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LESS THAN ZERO?
The Future for Buildings &
Carbon Emissions
1 November 2011
Forum Summary Report

Acknowledgements
Civic Exchange would like to thank the following people and organizations:
• The German Consulate in Hong Kong for its generous
support for this forum (special thanks to Mr. Werner Hans
Lauk, Mr Achim Sckade, Ms Ulrike Erdmann, and Mr So-Ang
Park);
• Mr. Werner Hans Lauk, Dr Rüdiger Kratzenberg, Mr David
Littler, Dr Raymond Yau, and Dr Guiyi Li for their
presentations;
• Michelle Wong for event planning and co-ordination;
• Dae Ho Lee for preparing this summary;
• The Salisbury YMCA, Dave Production House and Williams
Ltd for venue, video and transcription respectively;
• Dae Ho Lee, Wilson Lau, Yanyan Yip, Iris Chan for assistance
on the day.
Event presentations, videos and the current report can be downloaded
from the Civic Exchange website at:
http://www.civic-exchange.org/wp/111101

Executive Summary
About 200 people participated in a forum called “Less than Zero – The Future for Buildings & Carbon
Emission?” organized by Civic Exchange and sponsored by the German Consulate in Hong Kong on 1
November 2011. The forum explored the concept of zero emissions buildings and “plus energy” buildings,
which generate more energy than they consume. These issues were discussed with the help of international
and local experts, including:
Mr Werner Hans Lauk – Consul-General of the Federal Republic of Germany to Hong Kong, who welcomed
participants and provided the context of Germany’s commitment to climate action and the creation of a low
carbon economy.
Dr Rüdiger Kratzenberg – Head of the Building & Construction Industry, Directorate of Germany’s Federal
Ministry of Transport, Building and Urban Development. In a presentation entitled “Buildings as Power
Plants”, Dr Kratzenberg outlined Germany’s continuing efforts at improving energy efficiency in buildings,
and discussed the interrelationship of research, guidelines, and regulations. He showcased several examples
of “plus energy” houses developed by universities in Germany, which combine integral energy efficiency with
technologies for generating renewable energy. The surplus energy is earmarked for charging an electric car,
thus combining housing and mobility in the same energy story.
Mr David Littler - Group Director of the Building Services and Sustainable Engineering group in the Hong
Kong office of Buro Happold. Mr Littler examined different sustainability measurement tools that are being
used across the world. He compared the different priorities of these tools, noting the emphasis the German
system (DGNB) places on operations and ongoing maintenance throughout the building life-cycle. He
introduced a framework he called “Lean, Mean, Green” to tackle energy use and carbon emissions by looking
at the energy or carbon reductions per dollar of intervention. Under this approach, the first focus should be
on design of the building (“Lean”), then the systems within the building (“Mean”), and lastly the use of
renewable energy (“Green”).
Dr Raymond Yau – Arup Fellow, Director of Arup Hong Kong. Dr Yau presented on the practice and
challenges for zero carbon building in Hong Kong, summarizing the policy background for climate action in
Hong Kong, as well as the scale of the challenge. He described the proposal for the development of the West
Kowloon Cultural District along zero emissions principles. He outlined a series of measures that are needed
to set Hong Kong on a faster track to reduce carbon emissions, as well as commenting on a range of issues,
such as legislation, feed-in tariffs, and the importance of behavioural change.
Dr Guiyi Li – Senior Manager, Secretariat of the Construction Industry Council (CIC). Dr Li outlined the CIC’s
plans to develop a zero emission education centre in Kowloon, to be opened in 2012. He described the
features and technologies that will be utilized to create a carbon neutral, and climate positive building. The
project aims to promote the feasibility of low carbon technologies and their continual improvement,
providing a platform for industry stakeholders to compare products and systems to nurture innovation, as
well as advocating and promoting education on the practicality of zero carbon living and encouraging a
change in lifestyle.

Ms Christine Loh, CEO of Civic Exchange, moderated the Q&A and discussions after the presentations. There
was a diverse and lively discussion covering a ranging of issues including:
• What policies are effective and efficient to enhance adoption of green buildings in Germany?
• The mobility side of the Plus Energy project.
• Aspirations for Hong Kong’s green building scene in 5 years time.
• The role of building commissioning.
• How to allow tenants to see the amount and cost of the energy they are using?
• How the German Government encourages the landlord to invest in energy-saving features.
• Public policy for existing buildings.
• The role of data collection and analysis in developing green building policy and practice.
• Return on investment for energy efficiency interventions in buildings.
The forum programme and speaker biographies are included in the appendix to this report.
Civic Exchange is a non-profit public policy think tank that helps improve policy and decision-making
through research and analysis.
This summary is based on transcripts recorded at the forum held on 1 November 2011, and the opinions
expressed in this report do not necessarily represent those of Civic Exchange.

TABLE OF CONTENT
1. WELCOMING REMARKS ................................................................................................................................................................................. 1
2. KEYNOTE PRESENTATION: BUILDINGS AS POWER PLANTS ...................................................................................................... 2
2.1 THE INITIAL SITUATION ............................................................................................................................................................................... 2
2.2 ENERGY EFFICIENT CONSTRUCTION - GUIDELINES ............................................................................................................................... 3
2.2.1 History of Energy Efficient Building ............................................................................................................................. 3
2.2.2 The Energy Saving Ordinance ......................................................................................................................................... 4
2.2.3 Example of Refurbishment ............................................................................................................................................... 5
2.3 ABOUT ENERGY SAVING CONSTRUCTION – PLUS ENERGY HOUSES ................................................................................................ 5
2.3.1 Darmstadt University Model Plus Energy House ................................................................................................. 6
2.3.2 Plus Energy House with Electric Mobility ................................................................................................................. 6
2.4 COMPREHENSIVE SUSTAINABILITY EVALUATIONS ................................................................................................................................ 8
2.4.1 Sustainable Construction Assessment System ..................................................................................................... 8
3. UTILIZING BUILDING SUSTAINABILITY MEASUREMENT TOOLS IN HONG KONG, ........................................
WITH A FOCUS ON THE GERMAN SYSTEM DGNB ......................................................................................................................... 9
3.1 DIFFERENT BUILDING SUSTAINABILITY MEASUREMENT TOOLS ....................................................................................................... 10
3.2 COMPARING THE DIFFERENT MEASUREMENT TOOLS ........................................................................................................................ 10
3.3 HOW DO WE TACKLE ENERGY USE? ...................................................................................................................................................... 11
4. ZERO CARBON BUILDING PRINCIPLES – PRACTICES AND CHALLENGES FOR HONG KONG ................................. 13
4.1 THE CLIMATE CHANGE STRATEGY AND ACTION AGENDA & WHAT HONG KONG NEEDS TO DO .......................................... 13
4.2 THE WEST KOWLOON CULTURAL DISTRICT – ZERO CARBON APPROACH................................................................................... 15
4.3 FACILITATING A ZERO CARBON APPROACH IN HONG KONG .......................................................................................................... 16
5. PLANS FOR A ZERO EMISSION CIC EDUCATION CENTRE IN KOWLOON ......................................................................... 18
5.1 PROJECT BACKGROUND ........................................................................................................................................................................... 18
5.2 FUNCTIONS ................................................................................................................................................................................................. 19
5.3 FEATURES & CHARACTERISTICS ............................................................................................................................................................. 20
5.4 PROJECT OBJECTIVES ................................................................................................................................................................................ 20
6. DISCUSSION AND Q&A ................................................................................................................................................................................ 22
APPENDIX 1: PROGRAMME ........................................................................................................................................................................... 34
APPENDIX 2: SPEAKER BIOGRAPHIES ...................................................................................................................................................... 35

