The key challenges of Green Retrofitting Project (GRP) for existing office building in Malaysia / Siti Maryam Norhasandi

Built-environment is known as the largest provider of greenhouse gases (GHG), the culprit behind global warming and climate change. Countries worldwide have taken various measures to curb with the pressing matter by going green including new green buildings, renewable energy, sustainable resources and materials management and other countless measures. Nevertheless, the growth of new green building is only parallel to 1.5–2.0% of the existing building stocks or 50–100 years taken to replace the current existing building stock. The effort taken is not speedy and impactful enough though equally necessary as demolishing existing buildings for new green buildings is not financially and environmentally feasible. Ultimately, the most sensible way to reduce carbon footprint is through green retrofitting project (GRP) considering the large ratio between existing buildings and new green buildings stocks. Lamentably, the statistic showed that GRP globally is crawling slowly at 2.2% per year which is not helpful at all when Malaysia had aim to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) intensity of GDP by 45% by 2030 relative to the emissions intensity of GDP in 2005. As for 2018, the number of Green Building Index (GBI) Non Residential Existing Building (NREB) certification in Malaysia stoop really low at only 13 numbers of certification. To top that, the lack of streamline and standardized process and tool had further threatened the effort to implement GRP.