny niche in the construction and property industry. Rising energy prices and public concern about sustainability have transformed the markets for environmentally friendly materials and technologies.
The green building concept focuses on sustainability which address ways of minimizing the impact of buildings on the global environment while maintaining environmental quality within the building. It focuses on the impact of building upon the global environment, through their demand for sources of energy and the consequences of pollution and global warming, and at the other, on the quality of the internal environment. The benefits of green buildings can be grouped within three categories: (World Green Building Council)
Environmental
One of the most important types of benefit green buildings offer is to our climate and the natural environment. Green buildings can not only reduce or eliminate negative impacts on the environment, by using less water, energy or natural resources, but they can - in many cases - have a positive impact on the environment (at the building or city scales) by generating their own energy or increasing biodiversity. Â
Economic
Green buildings offer a number of economic or financial benefits, which are relevant to a range of different people or groups of people. These include cost savings on utility bills for tenants or households (through energy and water efficiency); lower construction costs and higher property value for building developers; increased occupancy rates or operating costs for building owners; and job creation.
Social
Green building benefits go beyond economics and the environment, and have been shown to bring positive social impacts too. Many of these benefits are around the health and wellbeing of people who work in green offices or live in green homes.
Encouraging Environmentally Sustainable and Innovative Reforms
The program has also been a pioneer in that it is working with the government of Jakarta to develop a green buildings code. This responds to the issue that as one of the world's largest greenhouse gas emitters, the building sector accounted for more than a quarter of Indonesia's total energy use in 2004---a share that is expected to increase to nearly 40 percent in the next two decades.
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The code sets energy and water efficiency requirements for buildings and will require climate change adaption practices to be included in building designs. Implementation of the code is expected to reduce energy consumption in large commercial and high-rise residential buildings, potentially cutting around 2.7 million tons of carbon dioxide per year by 2020. This is equivalent to carbon sequestered annually by 60 million grown trees or equivalent to the current annual emission of Macao SAR, China (2.4 million tons of carbon dioxide).
The new green building regulation will provide a better future for Indonesia if it can be implemented and all stakeholders work together to make it happen.