1. Welcoming remarks
Mr Werner Hans Lauk
Consul-General of the
Federal Republic of
Germany to Hong Kong
When it comes to tackling climate change, building energy efficiency is one of the most important issues,
especially for a city like Hong Kong with its more than 40,000 buildings. According to estimates, buildings
account for up to 90 per cent of the energy consumption in the Hong Kong SAR. No wonder that everybody
sees a huge potential for energy saving in building, as well as general and individual management of buildings
of all kinds.
Consequently, many experts and players are active in the field of building energy efficiency and the
topic is being discussed in many fora and events like this. However, as we also know, when it
comes to implementation we still observe a certain leeway. For us, it was therefore important to
add best practice examples and also new perspectives to the debate and to present Germany's
latest developments and experiences in the field of building energy efficiency.
Dear friends, the quality of German building and construction enjoys an excellent international reputation.
Protecting the environment, saving our natural resources, and tackling climate change are three of the main
features of German building and housing policies. Various programmes for the construction of new energy
efficient residential, as well as industrial buildings, and the energy efficient refurbishment of the housing
stock have for a long time already been part of these policies.
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2. Keynote Presentation:
Buildings as Power Plants
Dr Rüdiger Kratzenberg
German Federal Ministry of
Transport, Building, and
Urban Development
What am I going to tell you today? Just some information about sustainable building in Germany:
• The initial situation,
• About energy saving construction,
• The guidelines we have now in Germany,
• And about comprehensive sustainability evaluations.
2.1 The Initial Situation
We could say today that the international community is in no doubt that climate change poses an
economic and also an ecological threat to all of us. It is imperative that the industrialized nations in
particular take rapid, or let's say more or less rapid and appropriate action. It is true that Germany had
to reduce its carbon emissions by around 23 percent since 1999. However, in terms of per capita
emissions Germany is still a mid-table country in the league of major industrialized nations and we are
convinced we must make more effort in this.
One of the frameworks which is very important is the economic burden imposed on the public by rising
costs of energy for heating, cooling, hot water, and this also is residing in social discussions and is
depriving the economy of money that could be spent on consumption of other things.
Germany is a nation of tenants. About 65 to 70 percent of all dwellings are rented. In the last 10 years
net rents, which means excluding running costs for heating, cooling, water supply, have hardly risen.
However, the costs of heating, cooling, and hot water have risen by around 50 to 60 percent. It's true
that this trend was interrupted for a short time by the economic and financial crisis, but we are sure it
will continue sooner or later.
In order to more forcefully pursue all its goals, our German Government has developed an initial
strategy for sustainable development. This strategy is analysed at regular intervals by means of
progress reports, and concerns the following important issues: energy productivity, energy efficiency,
share of renewable energies, raw material productivity, conservation of resources, and also
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greenhouse emissions and air contaminant loads.
In 2010 the Federal Government adopted an energy strategy following the Fukushima disaster, and the
decision to shut down nuclear power plants in Germany by 2022. This strategy has been reinforced
once again. Its major benchmarks are now to reduce primary energy demand by around 80 percent by
2050, reduce heating demand by 20 percent by 2020, introduce climate neutral buildings in the new
build sector starting in 2020, and to draw up a refurbishment road map for building stock in which the
rate of refurbishment can be at least doubled. To give you a figure for this, the rate of refurbishment is
only 1.5 percent at the moment, so this is a very big thing we have to focus on.
It is only common sense within the European Union to work on these fields. We have laws by the
European Union that gives us very clear demands. By the end of 2020 member states shall ensure that
all new buildings are nearly zero energy buildings, and after the end of 2018 new buildings owned and
occupied by public authorities are to be nearly zero energy buildings.
There is also a kind of definition in this EU guideline, which says that a nearly zero energy building is
a building that has a very high energy performance and the nearly zero or very low amount of energy
required should be covered to a very significant extent by energy from renewable sources, including
energy from renewable sources produced on-site or nearby. So you see a lot of questions, and the
concrete figures are not there, but the direction is very clear.
2.2 Energy Efficient Construction - Guidelines
2.2.1 History of Energy Efficient Building
Sustainable building in German: what is the initial situation? Is there a realistic chance that we
will be able to achieve these objectives in a timely fashion? If we take a look at the history of
energy efficient building in Germany, we will see that great progress has definitely been made.
The development of energy efficient building in Germany is already 30 years old. The lower
curve on this slide shows the primary energy demand for the heating of buildings it has been
possible to achieve with model and demonstration projects. The upper part of the graph
shows the statutory provisions. You will see that both research and development construction
practice in Germany and legislation are continuously levelling out to a low energy standard.
In terms of construction engineering, we are now in a position to offer “Plus Energy” houses:
that means buildings that produce more energy than they consume. The task we now face is
to incentivize the economic construction of such buildings, thereby creating a situation where
they can be required by law in the foreseeable future.
The strategy for the first time
is going to comprise the
introduction of comprehensive
statutory legislation, in
particular the Energy Saving
Ordinance, the Renewable
Energies Heating Act, and the
Heating Costs Ordinance. It
evaluates the energy source in
use with regard to its
environmental impact. It
applies to both residential
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uildings and non-residential buildings. It applies both to new buildings and buildings
undergoing refurbishment. The ordinance lays down the requirements for issuing energy
performance certificates and states who may issue these certificates. It also stipulates
individual upgrading measures in existing housing, such as replacing old heating boilers or roof
installation.
2.2.2 The Energy Saving Ordinance
The new Energy Saving Ordinance came into effect in Germany on 1 October 2009. It
facilitates the complex process of evaluating the energy efficiency of building envelopes, fixed
building surfaces, and lighting. The primary requirement is the reduction of primary energy
demand. An additional requirement stipulates the energy efficiency of building envelopes.
There are no stipulations
regarding the type of
technology that should be
used to achieve these goals.
The German Government
sets so-called ‘reference
values’ in order to
determine the maximum
value of primary energy
demand. These are, for
example, U values for the
building envelope or
configurations with regard
to building systems,
including the use of renewable energies. The specification is not voluntary or connected to a
voluntary certification process. It is mandatory, across the board.
Carrying out refurbishment measures on existing housing stock is not mandatory. However,
any refurbishment measures implemented to enhance comfort must comply with the
requirements of the Energy Saving Ordinance. The Energy Saving Ordinance has tightened
these requirements. This slide shows U values for important exterior components. The values
in brackets are those specified by the old ordinance. You will see it is always, step by step,
moving on.
To bring in force mandatory regulations by law is one thing, but in the view of the German
Government this has to be accompanied by financial programmes that help the owners of the
buildings to cope with the stipulations of the energy efficiency policies. That is why the
government gives grants to landlords to a considerable extent. 1.5 billion euro is going to be
spent every year by the state-owned investment bank, KfW, Kreditanstalt Fur Wiederaufbau.
I would like to give you a quick overview on the results of this state programme in the last four
years. About 2.5 million dwellings and around 1,000 buildings were renewed. The
programme stimulated a total private investment of 85 billion, around 1.5 billion of savings on
heating costs were achieved, and total energy savings of the same value as the output of two
nuclear power plants were subsidized.
Ladies and gentlemen, some of my topics today are kind of outlooks to the near future. On
the other hand, especially when I come to the presentation of our pilot project for a Plus
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Energy house, you may ask which of these efforts could be applied to the geographical climate,
economy, and social circumstances here in Hong Kong. Of course, I have to leave this question
to the domestic experts.
2.2.3 Example of Refurbishment
In the following slides I would like to give you an impression of a quite usual, normal
refurbishment measure which was finished this year in the city of Freiburg, which is situated in
the south of Germany, close to the border of Switzerland and France. What you can see here
is a high-rise residential building. It comprises 16 floors, was constructed in 1968, and some
key data of the building before refurbishment you will see on this slide. You will see here a list
of building measures which took place in the last two years, such as building more balconies,
external sun-blinds, new windows, and so on. Some of the results are as shown; more
dwellings, partly handicapped accessible, balconies, and other things.
An advanced insulation system was also built, which was very important in this case, and as a
result the building now reaches the limits of so-called Passivhauses in Germany. In particular,
considerable reductions of energy demand were achieved. You will see here 80 percent
reduction of heat energy demand, and I won't give you anything in detail as I was told that
through the good help of Civic Exchange you will have these slides on the home page of Civic
Exchange afterwards. 1
Most users of building contractors are not construction experts, neither energy experts.
Energy performance certification must be explained in a way that is understandable to the
layperson. As with consumption in the case of cars, energy demand with regard to buildings
must be presented in clear and concrete terms. To this end, the Energy Saving Ordinance
stipulates the issuing of energy performance certificates for all new buildings or when selling
or releasing an apartment or building.
Public buildings must now display these certificates in a clearly visible location. The German
Parliament and Government must lead the way by example, of course. The Reichstag Building,
the seat of our parliament, was constructed in 1894, yet the building's current energy demand
is superior to the energy efficiency levels of comparable new buildings.
2.3 About Energy Saving Construction – Plus Energy Houses
I come now to the topic of the Plus Energy houses. Plus Energy means in this context that in my annual
energy balance I can provide more renewable energy than is needed to operate my building. These
objectives cannot simply be achieved by means of large, renewable energy systems. A range of
measures is needed. Construct compact structures and orientate them so that they can take optimal
use of solar energy. Ensure an especially high standard of thermal installation, including windows.
Avoid thermal breaches. Make the building envelope airtight. Install ventilation systems with heat
recovery. Realize low heating system temperatures, short pipe length, and hydraulic balancing of the
systems. Use efficient heating devices and domestic appliances. Make use of the daylight, and use
efficient technology for artificial light. Realize usage patterns for occupants, so that they actively
participate in the process of energy conservation.
Along with these passive measures, it is also necessary to realize active measures. These involve in
1 See www.civic-exchange.org/wp/111101/
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particular the use of environmental energy, for example, by means of solar panels or use of biomass,
and the generation of electricity by means of photovoltaics and wind turbines.
2.3.1 Darmstadt University Model Plus Energy House
In 2007 and 2009 our University of Technology in Darmstadt developed a Plus Energy house as
a part of the Future of Building research initiative from my ministry, in order to participate in
the Solar Decathlon competition in Washington. The most important objective of the model
houses, whose performance is tested in 10 disciplines, is to generate more energy than the
house can consume when it is being used at full capacity. We were lucky in 2007 and again in
2009, and Darmstadt University of Technology won this
competition in the USA.
A house with such technology can also look quite good.
Darmstadt University of Technology also received
architectural awards for its demonstration project.
The building produced by the Darmstadt University in
2009, produced twice as much energy as it could
consume under intensive use. 12 of 14 days of the
competition were cloudy and rainy. That was a crucial
reason why the team of Darmstadt University of
Technology won the competition in 2009, which was
subsequently visited also by our Federal Chancellor, Ms
Merkel, and she promised that the Federal Government
would continue to progress this issue.
The Federal Minister of Transport, Building and Urban Development, my current minister, Dr
Ramsauer, for the first time brought an electric vehicle with him to the inauguration of this
house in Essen, Germany. It was a Daimler Smart electric vehicle, which consumes about 0.14
kilowatt-hours per kilometre. Thus, using the surplus energy produced by the Plus Energy
house in Essen, it would theoretically be possible for the vehicle to operate for almost 8,000
km a year.
2.3.2 Plus Energy House with Electric Mobility
With this objective in mind, the Federal Ministry of Transport, Building, and Urban
Development organized an inter-disciplinary competition for the construction of a Plus Energy
house with electric mobility in the summer of 2010. The competition was conceived as an
open and interdisciplinary competition for higher education institutions in co-operation with
planning offices. The task was to demonstrate that a building with a Plus Energy standard is
capable of supplying its occupants, as well as several vehicles, with an average annual mileage
of about 30,000 km in the annual balance using only environmental energy. Here the electric
storage capacity installed in the building or in the vehicles play a central role. It serves as a
buffer for the supply of electricity to the house and vehicles and, in connection with a smart
grid, can perform storage functions.
I would like to show very quickly the winners of the competition; the first, second and third
prize, just to illustrate that Plus Energy houses can enrich the townscape and provide
attractive family architecture. All the designs submitted could have been implemented. This
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is the third prize, from Berlin University. The second was from the University of Dresden. The
project presented here consistently deploys photovoltaics as architecture and explores the
possibilities for realising this architecture in the suburbs. Finally, the first prize went to
Stuttgart University, the Institute of Lightweight Structures and Conceptual Design, in cooperation
with the Werner Sobek Company.
Planning was completed by early June this year.
Construction is to take place over the period to end of
November 2011. The Fraunhofer Society is providing
support and research for the overall project. The client
is the Federal Republic of Germany, and the opening
should be scheduled for 7 December, so very soon.
Again, Ms Merkel will take time by herself and open it,
and we are quite proud of this.
In March subsequently, a three months trial phase of
the project, with support and research, will begin. In
March 2012 we plan to have a test family move in and
live there for about 15 months. During this time the
research work will continue.
It's a single-family house for a family of four, to be constructed comprising a floor space of
about 130 square metres on two levels. In front of the house there will be a showcase for
vehicle parking and for accommodating the charging infrastructure for the electric mobility.
Furthermore, the showcase will also be used to provide information to interested members of
the public. Between the two-storey living quarters and the showcase in front of the house is
the energy core of the building, see this red field here, comprising all the heating, ventilation
and air-conditioning systems.
An energy simulation of the building is already done and shows that the sun panels on the roof
and outer facade produce 16.6 megawatt-hours a year of electric power. The building itself
requires only about 10.3 megawatt-hours a year, with an estimated another 6.0 megawatthours
a year for the electric cars. There may be thus a small surplus, which can be fed into the
grid. The house has a battery with a charging capacity of around 40 kilowatts per hour. The
battery can act as an intermediary storage device to enable electricity generated during the
day to be used in the evening.
Breaking down the energy balances by floor space illustrates the final energy demand of the
house in detail. The heating requires about 21 kilowatt-hours per square metre per year. The
house is to be provided with an air to water heat pump powered by solar energy. Domestic
appliances also account for a large share. They require over 19 kilowatt-hours per square
metre per year. It is essential that only domestic appliances with the highest energy efficiency
rating, AAA-plus or so, should be used.
The Federal Ministry does not want its project to be the only one, of course. We have thus
launched a research programme to support further model projects. It has been in force since
August this summer. In this programme applicants must prove that their projects exhibited
both a negative annual primary energy demand and a negative annual final energy demand.
We are providing financial assistance for supporting research and evaluation for metrology
and sensors, and innovative components that are still uneconomical, for example; thin-film
7

