From energy- to humanity saving: new green building challenges

In October 2009, the Russian Ministry of Justice registered the Green Building Council, a non-profit partnership to promote the creation and implementation of green building regulations. And the first significant event in the market is considered to be obtaining the first BREEAM certificate for commercial real estate - business center Ducat Place III - in 2010. Since then, recognized by leading market participants and experts, the country has come a long way: from the lack of understanding of the importance of sustainable construction by investors and developers to the emergence of unique (not only for Russia but also for Europe) "green" objects. Leading participants and experts of the Russian market of "green" construction discussed the experience of the past and prospects of the future in the forum "Day of innovations in architecture and construction" on December 4.

First of all, for these ten years the very concept of "green" construction in Russia not only appeared, but also took root. International ecostandards - first of all, BREEAM and LEED - have "penetrated" into the country and strengthened, said co-founder of the Green Building Council Alexei Polyakov. And the Russian Council itself was for several years an official member from Russia in the WorldGBC World Council and, accordingly, transmitted to the Russian market the principles of the World Council. During this time, a community of market experts has emerged in Russia, and a circle of recognized appraisers according to international standards has been formed.

Several key events for the Russian "green" construction market were also named by Snezhana Stojkovic, Head of Engineering Design Department of AESOM. In 2009, a law on energy efficiency was adopted, which defined criteria and indicators of energy efficiency of buildings. In 2013, Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a decree to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. In 2014, a fundamentally new international eco-standard WELL appeared, and last year its second version was released. In 2015, the UN has defined 17 new sustainable development goals. Each goal contains a number of indicators to be achieved within 15 years. And in 2017, a new standard TRUE (Total Resource Use and Efficiency) was released, which helps companies to define, develop, implement and achieve waste-free production goals.

Ksenia Agapova, the founder of the company "Ecosovetnik", noted that for ten years in Russia 6.6 million square meters of real estate was certified according to international "green" standards. At the same time, Pavel Yakimchuk, Director of the Department of Construction Project Management and Interior Design of CBRE, admitted that Russia seriously lags behind the USA and Europe in the development of "green" construction. Thus, in Chicago 70% of commercial buildings are certified, and we have only 6% of them. In this sense, we lag 2-3 times behind Europe and Asia. At the same time, according to estimates of foreign colleagues, "green" certification can save an investor from 1.5% to 12% of utility costs.

However, new non-trivial challenges are now emerging for the global and Russian environmental community.
"We have now believed that we will be saved by new technologies that have already helped us more than once. But we do not think that their introduction has its negative consequences. So, in the last century, London could not solve the problem of manure disposal from horses that were used as transport. But cars were invented to replace horses - and now we are fighting with CO2 emissions," explained Ksenia Agapova.
According to her, for sure, new technologies will appear that will solve this problem as well. But, at the same time, there will be negative consequences from the introduction of these new technologies. For example, we are not yet thinking about how we will dispose of solar panels, whose lifetime is 25 years. Alternative energy is not such a safe and joyful story as it seems to us yet, says the expert. Thus, since the peak of electricity production does not coincide with the peak of its consumption, we most often need to accumulate in such schemes. And it is extremely difficult to dispose of batteries. In Russia, there is still a huge problem to dispose of even ordinary batteries.
"The growing struggle for environmental quality and ecology is coming to the fore. At the same time, the environment should not be understood as just energy saving," Ksenia stresses.

In this sense, the most promising "green" standard looks like WELL, which is precisely focused on the care of human well-being and health.
"The physical and social environment in which we live, and then lifestyle, health and genetics, has a greater impact on human health. And many developers already understand this and start building human centric buildings," says Snezhana Stojkovic.
According to Pavel Yakimchuk, it is health care that will soon become the main driver and incentive for investors to decide on the need to certify facilities according to "green" standards.

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