In recent news there has been the talk of Green Building springing up in Nigeria and most especially in Lagos. Identified so far under construction are; the Nestoil ultra-modern office headquarters being built by Julius Berger Nigeria at a cost of N24 billion which will be located on Akin Adesola Street, Victoria Island Lagos and projected completion time frame of 24 months and Heritage Place funded by private equity investment firm Actis at a cost of which isn’t explicitly known and constructed by Primrose Development Company (PDC) and Laurus Development Partners. These two projects represent the prime properties that seek to be classified as Green Building receiving LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) certificate.  Of which Nestoil Towers claims to have achieved a Sliver LEED rating on its development.

The LEED certification is a process used in the United State which uses five rating systems to address multiple project types (Building Design and Construction, Interior Design and Construction, Building Operations and Maintenance, Neighborhood Development and Homes). In each of these categories, the project must attain certain prerequisites to earn points that then determines its LEED certification which are ranked as follows; 40-49 points gets you ‘certified’, 50-59 points ‘Silver’, 60-79 Points ‘Gold’ and 80+ gives you a whooping Platinum rating.

Moving on from the brief introduction of these projects and the process of getting a LEED certification, we need to understand what really is a green building? Green building from (Wikipedia) is one which may also be known as green construction or sustainable building refers to a structure and using process that is environmentally responsible and resource-efficient throughout a building’s life-cycle: from siting to design, construction, operation, maintenance, renovation, and demolition. It most importantly closes cooperation from the design team, the architects, the engineers, and the client at all project stages. Green Building must also provide the basics of all classic buildings such as economy, utility, durability and comfort.

 

LEED certified certainly has its perks attached to it as LEED certification is third-party validation of a building’s performance. LEED certified projects blend environmental, economic, and occupant-oriented performance. They cost less to operate and maintain; are energy- and water-efficient; have higher lease-up rates than conventional buildings in their markets; are healthier and safer for occupants; and are a physical demonstration of the values of the organizations that own and occupy them.

The big question that comes to my mind is; how can a building operating in Nigeria be truly Green? From definition to be assessed as a Green Building such development must be environmentally responsible and resource-efficient throughout its building life-cycle from sitting all the way to demolition.  From information gotten from on the construction of Heritage Place and Nestoil Towers I tried to understand how green these are buildings.

From all indication, the Heritage Place has taken ample measures to achieve its LEED certification. These measures range from the use proposes use of Pulverised fuel ash (PFA) in its cement content, storm water attenuation tanks, energy reduction by 30-40% to a sun pattern driven design of its building to make it more  eco-friendly/suitable. Nestoil headquarters constructed by Julius Berger will be adopting also be adopting certain Green measures not explicitly started but when is known is that a system of tunneling called the ‘micro-tunneling’ system would be used for constructing the drainage pipes. Basically, microtunneling is a digging technique used to construct small tunnels using a remote controlled microtunnel boring machine (MTBM). The machine is controlled by an operator on the ground using a CCTV camera.

It’s at this point I begin to question Greenness, looking at the present situation of running a business in Nigeria with power infrastructure and here I am talking most especially of electricity and transportation infrastructure. Firstly, Green buildings operating in Nigeria will be expected to generate their own electricity as the as the state of the Nigeria national grid is appalling. It is assumed that each building will have no less than 3 1000KVA generator to meet its electricity needs. The average CO2     emission rate of a diesel generator producing >300kw is 699g/kwh. While using this as basic figure; an average work day will be 8 hours, so what you have is 699g/kwh x 8 = 5592g/kwh. Then we assume that 2 generators will be running while 1 on standby we come to a figure of daily CO2 emission of 11184g/kwh. Well this is just for Monday, so for a full working week we get the total figure of 55920g/kwh. You can go ahead now and do the monthly emission if you please.

Moving on to transportation, car parking for buildings of this nature will usually provide parking for not less than 250 cars.  Data from the United States Environmental Protection Agency shows presents figures showing that a gallon of gasoline will produce 8,887 grams CO2.  Average fuel economy of a vehicle is 21miles to a gallon. Tailpipe CO2 emission of a car to a mile is therefore 8887grams/21miles= 423grams. Carrying the mathematics further an average car parking provided for 250 cars will produce 423grams x 250= 105750 grams. Assuming the car park is full occupied on a daily bases which is unlikely.

In my opinion, to move to better Green building the major thing that should come to mind in a Nigerian context would be measures taken to reduce the CO2 emission of the building. In addition to this other sustainability methods can then be added. Since the dawn of the industrial revolution, the use of fossil fuel has been on the increase which is the major contributor to CO2 emission in the world. From the 2013 report of Earth Policy Institute on Carbon Emissions it is plainly seen the effect fossil fuel use had done to push the earth to dangerous territory.

The beauty of it all is that saying you have a Green Building sounds well in board meetings and makes you look good in the eyes of the international community. Boiling down to the baseline of it, carrying out steps to achieve a Green building in design and construction does help to get the LEED certificate, using a generator and huge parking spaces only makes for high CO2 emissions that eventually counters initial efforts. How, it affects your balance sheet in context of a Nigerian setting is another question to be answered.

 

Written by Itua Omokhomion, Real Estate Analyst at 3Invest

2014-04-08