cells for facades, batteries, hardware, and software for the energy management system, or
charging points for electric mobility.
The first applicants were prefabricated house companies that are now starting to construct
several Plus Energy houses at a showhouse park in Cologne. An entire network of such
buildings will emerge in Germany in 2012, and we will collect all the data relating to both the
energy balance and sustainability, and draw conclusions for the evaluation of such buildings.
Our commercial slogan will be "My house is my filling station". This is no longer a futuristic
vision.
2.4 Comprehensive Sustainability Evaluations
Coming to the end of my speech, I would like to point out some information about comprehensive
sustainability evaluations. In terms of the national economy, the building sector is a crucial sector for
sustainable development. Around 40 percent of the total primary energy in Germany is required for
the operation of buildings. I was told yesterday it was about 80 per cent here, but I'm not sure about
this.
Buildings consume around 50 per cent of all non-renewable resources and at the same time are
responsible for around 60 per cent of the volume of waste arising in Germany. In addition, issues
relating to demographic change and reducing land take are problems which sustainability construction
has to respond to.
2.4.1 Sustainable Construction Assessment System
The Federal Government has established a permanent State Secretary Committee for
Sustainable Development at the Federal Chancellery, which reports directly to the Federal
Chancellor. It monitors compliance with the Federal Government's sustainable development
strategy, and takes decisions on how to focus various policy areas in order to ensure
sustainable development. In December 2010, the body made some far-reaching decisions on
sustainable procurement, such as design of Federal buildings to meet the requirements of the
Sustainable Construction Assessment System.
Even before the decision, the Federal Ministry of Buildings had developed an assessment
system for building sustainable buildings. This assessment scheme draws on the classical
aspects of sustainability: that means ecological quality, economic quality, and socio-cultural
quality. Technical quality and process quality were added as a cross-cutting quality. The site
quality is described, but is
not assessed.
All the major aspects of a
building were weighted
with the same percentage.
The quality of sustainability
is formed by a number of
individual aspects. The
number of these individual
criteria has been
established for office and
administrative buildings.
For each criterion, the
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measuring method and benchmarks are clearly described in tool kits. In the case of ecology,
environmental impact and energy efficiency play a crucial role. In the field of economic
quality, the focus is on the lifecycle costs analysis. Socio-cultural quality comprises primarily
aspects of comfort, convenience, as well as functionality. It covers issues that are important
for the public sector clients, such as disabled accessibility, space efficiency, and convertibility.
The assessment of all the individual aspects produces a complex overall assessment and at the
end of this process a building can be issued with a certificate. Its sustainability performance
can be expressed by degree of compliance, with a mark, or by a status of gold, silver or bronze.
If a building complies with all the statutory standards and is of otherwise good quality, it will
reach the lower limit of bronze and fulfil about 50 percent of the compliance.
A decree issued by the Federal Minister makes application of the sustainable construction
assessment system to all Federal buildings mandatory. Buildings must achieve a total degree
of compliance with the tool kit developed for office and administrative buildings by at least 65
percent, which corresponds to the silver standard. This means that the Federal Government is
the first major client in Germany to completely base its building activities in the next two years
on sustainability criteria.
3. Utilizing building
sustainability measurement
tools in Hong Kong, with a focus
on the German system DGNB
David Littler
Buro Happold
I am not actually going to talk to you about a less than zero building, but I am
going to tell you about using building sustainability measurement tools in Hong
Kong with the focus on DGNB. 2
Some of you may not have heard of Buro Happold, so I ought to just briefly tell
you. We are engineers, and these are some of the projects we have done in
Hong Kong and around the world. The project on the top left-hand corner,
which is the Hong Kong Jockey Club Sha Tin Communications and Technology
Centre, is actually the reason for these slides. The next few slides are really the
2 DGNB: Deutsche Gesellschaft für Nachhaltiges Bauen (The German Sustainable Building Council)
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story of the design of that project so far. At the very beginning of that process, at the beginning of this year,
the Jockey Club said to us in their brief, "We would like BEAM Plus gold please". But they also said to us,
"What else is out there? What other measurement tools, what other targets are around? Should we be
looking for something maybe different or something tougher?" The first step was to look at what else was
around the world.
3.1 Different building sustainability measurement tools
Now, here are just a handful of
measurement tools from different
parts of the world. There are
many more of them. This one just
happens to be in date order, so
the oldest at the top is the UK
BREEAM system, which is now 20
years old. It used to have
“Excellent” as the top rating, but
like exams at school too many
people are getting As so there is
now an "Outstanding" category,
which is quite reassuring.
As you go down the list you recognize LEED, from the USA, which is of course a very popular, very
common measurement tool. A little bit further down you will see BEAM Plus, which is now 15 years old,
or HK BEAM, as it was, which is now of course BEAM Plus. As you move down that list to 2008, second
from the bottom, you will see DGNB, which is the German system. At the very bottom there is the
Estidama tool - and I am told "estidama" means "sustainability" in Arabic - which is in Abu Dhabi.
3.2 Comparing the different measurement tools
Now, most of these tools have not gone further than their own country boundary, apart from BREEAM
and LEED, and LEED is the one that has certainly travelled the most of all of them. So we thought, "OK,
how do we compare
these tools? How do we
help the Jockey Club
pick a tool or pick a
particular target?" We
produced this very
colourful diagram, which
I will briefly explain.
Down the right-hand
side, you will see some
of the typical
sustainability topics,
things like ecology,
water use, pollution, of
course energy is in there,
and so on. Now, all of
the topics are very
similar across all of these tools and you can't really compare them because each one of them is really
designed for its own country, for its local regulations, for its local climate. But what you can do is pick
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out particular areas of emphasis or focus.
You will notice n In the BCA Green Mark column, which is second from the right, the dark blue section
is quite large, and so it is in the HK BEAM column, which is one to the left, the dark blue sections are
very large. They are the energy sections, and I think the reason for their size is because both countries
both have quite hot climates and we rely heavily on air-conditioning, which is a very high-energy user.
So the dark section, the energy section, is given quite a lot of focus.
If you now look at the column with DGNB at the bottom, which is the German system, you will notice
that the dark blue section, the energy section, is very small. That is probably because in Germany the
energy regulations are so tough and the performance is so good relatively that actually there is no real
reason to award lots of points for that because everybody is doing well already. What you will also
notice about the DGNB column is that the pink section is the biggest of all of them, and that is the
section that relates to management, maintenance and operation of buildings. In many ways, Germany
have not quite solved the energy problem but they are making fantastic progress, so they are now
looking at other areas of focus, which is how buildings operate and how you manage them. This is the
pink section – if you like, the management and operation area. It is lifecycle analysis, and there are two
parts to this. The first part is lifecycle costing, which is fairly obvious. What is the total cost of
constructing the building, operating the building, and then demolishing it and recycling it at the very
end? What does that cost you in dollars?
The second part is the lifecycle assessment, which is actually the amount of embodied carbon in the
building. That is taking the raw material, manufacturing it, transporting it to site, then building the
building, then running the building, and then demolishing and recycling it at the very end. What the
system allows you to do is to make decisions about cost over a 50-year lifecycle, but it also allows you
to have some idea of the environmental impact, the carbon story, behind the cost. This covers not just
the building, not just the M & E systems and the renewable technologies, but all the way down to the
finishes. You can even choose your carpet using the system. For example, bamboo flooring over a
lifecycle of 50 years usually comes out much, much better than carpet, and the Jockey Club were
applying this thinking to the whole of their building.
Environmental measurement tools are all very well, but gold, platinum and all those sorts of badges are
in many ways just badges. They do certainly serve a purpose, but behind those tools there are some
very hard targets and in many ways these are more important than the measurement tools, the gold,
the silver or the platinum. Energy, water, waste materials, and ecology are far more important and all
of our projects should have hard targets, and that is where less than zero really comes into its own,
with energy, quite rightly, at the top of this list.
3.3 How do we tackle energy use?
Finally, how do we tackle energy use? How should we design our buildings to make them zero energy
or less than zero? This is a very simple diagram, which is reasonably easy to remember, which is “Mean,
Lean, and Green”. This came from our work on the London 2012 Olympic infrastructure, which of
course is taking place next year. The “Mean” section at the top of the pyramid relates to the building
itself. It's to do with the shape of the building, the orientation, the amount of glazing, and the amount
of shading. It is the building envelope stuff. The “Lean” bit relates to the systems inside the building,
so primarily the mechanical and electrical systems, ventilation, air-conditioning, lighting, and so on.
Then the “Green” bit at the bottom relates to the renewable technology.
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The pyramid is that shape because the width of the pyramid broadly represents cost per amount of
carbon or energy saved. Of course, mean is cheapest, lean is
the next, and green is usually the most expensive. So the right
method for design is to start at the top with mean and work
your way down to green.
An example I have heard somebody give before is Arnold
Schwarzenegger's Hummer. He drives a very, very large
Hummer car and he puts biodiesel into his Hummer and thinks
that's OK. Of course, if he bought a much smaller car, which
was lighter and more aerodynamic, he would have fulfilled the
mean criteria. If he had then bought a more efficient engine,
he would be doing very well in the lean criteria. Then if he put biofuel into the car, that would be the
green criteria at the end. Buildings should be designed in a similar way. I should also point out that
Arnold Schwarzenegger is not German, he is in fact Austrian. That is of course why he got that so
wrong.
Anyway, the discussion points that I would like to contribute in a way are to do with:
• Consider all aspects under the “sustainability” heading,
• Take the longer-term view (life cycle analysis, including embodied carbon), and
• Economic design: mean, lean, green.
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4. Zero carbon building
principles – Practices and
Challenges for Hong Kong
Dr. Raymond Yau
Arup
I am going to share with you a slightly different perspective, rather than concentrating and focusing on a
particular building. I would like to share with you some of the events happening in Hong Kong and how
would that bring us into thinking about what we are doing with the carbon emission situation in Hong Kong,
particularly relating to building scope.
4.1 The Climate Change Strategy and Action Agenda & what Hong Kong needs to do
The Hong Kong SAR Government
back in September 2010 rolled out
a public consultation document
that was called the Climate Change
Strategy and Action Agenda. It
highlights by 2020, compared to
1995, the wish to change the
energy supply and energy demand
situation by switching to more
nuclear use, for example, to
nuclear power generation to 50
percent, and LNG generation to 40
percent, and the rest. Relatively,
from my perspective, little
emphasis has been put upon
buildings.
Arup has done a carbon calculator
and worked out the corresponding
implications of this strategy, in
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terms of the carbon situation in Hong Kong. If you look at the graph on the left, with this strategy 85
percent reduction will be achieved through the fuel mix switch to more nuclear and LNG and so on,
with 60 percent almost done through nuclear option, and only 8 percent done through the buildings.
This is what we find out from simply doing the carbon calculation.
This maps the initial two decades with blue dots representing the carbon emissions per capita in Hong
Kong. Those are real figures. The subsequent curve is a curve representing if we do follow the 2 degree
limit. We know that the environmentalists in a lot of advanced economies combating climate change
are all talking about the need to avoid a catastrophic climate change situation, which is to avoid the 2
degree limit.
For argument's sake, if Hong Kong is going to follow this 2 degree limit, we need to follow carbon
emissions per capita. At present, in Hong Kong we are producing 6 tonnes per person per year of
carbon emissions, which is more or less the world average. But by changing the electricity fuel mix as
per the suggestion in the consultation document by the Government, we could probably reduce it but
we will have to rely a lot on the switch to nuclear. Hearing from the German Government saying that
they decided to completely stop relying on nuclear energy after the Japanese tsunami and disaster, it is
something for our government to review and certainly for our community to think hard about on that
particular issue.
In order to catch this 2 degree limit, we have no choice but to engage in a serious manner on designing
our building stocks in achieving zero carbon buildings, and zero carbon buildings on an individual basis
but also the community level. So we need to seriously think about achieving zero carbon in clusters of
buildings or areas in Hong Kong that, in order to achieve this 2 degree limit.
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We see there are three kinds of
carbon curves over time with respect
to the carbon reduction efforts we
need to do. I understand in the next
10 years we may engage a series of
power generation switches and fuel
mix switches, which is relatively more
straightforward. The next wave would
be the zero carbon buildings plan that
I just shared with you, and last but not
least will be the zero carbon
community at the infrastructure level
as well as on the building form level.
We basically have decades of
experience in designing zero carbon buildings with, probably the first zero carbon building in the UK,
completed in 2001, the quite famous Beddington BedZED building, and also quite recently, 2009, we
completed a project in Seoul for Samsung Construction, investigating the possibility of a zero energy
house. Lately, we were involved in the CIC zero carbon building, and I think Dr Guiyi Li, our next
speaker, will share with you the details and I am not going to dwell on the details of this.
4.2 The West Kowloon Cultural District – Zero Carbon Approach
Instead, I would like to talk a bit about the West Kowloon Cultural District - just one slide, no more. I
got interviewed by the SCMP a few months ago, and we discussed the ambitious aim put forward by
Foster & Associates working in conjunction with us in trying to achieve a zero carbon approach to the
buildings in the West Kowloon Cultural Plan. Since we put this slide in the SCMP I received lots of
phone calls from various sectors asking me how we are going to achieve it, but I have now got the
occasion to share with you.
Like a lot of other people are doing, we need to ask ourselves whether we can produce a better design
which will be less energy intensive, by reducing energy demand; undertaking a passive design similar to
the German approach. Then we consider the district by a community based energy system, such as a
district cooling system in terms of improving the energy efficiency, and then we consider other
measures in helping to bring down energy demand overall. Then we switch to the most expensive
technology, which are the renewables, because we can't reduce energy demand any more so we need
to generate the energy in a non-fossil fuel base, in renewable energy.
But in such a community in West Kowloon, how can we put so much PV or other forms of renewable
energy there in order to provide a carbon neutral approach? In fact, we did not propose that. Instead,
we proposed an equivalent waste-to-energy approach. We looked at the waste generated in West
Kowloon and the surrounding district, and instead of sending that waste to the reclamation, which will
give off methane gas which has more GHG potential than carbon, we tried to deal with it locally within
the site by converting the waste into fuel gas, which will be used to support a fleet of fuel gas driven
buses within West Kowloon.
In doing so, we can achieve this carbon neutrality, but it is not absolutely all by renewable PV and so on.
Instead, we gather similar kinds of carbon, from the waste collected on this site and the close vicinity,
and then equate it to the corresponding carbon content, and in doing so we achieve a net zero carbon
approach. This particular approach is now facing tremendous difficulty for a variety of reasons. For
those who are interested, we can talk about it a bit later on.
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4.3 Facilitating a Zero Carbon Approach in Hong Kong
Now look at the density and carbon emissions. Find the location for Hong Kong, and we are actually
towards the right-hand side of the graph, and corresponding to 6 tonnes of carbon dioxide per person
per year. From that, we can see we are pretty efficient in that sense, largely due to the fact that we
don't have industry in Hong Kong, compared to other advanced economies or developing countries
that have a tremendous manufacturing industry. We don't. We also have a very efficient mass transit
or transport system. Therefore, it brings us to that particular point on the graph.
If we want to, for argument's sake, follow the 2 degree limit line, we need to continue to do a lot - we
can't be complacent - because we have these two ingredients, having no industry and also efficient
transport. Instead, if we are trying to follow the 2 degree limit curve, we need to do more on the zero
carbon buildings approach.
In Hong Kong, as the keynote speaker has
rightly pointed out, with the super highrise
high density compact buildings
developed in Hong Kong, how can we
really make use of the available surface for
collecting the renewable energy by PV?
We can look at the efficiency. Basically, it
is not very efficient to generate all this by
renewables, by just tacking PV on a facade.
Now I would like to float to you some
thoughts about cost. Basically, there are
three ways to look at the cost of zero
carbon measures or low carbon measures:
• First are measures that can pay off themselves over the lifecycle. It’s simple, and people will be
interested in investing in it.
• Second are measures that might not be able to be paid off during the lifecycle because of slightly
expensive technology.
• Those particularly falling into the third category are renewables, which you can hardly pay off
within the lifecycle; it could be more than 40 years.
We need to design strategies to put all these measures in place.
What we are suggesting is we need to legislate for those low hanging fruit, those easy to justify costeffective
measures, by having regulations to control. You must do it. You have no other choice. The
Government can consider providing incentives, for example, by investing through the DEEF, by enabling
not only developers with multi-tenancy to change light bulbs to T5, but also using the money for single
developers - changing the HVAC system. That will help to bring in more energy saving potential (which
is in itself an incentive) as well as the BEAM Plus platinum, and so on.
The feed-in tariff certainly is something that our government ought to look at. As previous speakers
have mentioned, in Germany, in the UK, and other advanced economies, this is a must. However, at the
moment we cannot enjoy it, meaning that there is no way renewable energy can be popular due to
cost.
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Last, I would like to highlight behaviour change. When I worked on the West Kowloon concept plan,
and soon after I highlighted the waste-to-energy, people said, "No, no, we are not in the game of waste
reduction. West Kowloon cannot have a waste treatment plant. It is for culture. We don't care about
zero carbon, zero energy. Let's focus on culture." But is that what we want? Look at what is
happening in Germany or other advanced economies in Europe; they are doing exactly this. I think we
need to have a paradigm shift, in particular on this waste-to-energy issue. There are a lot of well
executed examples, this one is in Sweden, and a lot in Germany, and so on, that we can learn from.
These last few are discussion points. High-rise, high density development, linked access to renewable
resources, minimizing the impact of urban form by implementing the urban form in a much better way
-- facilitating a zero carbon strategy -- is something we need to explore and exploit.
The initial and lifecycle cost of achieving zero carbon is often very high, but we need to align
appropriate policies to the strategies in order to facilitate this. Finally, there are behavioural changes.
Many strategies require significant changes to lifestyle and perceived norms and we need education
and pilot projects that will work together with the community. I hope West Kowloon will change their
mind eventually.
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5. Plans for a Zero
Emission CIC
Education Centre in
Kowloon
Dr Guiyi Li
Construction Industry Council
You may find that the name of this building is slightly different from the words in the forum announcement.
This is called a zero carbon building, and this is actually the project name we have been using for the last
eight months.
5.1 Project Background
Now that this project has been formally
announced in the policy agenda you may
have noticed that now we can talk openly
about it. So we would just like it, in a way,
to have a proper name, though now it is
called the CIC Zero Carbon Building.
Technically, it is correct, but the view is that
the name is not creative enough, so at a
later stage we will actually launch a naming
competition, to invite views from the public.
To be technically even more correct, it is
called a “zero carbon building plus
landscape area” because the building itself
is only 10 per cent of the development site,
as you will see later.
The project is actually located at Kowloon Bay in front of the Megabox. That green area is the zero
carbon building plus the landscape area. As I mentioned, the total size is about 14,700 square metres,
and less than 10 percent is actually for the building. The remaining area is the landscape area.
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That is how our architects show what the building design
looks like. That actually is the building footprint. There is
a loop, as you can see. Along this loop there will be some
outdoor exhibition areas, displaying 10 principles of “One
Planet Living”, which was developed by BioRegional and
the WWF. We also have a commercial area, as well as
the Eco-Plaza and Eco-Terrace. If everything goes right,
that's what it should look like when it is built. You can
see there is a prominent solar panel on top of the
building.
5.2 Functions
I just want to briefly let you know about the major functions of this zero carbon building. For the
building itself, there will be a temporary exhibition area that is really for the industrial stakeholders to
display their latest technology in practice or products. The second one is the permanent exhibition
area. There will be a lot of displays and real life exhibitions of energy consumption and CO 2 emissions,
etc. This is a permanent exhibition area. For this permanent exhibition area, we try to adopt what we
call an evolving approach because the technology progresses quite fast. In the design we have allowed
flexibility to upgrade the building as and when needed.
Additionally:
• There will be Eco-Offices, with people working in the offices. It is not just purely for exhibition.
• There will be a showroom of Eco-Homes. Unfortunately, we cannot have people living in there
because planning permission does not allow that. Otherwise, we could have people living there.
• There will be a multi-function room. This is for seminars like this one and also for corporate
functions, and there is a capacity of about 300 people. It is quite a fair size and is multi-functional.
• For the remaining area, there is the Eco-Terrace and the Eco-Plaza which I have mentioned. They
can hold outdoor exhibition events and also corporate functions as well.
• There is going to be the first native urban woodland in Hong Kong. I will just let you know where
it is roughly. It is in the south-eastern corner.
I also must mention that this project is jointly developed by CIC and the Hong Kong SAR Government.
The Hong Kong SAR Government is actually paying for part of the landscape area and the CIC is paying
for the zero carbon building, as well as part of the landscape area.
There is the outdoor exhibition area, which I have mentioned already. There is the commercial area.
Why have we called it the commercial area? Somehow we have to generate revenues to sustain the
future operation and management of the building, as well as the landscape area. This commercial area,
we haven't actually worked out exactly what we are going to do with it yet, but it is intended for
exhibitions, like the latest energy efficient vehicles or electric vehicles and EV, electric vehicle, charging
points, and any green products, etc. There will be another landscape area, as you can see from the
earlier picture.
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5.3 Features & Characteristics
Here I just want to briefly let you know the key features of this zero carbon building:
• Number one is carbon neutrality. Basically, the energy consumed by the building will be more
than offset by the renewable energy generated on-site. That leads to positive energy output. We
actually have surplus energy feeding back into the electricity grid, and that is going to be a first in
Hong Kong -- feeding in electricity.
• The last one is climate positive. Because of the energy surplus and this landscape area, as you
saw earlier, it should actually help mitigate the heat island effect in that area, compared to the
current situation.
Here I want to highlight the four Es:
• Number one is "experimenting". There are quite a lot of technologies adopted in this design that
have never been used in Hong Kong before, although it is a proven technology somewhere else.
Actually, it is experimental in nature, this building.
• The second one is "evaluating". Because of the experimental nature, with any new technologies
we will do an evaluation through this building and recommend to the industrial stakeholders that
this is good technology to be applied in Hong Kong, or to certain types of buildings. To facilitate
that, we have a very comprehensive monitoring system built-in within the building management
system. That provides the on-line and alive display of temperature, humidity, energy
consumption, etc.
• The next one is "evolving". I briefly mentioned earlier that because the green building technology
evolves fast, so we actually have allowed in our future budget, as well as in the design, for the
flexibility to upgrade certain elements of the building.
• The last bit is "educating". As Dr Kratzenberg has mentioned earlier, educating the young and
educating the public is actually a fundamental part of getting this message across. This is a huge
element, the educating purpose of this project.
There are a few firsts in Hong Kong for this building project:
• One, it is going to be a first generation plant with waste-to-energy in Hong Kong. It is a combined
cooling, heat and power installation.
• The second one, it is going to be the first native urban woodland in Hong Kong. You can see a lot
of native woodlands in the hills, but for urban areas that is the first one. Probably, by the time
this project is completed, it will be the first BEAM Plus platinum building project in Hong Kong.
5.4 Project Objectives
Now, I just want to talk about the project objectives. Before I go ahead, you may ask why is CIC doing
this? I will just give you a one minute commercial about the CIC. The CIC is a statutory co-ordination
body set up under the CIC Ordinance with the following major functions. Number one is to reflect to
the government and the industry's needs and aspirations. Number two is we also recommend to the
government the major policies and strategies that concern the industry. Number three is to elevate
and improve the competitiveness and the quality of the construction industry. Now, part of that is
encouraging research and good practice in terms of environmental protection, safety, etc. So, that is
the CIC's commercial done.
20

