Thursday, October 2, 2008

Greener Building Underway

Source : The Straits Times, Oct 2, 2008

THE Building and Construction Authority has awarded the main contract worth $10.47 million for the construction of Singapore's first Zero Energy Building (ZEB) at the BCA Academy.

The contract went to ACP Construction Pte Ltd, a local general construction firm, which has been building mainly high-tech industrial complexes in the last five years.

They were also involved in two Green Mark projects in Depot Road and Neuros Biopolis Phase 2 in One North.

BCA Academy will retrofit an existing building at its Braddell Road premises into a Zero-Energy Building.

It has awarded another tender for the building's solar panel to Singapore firm Grenzone for $1.7 million.

The ZEB is part of BCA's plan to raise awareness on sustainability in the built environment and is BCA's flagship R&D project under its Green Building Masterplan. This project integrates various

Green Building Technologies in a single building to demonstrate how it can be retrofitted to be energy-efficient.

When completed in late 2009, the ZEB will house green classrooms and a library, as well as a visitor centre that can be used for training purposes. The retrofitted building will also function as a test-bedding centre for Green Building Technologies, to allow fresh ideas to be tested and experienced before wider adoption.

If the results of the test-bedding of these technologies are positive, some of these technologies can potentially be adopted in other buildings.

Many advanced countries such as Germany, Netherlands, UK and the US have set very ambitious targets to achieve zero energy or carbon neutral buildings as they realise that green buildings are an important solution in addressing the global challenges of climate change and energy security.

Given that buildings once completed will consume a lot of energy over their lifetime, BCA said it is critical that new buildings get it right from the beginning.

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