This day and age, everyone talking about going green and there must have some reasons to wish to follow with the green movement. Over the years, green building is beginning to become the key driving force towards decrease the negative impacts on the earth. So, what is green buildings? The idea of green buildings is both structures and the implication of environmentally responsible and resource-efficient throughout a building’s life cycles: – from the design, maintenance, construction, deconstruction, renovation and operation. The green buildings are designed and bring along most significant benefits to the environment and human health. For environmental, green buildings can conserve natural resources by reduce wastage of water. By building green, it can also improve the air and water quality to create healthier environment for people to work and live in. Besides that, green buildings can reduce the operating cost and create market for green product in buildings economic. Green building can reduce ongoing performance to promote efficiency.
With the increasing of the population around the world, the demand of the building development is getting higher. The issues of increasing buildings development which includes global warming, energy crisis and also the depletion of the natural resources in the earth has catching the world’s attention. In 1991, Prime Minister Mahathir bin Mohamad has drafted Vision 2020 which hope Malaysia’s governments, businesses and citizens have cherished the thought of the clean, green, fully-developed and unified nation it proposed. (Anon,2018). Malaysia is making real progress focused on the future and started to jump on going green to achieve toward the vision. To achieve the goal, the idea of construction of green buildings has been pushing to the forefront to minimize the negative impacts to the environment.
The essence of sustainability of green buildings has been frequently highlighted in Malaysia but green buildings movement are still infancy. In construction industry, construction of the office buildings become the one of the most fastest growing sectors (Wseas.us, 2018). According to Salehi et al. (2009), he reported that the energy consumption in the office buildings is 60% higher energy consumption comparing with green buildings. The higher energy consumed especially by the air conditioner in the commercial buildings has given birth to the commercial green buildings which apply the energy-efficient design to office buildings.
Commercial green building has a strong connection with the various aspects of sustainable development. Commercial green building is an office building that operate in an environmentally-conscious way for years to come. With regards the saving of energy, sustainable architecture can be applied in commercial buildings which straightforward design for saving of approximately 30% in energy consumption and 75% in potable water consumption can both be saving up. In additional, sustainable materials are often combined with urban planning and sustainable landscape design to develop commercial green buildings which the working environmental that are full with green regulation. During the construction period, waste can be recycling and throughout the building’s lifetime Therefore, commercial green buildings achieve the environmental protection and also improve the green interior of the buildings. (Ltd., 2018).
Many countries have their own ‘rating tool systems’ to evaluate their commercial green building. This rating tools encourage the implementation of the green building and to regulate the sustainable of the green building in post occupancy stage. As similar with USA’s LEED assessment, Malaysia has adopted the concepts to a related rating tool, Green Building Index(GBI). GBI is recognised by overall Malaysia industry which is a to apprising the performance of green buildings. The completed design of building has to be verified and the buildings need to reassessed every three years. GBI rating tool is based on six criterias to process the assessment of the particular commercial green building. It includes Energy Efficiency(EE), Indoor Environment Quality(EQ), Sustainable Site Planning& Management(SM), Materials& Resources(MR), Water Efficiency(WE), and Innovation(IN). To achieve the related criteria of GBI, commercial green buildings meet some challenges and obstacles to develop in Malaysia.
1.1 Research Problem Statement
According to Malaysia Green Building Confederation, the rate of growth development in Malaysia is rapidly industrialisation between 5% to 9% annually but it is still unsustainable development which is not going green (Mgbc.org.my, 2009). Numerous construction projects still using the conventional ways to construct their commercial buildings. Conventional buildings have lot of negative impacts on the human health and use the ‘future’ natural resources and emit greenhouse gases which supposedly use after 50,75 years later. In Malaysia, there are roughly 40% of total global energy consumed in was used in buildings and the consumption is expected by the year 2030 the energy use will increase to 50%(Hassan et al., 2014). Over the years, certain natural resources that needed for peoples surviving will begin run out.
Making green construction and developing green commercial buildings in Malaysia has been long recognized by the industry but the idea has not spread like wildfire. Green buildings movements are still infancy in the construction industry. One of the main concern is the stakeholders are afraid to challenge and have a mind-set of going green is the increased cost in development instead of aim for long-term solution (Schendler, 2006). All the parties include governments, project teams and also the developers have less knowledge to embrace the green buildings and take further action. In addition, there do not have global wide awareness on environmental issues and the also the recent support of government in the development of green buildings are still getting low participation.
Therefore, a study of challenges to developing green buildings is needed and be solved to encourage and promote sustainable buildings to become mainstream in the region.