Also, most of you have heard that Hong Kong's buildings consume 90 per cent of the electricity and are
responsible for 70 per cent of greenhouse gas emissions. Therefore, the construction industry, as an
industry, has a significant role to play in carbon emissions reduction in Hong Kong. So the CIC, as an
industry coordination body, starts this initiative.
Also this is another way to showcase state of the art eco-building design and technologies to the
construction industry internationally and locally. Additionally, it is to promote the green living and
working concept and the human behavioural changes that can contribute to the greenhouse gas
emission reductions.
This building is going to be run as a business, and as a business we are going to provide services to
industry stakeholders, as well as to the public. Now, for the services to the industry stakeholders:
• The first one is to showcase the workability of low carbon construction technologies and promote
continuous improvement and quality enhancement in the construction industry.
• The second one is to provide a platform for the industry stakeholders to validate and compare the
performance of different products and systems, to nurture innovation, and encourage
improvements.
• The last one is to provide a venue for events and seminars in a zero carbon environment.
Obviously, we cannot wear these jackets in that environment.
Services to the public can be summarized also in three bullet points:
• The first one is to demonstrate to the public the practicality of the zero carbon living and working
environment with a view to encouraging a change of lifestyle.
• The second one is to assist in providing zero carbon building and green building education tool kits
for liberal studies in schools. We are actually targeting the younger generation.
• The last one is providing greenery and leisure space for enjoyment by the public. That is actually a
service to the public.
If everything goes well, the project should be completed by May next year and will be open to the
public soon after that. In fact, we are actually doing something about this; we are not just planning,
talking, or designing it. This is a picture taken on 28 October, so still very fresh. You can see in the top
left corner that is the building footprint. You can see the foundations are already nearly complete and
all the site formations have actually been completed. That is the end of my presentation.
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6. Discussion and Q&A
QUESTION:
What policies, such as incentives, regulation or leading-by-doing, are effective and efficient to enhance
adoption of green buildings in Germany?
Dr Rüdiger Kratzenberg: You have to start on many levels at the same time. It
begins with education in the school - making pupils and students comprehensive
on these topics. You have to give some public money, especially to land owners
and the owners of buildings, and you have to put a lot of money into research.
This is at the first level maybe the most effective thing you could do - to spend
much money on research for technical components. At least you can think over
some tax cuts or something similar. But it must always be a large, wide array of
components coming forward; it is not a single thing.
QUESTION:
The Plus Energy project targets not only buildings but also mobility. Now that we have got to this point in
Germany – which has taken many years and a lot of effort – in terms of energy use, will you be looking at the
broader scale of how cities are planned, for example how many kilometres people have to drive per day?
Dr Rüdiger Kratzenberg: That depends very much on where are you living. Of
course, it makes a big difference if you are living in a great city agglomerate or in
the countryside. Of course, this strategy to bring in electric vehicles is firstly
taken in the cities. On the other hand, we are making a lot of effort to bring-up
our public transport systems also. But Germans love to go by car, so it could be
very good for the environment to bring in more electric cars, and we are planning
to have just about 10 million electric cars on our roads by 2020. We work
together with the industry of course, with all the other players on this field, and
also invest some public money in this field also. Especially still, the storage of
electric energy in batteries is problematic. But we will move ahead in this field.
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QUESTION:
Does the German Government have a position about what kind of low energy cars are best – do they prefer
hydrogen powered vehicles or battery-powered vehicles?
Dr Rüdiger Kratzenberg: That is a very interesting question. Both at the moment
are being pushed forward, but I think after some years you will have to decide
which way to go. It's not clear at the moment, but some members of the industry,
like Mercedes, are going on both solutions, while some are only going into electric
cars, like BMW, for example. So it's not clear at the moment.
QUESTION:
If we were to take a look in five years time, where do you think Hong Kong could be?
Dr Raymond Yau: In my earlier presentation I highlighted basically the carrot and
stick approach in enabling us to achieve the zero carbon strategy, the low hanging
fruit, and the legislation required, which is exactly what the government has been
doing lately. The middle of next year the building energy code will be fully
enforceable. For the first time in Hong Kong we do have an energy code that
stipulates the building systems to be in place in buildings. The industry in fact has
been adopting the voluntary standard for at least about the past decade, but now
we finally have it in legislation as part of the Building Energy Efficiency Ordinance.
That is the starting point.
I understand the Council for Sustainable Development is currently undertaking a
public consultation or survey seeking comments from the community about what
more we, as a community, can do. That also includes questions asking whether
the government ought to tighten and make the building energy code more
stringent. Even tighter than what we have now.
Also, with our involvement and other consultants' involvement, the Buildings
Department is contemplating, in time, creating some guidelines for energy
efficient measures for residential buildings. You may be surprised to know that
even up until now, we don't have this -- we do have an overall thermal transfer
value stipulated in the Building Energy Efficiency Ordinance, but that is only one
part of it and that only applies to commercial buildings. It doesn't apply to
residential buildings. So you see a lot of residential buildings put up in Hong Kong
with extensive glazing, window to wall ratio, and so on. The government is
thinking of putting some guidelines and eventually, maybe in five years time, to
have legislation stipulating the thermal energy performance of residential
buildings in Hong Kong.
I cannot pre-empt any possible outcome of the [Council for Sustainable
Development] survey because there are so many different stakeholders in town
with different vested interests. Certainly, the government itself, as far as I
understand, is thinking along that line and there are some sectors in the
community who are pushing along this. But no doubt there will be different
views among different stakeholders. I think it is better to wait for the Council for
Sustainable Development.
Dr Guiyi Li: I think Hong Kong has its unique features, with its high-rise buildings
and very scarce land. I don't think we can reach the level in Germany or in the UK,
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in terms of the number of Plus Energy buildings in real life operation. However,
what we are all trying to do is promote this concept and promote this practice.
For instance, like the CIC Zero Carbon Building, even if other buildings are
adopting one or two bits of the concept or technology, I think that is already
making a good contribution to carbon emission reduction in Hong Kong. I think
that is what we are trying to promote and I am pretty sure that in five years time
there will be a lot more buildings that will have one or two or more of the
features, although not all of the features we are trying to promote.
Mr David Littler: I think there is no doubt that we have got the technical
knowledge. There are plenty of architects and engineers in Hong Kong who can
do it, and you have seen examples of that this afternoon I think. What we are
lacking is political courage and financial support, financial incentives. The only
example I can give you is from the UK, which seems to show that regulation is
pretty much the most effective way of changing things quickly. They have an
energy code there called Part L, and those of you that have worked in the UK will
know and fear it, and it gets tougher every couple of years, they have just brought
out another one, and it is getting quite, quite hard to meet.
I think here in Hong Kong the OTTV (“overall thermal transmittance value”)
calculation that Raymond just mentioned, is the first step of a regulation. That
should be toughened quite dramatically quite quickly, and applied to residential
buildings. My apartment has far too much single glazing and it faces the wrong
way. I should really live somewhere else actually. But it just shows you how weak
the regulations are here.
That should be a starting point. Get the buildings right. The building energy codes
should be regularly updated, maybe every two years, and made tougher so
people get used to them. Then you may even have something that has worked
incredibly well in London, which is a minimum renewable energy requirement.
This was brought in London maybe five or six years ago, maybe slightly longer.
What they said was that if you wanted planning permission to build a new
building in London you had to offset your total carbon emissions by 10 per cent
using renewable energy technologies.
Overnight, all the private developers in London just had heart attacks. It was the
end of the world. But within about a week all the architects and engineers figured
out that actually if you designed the building better, instead of taking 10 per cent
of the 100 per cent carbon emissions, if you worked a bit harder you could make
the 100 per cent maybe 70 per cent. So the renewable requirement shrank, and
suddenly everybody started thinking about designing buildings better. It was
really surprising how, with the minimum renewable requirement, everybody just
went, "OK, there's a better way of doing it".
We need something like that, which will kick-start thinking about holistic design.
At the moment we are talking about panels on roofs, but we are not talking
enough about double-glazing, or solar control glazing, or shading, and I think we
need to join it up. But regulation, for me, is the driver.
Dr Rüdiger Kratzenberg: Of course, I am from too far away to be here giving
advice, but what I think I could say is: I don't know what is the most important
24

