1- Why do real estate businesses need to develop green buildings?

– Global climate change is getting worse and worse.
– Natural resources are increasingly scarce.
– Construction industry in general and real estate in particular are consuming a large amount of resources.
⇨ Construction businesses need to practice their social responsibility by developing green buildings to use resources economically and efficiently.
⇨ Bring long-term benefits to residential communities and the society

2- Share about green building development at Ecopark

– Ecopark Group’s vision and mission is to develop the most livable eco-urban areas in the region, so, right from the planning and design, we have carefully studied the location of the project, and assess wind direction, sunlight direction, natural conditions to deliver development direction for green urban areas that not only matches natural conditions but also in accordance with local cultural and historical traditions.
– Ecopark is a typical green building project with large land area for green trees and water surface, up to 109 hectares, accounting for 21% of the area.
– Each sub-zone, each construction is oriented to develop as green areas, water surface, public constructions are widely distributed to each sub-zone of the project. The water surface system is distributed and circulated throughout the project, bringing a lot of value in the landscape and microclimate to the project.
– For the first high-rise buildings such as Rung Co apartment building, Westbay, we worked together with Japanese design consulting firm Kume Sekkei to study architectural solutions to optimize natural ventilation, natural light for each building, each apartment, making the most of the southeast wind, minimizing the number of apartments facing west, using glass doors to ensure natural lighting, energy efficient and water saving equipment, such as inverter air conditioners, inverter pumps, dual flush toilets, led lights…
– To measure the effectiveness of green building solutions, Ecopark has cooperated with SGS of IFC, a member of the World Bank, to register for Egde green building certification and has been certified by this organization with energy, water and self-energy reduction of the material is 23%, 26% and 34% respectively, thereby helping to cut down 35 tons of C02/year for Aquabay buildings. To achieve this result, Ecopark had to regularly coordinate with the design consultant, SGS to inspect and test from the stage of designing architectural plans, technical designs, materials selection to constructing and operating the buildings.
– Currently, Ecopark continues to expand the green building model for new high-rise buildings such as SkyOasis, Solforest, international schools…

3- Challenges of implementing green building

– The increase in investment costs will reduce the competitiveness of the project while most customers do not pay attention to the decreased operation cost when buying an apartment (only the initial price, utilities, etc., are considered).
– There is no specific financial support mechanism for green real estate developers.
– There are certain barriers to the creativity of designing the exterior architecture to ensure the harmony of architectural criteria and energy efficiency.

4- Recommendations

– Social responsibility is not a strong motivation for businesses to develop green buildings. Therefore, there is a need for more specific financial support mechanisms to accelerate this movement.
– A green building classification is required for financial incentives as well as adequate recognition of social responsibility.
– It is necessary to take more effective measures to raise the awareness of both enterprises and the people of the need for green building development.