Retrofitting Seminar 2008
Green Building Media held their first Retrofitting Seminar on the 10th of April, 2008. The purpose of the event was to bring together key stakeholders to share knowledge about energy efficiency in the built environment and reach consensus on the best way to accelerate the initiation of retrofitting projects with a view to easing the energy crunch in South Africa and mitigate against climate change.
With a live video link between three cities, Cape Town, Gauteng and Durban, the Retrofitting Seminar went underway. Speakers spoke on various topics, including a few projects and case studies of retrofitting.
Llewellyn van Wyk from CSIR started the seminar, speaking on the Retrofitting for Effective and Efficient Energy Utilization in Buildings. The talk was aimed at the climate change, causes and consequences, as well an overview of the global construction industry. The second half of the talk touched on post-modern architectural responses and looking into the future for retrofitting.
Prashant Kapoor, director from WSP, spoke on the subject of refurbishing cities - redesigning cities towards sustainability. Kapoor aimed at answering the question of what is a sustainable city and focused on how the carbon affects the city. He also touched on Europe’s sustainable city agenda, the global sustainable cities networks and what leading sustainable cities where doing about climate change. He indicated ways of measuring and monitoring sustainable cities.
John Less from the Clinton Foundation spoke about the initiatives the Foundation where involved in, including the Alliance for a Healthier Generation, Climate Initiative, the Economic Opportunity and the Global Initiative. He went on to explain how the Clinton Founation were aiming to achieve this by organizing global programs that pool C40 cities’ economic and political power. They are also planning to mobilize innovative financing mechanisms to remove budgetary hurdles amongst other strategies.
Sandile Maphumulo represented the Electricity Supply Side Challenges, a Case study for Green Buildings, on behalf of the Ethekwini Municipality. He discussed the energy challenges with regards to peak demand, expected peak demand, operational capacity and installed capacity. He touched on issues such as the National Response Plan, government interventions, the role of Green Buildings in the National Response Plan and the strategy to achieve the energy efficiency goals.
Dimension Data General Manager, Nick Caldwell spoke on their Campus office park, in Bryanston as a case study. He used before and after shots of the building at night to demonstrate how the green techniques of using motion sensor lights improved their energy saving. Caldwell released in depth technical information on the impact the technique had with regards to annual power saving, the average power saving, expenses, savings and both the environmental and social impact.
Colin Devenish from the V&A Waterfront gave his talk on Retrofitting made easy. He highlighted key reasons for retrofitting, gave examples from his own experiences including a few challenges the V&A Waterfront had to endure and the way forward to a sustainable building future.
After lunch, individual workshops were held in each city with their own panellist. Questions were directed at the panel and comments added by the experts in the audience. The discussions continued throughout the afternoon.
Llewellyn took an all-hands on deck approach at the Durban Venue, by challenging both the panel and audience to retrofit a building. They covered the various aspects and angles to what the best ways to sustain and save energy.
Cape Town got stuck into barriers and solutions of retrofitting, with both the panel of speakers and audience covering the different angles and sharing their own experiences.
Gauteng looked at the issues around the different types of building with regards to retrofitting, specifically in the single and multi-tenant buildings. Questions were directed to both the panel and audience with regards to the lack of information and the root of the issue.
After the event, Schnieder Green Award was announced. The award is for the best energy saving project of 2008 and projects will be validated in 2009, at the next Retrofitting conference.
