Environmental Challenges
for existing building
Existing buildings: a new environmental challenge
The worldwide trend towards sustainable buildings, which began in the 1990s, is now gaining speed due to recent climate and energy issues.
Improving the environmental performance of existing properties is commonly recognised today as a priority to meet climate change challenges.
Today, the building industry is at the core of sustainability issues:
- it produces 40% of CO2 emissions
- it is responsible for the use of 40% of natural resources
- it is responsible for 40% of the waste produced
- the resultant urbanisation has an impact on the environment
- it has an impact on human health ("sick building syndrome").
The worldwide trend towards sustainable buildings, which began in the 1990's, is now gaining speed use due to recent climate and energy issues.
Gabor Kende
Engineering Manager
Europe - GE Real Estate
From a technical point of view, the Green Rating system represents a highly effective tool in assessing the environmental performance of a building on two different levels: one from the point of view of its intrinsic performance, which means that it depends only on the construction’s quality and equipment, and the other, the actual indicator, which depends more on the behaviour of the tenants and the performance of the facility manager concerning the building’s settings.