thing but I could recommend what the first step should be. The first step should
be bringing in transparency, issuing energy performance certificates or something
similar, to make clear what is the real demand from primary energy, electricity,
and so on. Don't label it; just the data must be made available. This must be the
first effect.
Then I think you have to proceed and put the data together with research. After
this a clear political will has to be created, and afterwards the creation of
regulations. Without this, it will not happen. It's a rather ambitious hypothesis,
but I would like to come back and observe.
QUESTION:
There are high property costs here, so there is a lot of pressure to commission buildings immediately after
they are finished and this sometimes leads to them running less efficiently than designed. How do we correct
that?
Mr David Littler: Getting buildings commissioned is really difficult, even if you
have plenty of time it is actually quite hard, and as soon as the people move into
the building they don't use it in the way you thought they would.
If you have an energy performance certificate like the one you see on your
refrigerator at home, that is usually for a design condition, so it is a theoretical
performance. What is now happening in parts of Europe – I think it is every two
years, I may have that wrong – there is a displayed energy certificate, which is a
real life fuel bill analysis, and what you end up with is a certificate in a frame in
the reception of your building which shows the design and theoretical energy use
on the left, and on the right-hand side there is the actual.
Now, you could say when your building is finished, "Look, we got an ‘A’, brilliant",
and all your tenants move in and then two years later you have got a "D", and
that's not very good. But I think that's the only way to achieve the transparency
that you are talking about; an ongoing look at how is the building doing. It is like
going and getting your car serviced every year: "Is it doing OK? Am I wasting
money? Is it using more fuel than I thought?"
QUESTION:
This idea of commissioning of a building, is it well understood? Just say you have a new building built to
BEAM or BEAM Plus standard. What do you do when you receive your building? What is the process of
commissioning?
Mr David Littler: If you imagine buying a car, when you buy a car it comes with a
manual and someone else has driven it round to make sure that it works. That
process of driving it round and making sure it works and it does everything it says
in the manual -- that should happen at the end of a building's construction period.
It is like a test drive.
Normally, the air-conditioning system is finished, they turn it on: Does it reach the
temperature you wanted it to, do the lights turn on and off, does hot water come
out of the tap? -- that is what commissioning is, it is testing the building.
25

