Green Buildings

The government has signalled its desire for all government offices to ultimately be in so-called green buildings.  And why?  Primarily because of perfectly legitimate concerns about global warming.  This is a classic example of muddled thinking satisfying warm fuzzy sentiments, or, the heart over the brain.

A points system has been defined in determining what is a green building and largely constitutes electricity savings.  But points are also awarded for roof-top rain entrapment and even provision of bicycle stands.

Global warming has a single cause being the burning of fossil fuels.  New Zealand, rare among nations, generates little of its electricity by burning coal or oil and is capable of supplying 100% of its needs by means other than fossil-fuel burning, with further investment.

New Zealand has no electricity shortage problem although obviously with population growth additional generating facilities will periodically be required.  These can all be met by non-fossil fuel-burning methods.

Most government offices are in Wellington and Auckland.  Both cities have high and regular rainfalls.  Neither have water shortages although Auckland's rapid growth will doubtless necessitate more reservoirs.  Provision of these poses no problem but in any event is totally irrelevant to global warming.  Anyway, if there is merit in this proposition then why not extend it to housing?

Many houses in New Zealand have water tanks because they're in the country and unable to access piped water.  Apart from their cost and maintenance requirements they can, unless regularly inspected, pose serious health issues.  Studies have shown that most private tanks deliver unhealthy water which is not the case with the treated and sterilised city supplies.  But to repeat the salient issue is that this is irrelevant to global warming.

Silliest of all is the bicycle stand proposition.  Encouraging people to cycle in lieu of motorised transport would obviously help address the fossil fuel issue but has one difficulty.  That is that Wellington and Auckland are both built on steep hills and apart from the dangers from both cities' clogged motor traffic, cycling to and from work would be beyond the physical competence of 99% of people in those cities.  Visit any CBD building's basement carpark and invariably there will be one or two bicycles leaning against the wall.  The building may perhaps house 150 workers indicating that at best, about 1% of its occupants, nearly always young and fit males, are physically competent to take on the city hills and traffic.

Perhaps the most famous cycling city is Amsterdam but apart from its flat terrain, more importantly a host of measures have reduced motor vehicle access to a trickle.  Ironically this has resulted in all of Amsterdam's new office buildings being constructed in office parks built in green fields many miles from the city and all reached by fossil-fuel burning transport.  From the office workers viewpoint this has borne an important environment toll in denying them the pleasures of a city location.

For example 50% of the world's population now live and work in cities and while economic factors are a major motive for this relentless trend, environmental reasons, particularly in the developed world are also a factor, people seeking the ambience and facilities of city living.  This applies to young and old as in recent years numerous retirees have shifted from rural living to city apartments in Auckland and Wellington.

The first rule in addressing any problem is to clearly identify it.  Plainly that has not been done with the green building advocacy when it comes to global warming and instead straw men have been set up as easily knock-overable targets.

The government will doubtless argue that their green building policy is also targeting conservation.

Conservationism is fine when it solely addresses waste but human history shows that any form of conservatism always descends to irrational zealotry.

The progress of human development from the caves has been a constant battle against conservative forces, be they political, religious, economic or philosophic.  Conservative thinking is by definition, unprogressive, unimaginative, authoritarian and in practise, frequently misanthropic.  This is certainly true with many of the policies of the New Zealand Conservation Department.  Thus the much vaunted Department's new Wellington headquarter crams its employees into open spaces because this conserves (lights, rent et al) all at the cost of a pleasant and dignified working environment.

Robt Jones Holdings Ltd as a deliberate policy, never takes a conservationist approach with its 20 office buildings in Wellington, Auckland and Sydney.  Instead it adopts an environmental strategy by creating high quality suites, seeking (by industry standard) excess lifting and numerous other features to enhance the working environment.

If the government wishes to attract quality employees it should abandon conservationism in its approach to office buildings and substitute environmental goals.

Finally and regrettably, it needs to be said that in making these observations I am not talking my own book.  While we have some government tenancies these have been inherited rather than solicited as our specialisation lies in providing prime CBD location quality office space attracting tenancies which place a value on their working environment.

Sir Robert Jones.
July, 2007.