Green Construction on the Starting Blocks

Green building is one of the main trends of green economy. It includes efficient utilization of energy sources and rational use of natural resources during the building’s complete life cycle – from its design to demolition. Its being present or absent can be considered as an indicator of the development level of the country. Due to a number of reasons Russia is behind most developed countries in terms of green building which we became aware of only five years ago. The current stage of development can be called “a takeoff”.

In Russia there are about 30 buildings that comply with international eco-certification standards and there are currently approximately 30 buildings under certification there. This, however, constitutes 0,01% of the total amount of green buildings in the world. Here there exist domestic projects of environmental certification such as: the system of voluntary environmental certification of real estate and natural resources “Evaluation of Environmental Sustainability by the Union of Russian Architects and the Council on Green Building”, the system of voluntary environmental certification “Green Standards”, the rating system of assessment of environmental sustainability System of Standards by the National Union of Constructors 2.35.4-2011.

Currently Russian systems are not in high demand; there are only 20 buildings certified there and none of them according to any of the recently mentioned systems. The reasons for their not being interesting are their low marketing appeal, absence of popularity and lack of significant benefits or incentives.

Very often builders, developers and designers do not understand the goal and objectives of these systems of certification or green building as such. At the same time a number of companies consider assessing their projects in this respect and undergo the certification. However, given that constructing a building in line with what international standards require stands for a lot of additional work that involves all participants of the project, very few take a positive decision.

Very often the creators of the project formally meet the requirements, do not get to the heart of the matter and choose the most cost-effective issues. This, however, does not add real value to the future building. Moreover, this approach makes the real goal of certification senseless.

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The article provided by EcoStandard group