QUESTION:
Who normally would do that job? When I move into a new building I am just given the keys. Do I take it for
granted that somebody has done it? And usually who does it in Hong Kong?
Mr David Littler: The way it normally works is the design team, which will include
some engineers, will write in the specification for the contractor, for the builder,
"Please commission the building at the end, and here is a guideline", which is very
specific about what they should do, and the engineer will check to ensure that
has happened before the building is handed over. In reality, as you mentioned
earlier, there is a lot of pressure to get the building handed over and often that
period is squeezed, and that is the same the world over. So it is often not done
well enough. In other countries, people are starting to offer ongoing
commissioning. After six months the team and the contractor will come back to
the building and they will test it, the same again after 12 months. This is now
becoming a regulation in certain countries, but it isn't here. It is like, again, taking
your car back to the garage after six months and 12 months, is it still doing what I
thought it was going to?
Dr Raymond Yau: I would like to add a bit on that. In a lot of green building
rating systems, they put a lot of emphasis on the testing and commissioning
requirements. It is not simply the tests and balances which contractors normally
do towards the end of the installation making sure that most of the system is
working reasonably. Certainly, quite a lot of them might not be operating at the
most optimum condition, and so on. Those green rating systems emphasize that
you need to go through a testing and commissioning process, even at the
beginning of your design, during the design, construction, tests and balance
situation, post-occupancy, and so on. Quite often, this could be compromised
because of the programme and also people moving into the building, and so on.
I think we need to have a re-emphasis on when these particular few credits in
those green rating systems should be awarded, rather than forcing the process to
give the rating too quickly to the completed project. In some instances, it will
help a lot. Other instances, the building has been in operation for quite some
time and needs to undertake a retro- or re-commissioning process. I understand
there are a lot of major, big developers in Hong Kong who are really buying into
retro-commissioning. They have spent some investment and are able to recommission
the system and end up saving lots of money on a yearly basis, I am
talking about millions a year, in terms of electricity consumption. So it pays off
very shortly. Retro-commissioning or re-commissioning after some years of
operation certainly is worthwhile and is considered to be a low hanging fruit.
QUESTION:
I heard a presentation recently by the owners of the Empire State Building where they talked about the
importance of every tenant having a meter to evaluate their electricity usage. I asked the Empire State
Building gentleman why they did this, and he said it makes for much better relationships with tenants, far
and above the energy savings. Now, in Hong Kong this doesn't happen because building owners in
commercial buildings hide the cost of electricity in a flat rate with the rental. How do we
persuade/cajole/require building owners to start allowing tenants to see the costs or how much energy they
are using?
26

