Buildings

One of Japan's largest construction companies is making a bold claim. Shimizu Corp believes its new Tokyo headquarters emits less carbon dioxide per square meter than any other building in the world. Thanks to a myriad energy-efficiency technologies and renewable energy installations, the building uses only 38 kilograms per square meter of CO2 annually, estimates Shimizu. That's 62 percent less than the average emissions of most Tokyo office buildings, says the company.

Seoul began implementing new measures this week requiring major buildings to disclose their electricity use and expanding the scope of facilities subject to energy consumption monitoring.

At least CNY1 trillion (USD 159 billion) is expected to be spent on developing smart city projects in China by 2015. Smart city specialist Jiang Defeng, said spending on advanced information technologies, especially the "Internet of Things," to provide fast and effective information services in areas such as traffic management, health care and environmental protection, among others, would be critical to developing these cities, reported Xinhua.

The idea of setting up a conservation trust in Hong Kong has been on the back burner for a number of years but the city’s incumbent Chief Executive, Leung Chun-Ying, is providing new hope that a government-backed trust organization will finally get its wings. Trusts are non-profit organizations that are committed to preserving the cultural landscape and ecological heritage for the public good, indefinitely. Well-known organizations such as the National Trust in the UK have been around for over a century and are seen by the British public as a steward of places significant to its cultural past.

According to a new report from Pike Research, the global market to retrofit commercial buildings to improve their energy efficiency will expand from USD80.3 billion in 2011 to USD151.8 billion by 2020. Western Europe will remain the largest market for energy efficiency retrofits in commercial and public buildings, but its share of world revenues will drop from 41 percent in 2011 to 37 percent in 2020.

The US Green Building Council (USGBC) is hoping its globally-recognized green building rating system will play a bigger role in China’s building industry.

The largest group of foreign investors in Taiwan is backing the country’s Low Carbon Initiative (LCI) which aims to share European expertise in low-carbon solutions and initiate partnerships with the government and Taiwanese firms to speed up Taiwan's transition from a fossil-fuel-dependent economy to a low-carbon model.

The social value of a place has not always been a strong basis for heritage conservation in Hong Kong but a sea of change could be on the horizon. The destruction of some of Hong Kong’s most iconic heritage in the past decade – such as the Central Star Ferry Terminal, Queen’s Pier, and Lee Tung (Wedding Card) Street – created a public uproar. It created recognition that certain places have meaning to society as a whole while Hong Kong government processes have been inadequate in engaging the public to identify the value of such heritage sites. Vocal opposition and resentment generated at the time represented a strong endorsement of social views on heritage issues.

The Seoul municipal government said it is seeking to build solar power facilities at about 1,000 of its schools in an effort to cope with the effects of global climate change, the Korea Herald reported yesterday.