Green Building Award 2021: 39 Award Winners Announced at the Award Presentation Ceremony
Enhanced Design of BEAM Plus Certificates with Carbon Performance Indicators
Launch of Chinese Version of BEAM Plus Assessment Tools
Green Building Award 2021: 39 Award Winners Announced at the Award Presentation Ceremony
The Green Building Award 2021 was honoured to have Mr Michael WONG Wai-lun, JP, Secretary for Development, the Government of the HKSAR (top right), Mr WONG Kam-sing, GBS, JP, Secretary for the Environment, the Government of the HKSAR (bottom left), Mr Franklin YU, Chairman of GBA 2021 Organising Committee (top left), Mr CHEUNG Hau-wai, SBS, Chairman of the HKGBC (bottom middle), and Mr Joel CHAN, Chairman of the PGBC (bottom right) joining the first-ever virtual award presentation ceremony as our officiating guests and sharing with us their visions on the green building development in Hong Kong.
GBA 2021 received an overwhelming support from the industry with a record-breaking number of 100 nominations. Among the 80 Finalists, 39 Award Winners were announced at the Ceremony which included 4 Pioneer Awards, 10 Grand Awards, 23 Merit Awards and 6 Special Citations on United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. All of them truly demonstrated their dedication and achievements in going beyond the conventional practice, stretching their boundaries in advancing sustainability, and accelerating Hong Kong’s development into a liveable city.
Winners of Pioneer Award (for Green Building Leadership), Grand Award (for projects) and Special Citation of Green Building Award 2021 are listed in the table below.
Enhanced Design of BEAM Plus Certificates with Carbon Performance Indicators
To support global carbon neutrality initiatives, the Council will enrich the contents of BEAM Plus Certificates by adding a set of “Carbon Performance Indicators” (CPIs). This new arrangement will be applied to the certificates of BEAM Plus New Buildings, Existing Buildings, New Data Centres and Existing Data Centres, effective from 3 May 2022.
To give a clearer picture of carbon reduction performance in certified projects, carbon-related metrics such as annual energy reduction, water use reduction, embodied energy optimisation (for new buildings) and implementation of waste management plans (for existing buildings) will be added to the new certificates. By showing these key carbon metrics on the certificates, the transparency of each project’s carbon performance will be improved. This in turn will encourage project owners to strive for greater carbon reductions in their projects, including both operational carbon emissions as well as the embodied carbon in materials.
Carbon neutrality is a key goal of global sustainable development. Apart from BEAM Plus, the Council is also playing a significant role in developing energy benchmarking and target setting initiatives to drive carbon footprint reduction. It is believed that with full support from building owners and green building practitioners, Hong Kong will surely achieve its goal of carbon neutrality by 2050.
New design of BEAM Plus certificates (BEAM Plus New Buildings v2.0 as an example)
Launch of Chinese Version of BEAM Plus Assessment Tools
The Hong Kong Green Building Council is committed to driving the development of green buildings. To this end, the Council runs the BEAM Plus Assessment Tools that enable accurate assessment of the sustainability performance of buildings (especially high-rise and high-density buildings in sub-tropical climate). BEAM Plus (formerly known as HK-BEAM) has footprint in geographical areas outside Hong Kong including Macau, Guangzhou and Shanghai. To further promote BEAM Plus, a Simplified Chinese version of “BEAM Plus New Buildings Version 2.0 (2021 Edition)” was officially launched on 28 February 2022. A Traditional Chinese version will also be launched in the near future to further maximise the reach and impact of BEAM Plus, allowing it to collaborate with a wider range of industry stakeholders in the region.
BEAM Plus consists of five assessment tools, namely New Buildings, Existing Buildings, Interiors, Neighbourhood and Data Centres, which offer a comprehensive set of sustainability criteria relating to the planning, design, construction, management and maintenance of a building. Today, all major new public works projects would aim at achieving “Gold” or above rating in BEAM Plus, while the annual BEAM Plus participation rate of private sector projects has exceeded 50%. To date, the assessed new buildings have collectively saved nearly one million tons of carbon emissions annually, which are equivalent to planting 42 million trees. Since the Council started operating these tools in 2010, the number of BEAM Plus registered projects has reached 2004, of which 930 have been certified with a Bronze rating or above.
The Council hopes that more BEAM Plus certified projects would emerge in different cities and contribute to the country’s energy saving and carbon reduction targets, ultimately moving us closer to the vision of carbon neutrality.
To download the Simplified Chinese version of “BEAM Plus New Buildings Version 2.0 (2021 Edition)”, please visit https://www.beamsociety.org.hk/en_beam_assessment_project_1.php.
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