Dr Raymond Yau: To take the CIC Zero Carbon Building as an example, it builds in
a lot of measurement points and energy meters to inform users how much energy
they are using. We are also contemplating having a competition among the
different divisions to show how this particular function group used this amount of
energy, as compared to their adjacent neighbours within the same premises. That
will instigate behaviour change with an objective. We are certainly trying it out
on the demonstration project.
Quite frankly, if we want to apply it in commercial buildings, there needs to be a
lot of changes in present lease conditions, and so on. There is a method being
looked at - particularly at the recent Helsinki World Sustainable Building
Conference held two weeks ago; I heard presentations by some Australian
developers who are engaged in green leases and also some Swedish developers
are doing something similar. It appears that they are implemented quite
effectively, but I claim no expertise in that.
But one important thing, like the gentleman said, is that it relies a lot on the
relationship between the tenant and the developers. They sit together, talk
about how they can work together to reduce energy consumption together, they
have a target for both the landlord and the tenant to work upon, and they agree
this is the amount of energy that we want you to consume, not more. This is
something where we need to work together, there is an energy meter to measure
how you are performing, and that could be a benefit of not using the quota that's
been given.
These are some of the examples they are doing, particularly in Australia, in the
green leases.
Dr Rüdiger Kratzenberg: To the last point I would agree very much that metering
is of extreme value and importance. It is not comparable, but we have a strong
tradition on this, and the costs are very clearly separated. The conditions, and
how to bring them to the tenants, are very well laid down, so you have an
objective side on different buildings. I think it would be interesting to make a
research project on different buildings in Hong Kong and look at what the flat rate
for the electric supply really is.
QUESTION:
It was mentioned that 70 percent of the people in Germany are tenants. In Germany, how do you encourage
the landlord to invest in energy-saving features? In Hong Kong, the landlords are very short-term oriented.
Dr Rüdiger Kratzenberg: This is a crucial point of course in the whole system in
Germany, and we have many debates at the moment because the developers
and the owners are telling the minister, "We cannot bear the costs.” So we will
have to spend in advance, and then we are going to convince them by making
balances to show that it will pay off within 10 to at least 20 years. Indeed, we
always have the question of economy and we are not allowed by the politics and
by law to make burdens on the owner that do not pay themselves off within a
certain time. Of course, in a particular case you can discuss and have different
views on this. But this is an ongoing procedure for 10, 15 years now, and it now
works much better than it did in the beginning.
27

Mr David Littler: The UK Government has come up with this idea of a green deal.
The government will lend you some money to include an energy-efficient
‘something’ in your building and then you pay back the loan through savings in
your fuel bills. It is like a little loan or a little mortgage on a bit of energy efficient
equipment, which is a very simple idea.
QUESTION:
If we were to revamp our electricity Scheme of Control, essentially, what we would need to do in Hong Kong?
Mr David Littler: It might come back to the sub-metering point. I used to work
with somebody who every evening, about once a month, would send an e-mail
round the office saying "Turn off your computer tonight". Then the next morning,
if you had turned off your computer, he would come in very early and leave a
chocolate on your desk. If you hadn't turned off your computer, there was no
chocolate. It was really quite upsetting sometimes.
What it meant was that he was incentivizing people, and he counted the number
of people who weren't turning off their computers as the months went by, and it
really dropped. You get a chocolate once a month, it's really easy, and it just
changes habits. I just wonder whether here, if you imagine a large landlord in a
multi-tenanted office building installing sub-meters and then saying to the
tenants, "I will give you some of the saving in running cost, I will take a little bit to
pay for the sub-meters, and I will get my money back in two or three years" --
then everybody in that building becomes quite competitive. The results are
published: "We are beating the 17th floor, we have beaten them for six months.
We got a ‘chocolate’". It just gathers pace. I think something like that, the idea of
a green deal, almost alone, if developers did it I think they would save quite a bit
of money. The problem here is that rent, compared with energy cost, is a massive
multiplier, much higher than probably anywhere else in the world actually.
Mr Robert Gibson (City University): Two points. The first one, coming back to
this landlord/tenant issue, I believe that the big part of the bill generally is the
supply of central air-conditioning rather than anything else, and the question of
how to do the thermal metering for that -- how technically difficult is that?
Secondly: one suggestion at the moment here in Hong Kong relates to re-working
property tax – for commercial buildings you pay rates. But we do not have tax on
electricity. What the government could do is to get rid of the property tax and
put the tax on the electricity instead. The government gets the same amount of
money, but it is on the electricity bill, not on the property. It will simplify the tax
code. The benefit of this is, simplistically, if the property tax bill at the moment is
the same as the electricity bill, if you make this change, you double the electricity
cost and you halve the pay-back period for doing energy efficiency measures.
28

QUESTION:
The CIC zero emissions building is a new building. Is the government planning to show the new construction
technologies on existing buildings?
Dr Guiyi Li: The CIC actually is not part of the government, so I couldn't speak on
behalf of the government. Actually, I couldn't speak on behalf of CIC either; I can
only speak on behalf of myself. I understand the government is considering
retrofitting regulations and I know the Business Environment Council is also doing
a demonstration retrofitting project for their own office, for the existing building.
QUESTION:
Let's think about the 40,000 existing buildings in Hong Kong. How much do we know about them? How old
are they? Where are they? What is the breakdown - commercial, residential, etc.? What does it take for us
to have some kind of data set for all the buildings in Hong Kong?
Dr Raymond Yau: What we did was just plough through the documents from the
Rating & Valuation Department and Census & Statistics Department to get the
details. I don't think they have got individual buildings' characteristics and so on,
but generally you can get information on the existing buildings’ shell and also the
buildings that will be refurbished soon, if it turns out to be in their record. There
are currently 4,000 to 5,000, and in the next decade or so there will be another
5,000, and so on.
The Hong Kong Green Building Council (GBC) is looking into this area in particular,
in view of the government trying to revitalize industrial buildings. Some efforts
have been put together in giving advice through the Hong Kong GBC on how to
revitalize those particular existing industrial buildings which tend to hold much
wider potential for retrofitting in a much simpler way, rather than those
individual multi-tenant residential buildings, for which you can hardly do much.
No doubt it is a very important area that the community will need to focus on in
order to help us bring down energy consumption, as well as carbon emissions.
QUESTION:
Would it be fair to say that in the last two years or so, the Hong Kong SAR Government’s Development
Bureau has been trying to better link energy efficiency and greener buildings?
Mr KS WONG (architect, Professional GBC, and HKGBC): I think your observation
is correct, and I think in 2008 the Professional Green Building Council went to
Australia with Development Secretary Carrie Lam to see what Australia was doing.
We were pretty impressed by the Australians at that time. I think because of the
impact of climate change that was so evident in Australia, all levels, from the
public to the politicians, were aware of the rebuilding challenge, so they did react
to that. I am certainly aware that other countries are also following such a
progressive approach.
After that, we all returned to Hong Kong and talked about how to accelerate our
change in Hong Kong. We set up the Hong Kong Green Building Council, with the
29

support of Carrie Lam, and I think the CIC zero carbon project is also supported by
Carrie. This year Carrie also went to the world conference held in Helsinki, to
learn and talk about the state of the art in the green building movement. I think
in the last two or three years we have seen a lot of changes in Hong Kong, and
those are really progressive and positive.
Reacting to your early question -- what we can foresee in the forthcoming five
years -- I think on one hand we will see more green buildings in Hong Kong. Say,
for building permits, in the first year we have got more than a hundred project
applications. If a hundred buildings per year, in five years time we could have at
least 500. Not too bad.
But I always feel that the Hong Kong people's culture is still not catching up in
many cases because, as mentioned by many people, even if we can have
hardware and good green buildings, if the people – the “software” side – the
people inside are not reacting or changing or catching up, then the actual
consumption could be as high as before.
I do look forward to seeing Dr Li's zero carbon building completed. It is not just a
case of a carbon neutral contribution from Hong Kong, but it is actually a kind of
education centre, to educate and transform people, hoping that people can be
aware of the issue and change accordingly. I think the challenge facing us is not
only about a carbon neutral new building, or retrofit, as mentioned by Dr Li.
Tomorrow morning the Business Environment Council will have their workshop
talking about transforming their own building in Kowloon Tong, to design it to
reduce carbon emissions by 40 per cent. They are targeting to have that retrofit
project completed in a year, and demonstrate the possibility of an economical
way to retrofit the project and save 40 per cent of energy costs.
But most important is how to transform the Hong Kong people's culture. Given
our territorial character, Hong Kong people are not really feeling the effect of
climate change and other energy and resource scarcity problems. I think that is a
topic that maybe Civic Exchange can do more to tackle.
Ms Christine Loh: If we had a kind of continuous data set about our building, our
flat, our building estate, or even our community -- and what is happening -- I think
we will start looking at it perhaps like the weather. What is it that Hong Kong can
do to start getting some interesting data that the people would be interested in? I
say this because Civic Exchange has worked a lot in the air pollution and public
health area and, together with the health experts at the Public Health School at
Hong Kong University, we have developed something called the Hedley
Environmental Index. What we have used in this index is the government's air
pollution data that is released moment by moment and then from that you are
able to do a calculation on health costs, days lost from work, and so on. I am just
wondering, with the Internet platform that is now available, what are some of the
things, if anybody has any ideas, that we can do to start uploading the kind of
information that will start to alert us to Hong Kong's energy use, and maybe
gradually we can get it down to the community level, to the flat level, to the
building level. I think it is a good way of energising people. I don't know what the
answer is. But is there a way that we can start this process?
30

