‘Green buildings’ cheaper in the long run than ‘traditional buildings’ 

MANILA, Philippines — While construction of “green buildings” may be more expensive at first as compared to traditional buildings, they prove to be cheaper in the long run.

Several ‘green building’ advocates explained this Tuesday as they called for the construction of more environment-friendly buildings in the country.

Green buildings are structures that reduce negative impacts to the environment through its design, construction, and operation.

Eduardo Manahan, Building Owners and Managers Association of the Philippines (BOMAP) chairman explained that green buildings are cheaper in the long run as it lessens power cost, water cost, and provides more convenience to the people occupying the space.

“You can say that building costs a lot, but in the long run you will know that it costs less,” Manahan said at a press briefing for the International Built Environment Week (IBEW) to be held in Singapore this September.

“It’s about doing things that would be friendly — environment-friendly — and health concern-conscious for users,” Manahan added.

ProdigyAE Chief Building Information Management (BIM) Consultant and Principal Architect Gio Carino echoed this saying that the perception that green buildings are expensive are only “misconceptions.”

“Actually, based on our experience, that’s the misconception in the market. Technologies like these have been perceived to be expensive mainly because of the perception of huge initial investment required and the limited perception in terms of time for recovery,” Carino said.

Carino added that the Philippines was also initially a green-driven community through tropical architectures such as “bahay kubo.”

“This adoption through green technology, for me, is only revisiting what we started back then and tying it up with current technologies and the way of life right now,” Carino said.

Senior Advisor of Italpinas Development Corporation Giovanni Gusella, however, said that cost of green buildings can be minimized through passive green strategies or using natural energy sources such as daylighting or natural ventilation.

“I can speak about our buildings and how we design our buildings to keep them low-cost. There are two strategies to have a green building — using passive green strategies and using active green strategies. Active means you will have to adopt high-technology elements that are still expensive so what we do is to adopt the passive green strategies,” Gusella said.

“This is a way to keep a green building low-cost affordable and accessible to the middle class in the Philippines,” Gusella added.

IBEW is the new flagship event in the Southeast Asian region for industry leaders and professionals from the global built environment industry to exchange ideas and experiences on policies, business solutions, and technologies, as well as explore business opportunities.

It is set to happen from September 4 to 6 in Singapore.  (Editor: Mike U. Frialde)