QUESTION:
What is the return on investment for energy efficiency interventions in buildings?
Mr KS Wong: We just started the study but, based on the overseas experience in
general, actually, in a few years you would have a return. A very good case is the
Empire State Building project, and their data shows that payback will be within a
few years. In general, it should be OK, but I think for the BEC project it is to
demonstrate that it is doable. We will have more accurate data to show the
target in Hong Kong.
QUESTION:
Some final thoughts from each panellists
Dr Raymond Yau: The CIC zero carbon demonstration building actually highlights
one very important process in terms of identifying the energy hierarchy, which is
trying to do the simplest approach to begin with. Reviewing energy use of the
building, not over-sizing the building, and undertaking passive design, meaning
not using up electricity to run the system. Measures such as considering the
thermal properties of the building, shading coefficients, considering the window
to wall ratio, thermal mass of the building, and so on, have to all be put in at the
first approach. That will end up reducing the energy demand for the building.
That actually would surpass the requirements of the OTTV, and achieve a very
good installation of the building itself.
That would cost the least, from a payback perspective that is the least -- by
designing a better building. A similar approach could apply to commercial or
other buildings, by having an integrated design team to begin with considering all
these passive and low cost issues.
Then look at making your system more energy efficient by considering seriously
outperforming, for example, the building energy code, which will be enforceable
next year. Industries are already starting to talk about whether we can specify,
for example, less light and power density than stipulated in the code by
considering options like background lighting and cross lighting, which is highly
implementable and used in a lot of advanced economies. However, we are not
doing it as frequently in Hong Kong. It doesn't cost a lot, but it certainly has a
31

different behaviour perception, so that needs education.
The last, to close it, is to really look at how we can address the carbon issue, how
much energy supply to your building is going to come from a non-fossil fuel base,
whether we can generate some power by renewable means? No doubt, I think
the payback will be extremely long, but it is a kind of commitment your company
could consider seriously -- how much you want to do in that respect by
considering the still quite expensive renewable technology.
In regard to the Development Bureau's attention or the Environmental Bureau's
attention to carbon, I am very adamant that for climate issues coordination of
independent bureau efforts must come from a ministerial level. We can see it
would be much more effective if in the upcoming elections we have got a new
administration that put a lot of attention into this particular area, co-ordinating all
the good efforts by the bureaux, but in a more effective way.
Dr Guiyi Li: I would like to take on two points. Number one, at the very
beginning of the zero carbon building project inception stage, we were thinking
about how we can achieve zero carbon emissions and one joke was that you build
it and then don't use it and then it is zero carbon emissions. If you also look at
the extreme condition, you can design a building very well, very energy efficient,
but if you don't use it properly you still don't achieve your objectives. That leads
to the issue of people's behavioural change.
In fact, I saw data somewhere that saifd the contribution to energy savings –
about 70 percent, actually – is coming from human behavioural change and 30
percent is coming from others. So I just want to emphasize human behavioural
changes, and to do that is a long process. During lunch-time we discussed that
even 10 years ago not many people had heard of green buildings. Now everyone
knows what a green building is. Also, we talked about shark's fin soup. If it was
10 years ago, not to drink shark's fin soup, people would say, “Unimaginable!”
Now, actually it is quite common not to have shark's fin soup in a banquet. So
talking about the education process, there was a behavioural change. That is
number one.
Number two I think is the policy side. For instance, in this zero carbon building
we have surplus energy generated from a renewable source and then that goes
back to the electricity grid. At the moment, it is free of charge. That is not a very
good story to tell, and obviously I understand there is an issue. The reason we
export it for free because the electricity utility companies have to invest in the
infrastructure to take in this non-stable and fluctuating electricity from the
building. Today it is not a profitable business. I think the government needs to
have a certain policy to go with these sort of measures, so that people feel that by
saving energy or by exporting renewable energy to the electricity grid they
actually benefit themselves as well as benefit the community.
Mr David Littler: I just want to say something about the ROI. For a specific
measure like a solar thermal panel, the ones that generate hot water, six or seven
years is a typical figure for payback. But for a large, speculative office building,
there is quite a lot of data around which talks about increased rents, increased
percentage of lettable area, if a large international tenant is looking for a green
32

uilding which has a label of gold or platinum. I think those kind of incremental
improvements far outweigh often the cost of the bits of technology. So, for me, it
is about finding more data about adding value to the building.
Final thoughts: For me, it's about regulations. It’s also about transparency, and I
am completely with the energy labelling thing. I think that is quite important.
Finally, it is about reputation. If you use the words "Germany" and "energy" in
the same sentence, I think a lot of people immediately think Germany is really
good at low energy buildings. When I first moved here and I told a colleague I
was moving to Hong Kong he said, "Isn't the air quality really bad in Hong Kong?"
It was quite sad, and of course it is an issue here, but wouldn't it be nice if in five
or 10 years time people associated Hong Kong with something more positive,
more green, and more to do with low energy? That would be really quite an
achievement.
Dr Rüdiger Kratzenberg: First of all, let me again thank you for being your guest
here and hearing so much information from me also. Coming back to our topic, I
would say if I could take a picture from the spot, the aim to have a gold status
building -- sustainable and with zero energy demand -- is not a 100 metre sprint, it
is more like 10,000 metres, or even more. When we started with our legislation
we also found that the data available was very, very poor.
Of course, it's more reasonable to start with newly constructed houses. Then you
have a chance to bring together from the very beginning the planner, the
architects, also the technical engineer -- that is very, very important. Then with
relatively small costs you can bring in systems like DGNB, or other things. We say
it is about, let's say for an early high-rise, 10,000 or 20,000 euro at least, just for
the system.
Much more complicated is the question of how to deal with the stock of existing
houses. That really is a problem. There you can start, as we did, by bringing in
more transparency for the real energy costs. Whenever a tenant is going to rent
a new apartment then it must be mandatory that he be told how much the real
energy cost per square metre is from his apartment. This is more or less
European legislation, that every single new rent treaty must be accompanied by
the certificates for energy performance. That's what I could recommend. Thank
you again very much.
Ms Christine Loh: That is a very appropriate example to give. You have reminded
us that actually arriving at green buildings and energy efficiency, that it is a
marathon. Germany started 30 years ago. We are now kind of getting into the
act. As we all know, if you are going to run any distance, then we have got to get
fit, and we know in Hong Kong we are not very fit in this area yet. But we have
some early champions, we have some people who are ready to get into training,
and we have some ambition from the government that maybe we can be fitter
and faster.
I would like to think that in five years time when we invite Rüdiger back to Hong
Kong, maybe even earlier, that you would be able to be a good check on us to see
if we are fitter and faster. Thank you very much for spending the afternoon with
us.
33

Appendix 1:
Programme
1.30 - 2.00pm Registration and networking
2.00 - 3.00pm Welcome: Mr Werner Hans Lauk, Consul General of the Federal Republic of Germany
Keynote address:
BUILDINGS AS POWER PLANTS
Dr Rüdiger Kratzenberg, Head of the Building & Construction Industry Directorate of
Germany’s Federal Ministry of Transport, Building and Urban Development. Dr
Kratzenberg is currently overseeing an experimental project in Berlin to design an Energy
Plus family home, with the surplus energy earmarked for charging an electric vehicle. He
will talk about this and other strategies in Germany for emission reductions in buildings.
3.00 - 3.30pm Refreshment Break
3.30 - 5.00pm Panel Discussion: Hong Kong experts discuss the latest zero emissions building
developments in Hong Kong, including:
• Mr David Littler, Group Director (Building Services & Sustainable Engineering), Buro
Happold: Utilizing building sustainability measurement tools in Hong Kong, with a
focus on the German system DGNB.
• Dr Raymond Yau, Arup Fellow, Director of Arup Hong Kong: TBC
• Dr Guiyi Li, Senior Manager (Research) at the Construction Industry Council: Plans for
a zero emission CIC education centre in Kowloon.
Q&A and Discussion: moderated by Ms Christine Loh, CEO, Civic Exchange
Close and thanks

Appendix 2:
Speaker Biographies
Dr Rüdiger Kratzenberg is the Head of the Building & Construction Industry Directorate
of Germany’s Federal Ministry of Transport, Building and Urban Development. He
oversees a diverse portfolio covering civil engineering, architecture, building research,
energy performance of buildings, and building law. Dr Kratzenberg has qualifications in
law from the Friedrich Alexander University in Erlangen-Nuremberg and has held several
senior posts in state and federal German governments relating to urban development.
Mr David Littler is the Group Director of the Building Services and Sustainable
Engineering group in the Hong Kong office of Buro Happold. He has worked on a wide
range of project types around the world, and has often been able to influence the form,
fabric and architecture of a proposed building in the early stages of the design process to
help achieve a low energy solution.
Dr Raymond Yau (TBC) is Arup Fellow, Director of Arup Hong Kong. He was one of the
pioneers of Computational Fluid Dynamics and Dynamic Thermal Modelling techniques
for built environment applications in both the UK and Hong Kong. He has been involved
in a number of major studies and building projects in Hong Kong and Mainland China,
and is Adjunct Associate Professor at Department of Architecture, The Chinese
University of Hong Kong.
Dr Guiyi Li is a senior manager within the Secretariat of the Construction Industry
Council (CIC), responsible for the CIC’s research programme. He is an environmental
specialist with 25 years of international experience in research, consultancy and
management. Dr Li is a Chartered Engineer, a Fellow of Chartered Institution of Water
and Environmental Management (CIWEM) and a past chairman of CIWEM Hong Kong
Branch.
Ms Christine Loh is the co-founder and CEO of Civic Exchange. She is an Adjunct
Professor at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, as well as a board
member of various local and international companies and foundations, including the
Hong Kong Mercantile Exchange, Tällberg Foundation, East West Institute, and
Community Business. She is actively engaged in numerous non-governmental
organisations in Hong Kong relating to sustainability, urban planning and design, and
human rights, including Clean Air Network and Society for Protection of the Harbour.

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