Editor’s Note

In early September, I had the privilege of attending the South African Property Owners Association (SAPOA) annual convention at Sun City, the theme of which was “Resilience: Charting the Course”. I left armed with an excellent overview of the global property environment and economy, the state of water infrastructure and municipalities in South Africa, and the importance of precinct management within a well-functioning city, among other topics. Panel discussions were not without lively debate and conversation – some controversial – but the general zeitgeist was one of optimism, despite the economic difficulties our country faces. Now that the Government of National Unity is in place, there’s renewed positivity, and investors are looking at local opportunities again.

This year, +Impact was once again honoured with a SAPOA Journalism Award for Excellence: runner-up for Property Publication of the Year – a wonderful validation of our team’s efforts to report on the sustainable building arena and the consistently excellent work of the GBCSA each year.

It’s this kind of cooperative gathering of expertise that really helps advance a sector, and we’re super excited about the 2024 GBCSA annual Green Building Convention on 5-7 November. This year’s theme – Zero+: Net Zero Today, Climate Positive Tomorrow – promises healthy debate, innovative ideas and inspiration for collective action towards a greener future, and importantly, strives to help catalyse Africa’s journey towards net zero. Upfront on page 16, you’ll find a programme for the convention, highlighting the powerful thought leaders, professionals and change-makers taking part.

Apropos climate positivity, South Africa’s newly legislated Climate Change Act is set to propel the country along a carbon-neutral trajectory. In the second instalment of this series on page 48, GBCSA’s research desk takes a closer look at the Act’s mechanisms and their potential impact.

Our project line-up for this issue kicks off with De Beers’ Sky Park Offices in Kempton Park, Gauteng (page 30), which has just secured a 5-Star Green Star Interiors V1 rating – a natural progression for the building, which had already been certified 4-Star Green Star for both Design and As Built. The design and operations of the new Sky Park office space supports the company’s greater goal of a lower carbon footprint.

Moving south, Canal Walk Shopping centre in Cape Town’s Century upped its sustainability credentials with a 5-Star Green Star EBP recertification, this time significantly ramping up its waste reduction, and energy and water savings – read more on page 38.

Net zero is becoming more and more achievable on many fronts, even extending to net-positive status. In keeping with the Green Building Convention theme, we bring you our net zero showcase on page 54, spanning net positive ecology at dsm-firmenich South Africa’s offices in Midrand; net zero waste at 1 Discovery Place in Sandton; net zero carbon at Bank of Botswana in Gaborone; and net zero water at Cape Town’s The District.

Sustainability is built into the very fabric of Building D in Pretoria’s Irene Link precinct; this iconic building is home to funeral services giant AVBOB, and has recently been awarded a 4-Star Green Star Office Design V1.1 rating – find out how on page 72.

Walking its talk is mega communications organisation Vodacom South Africa, which has been committed to a sustainable journey for more than a decade and a half. Their latest achievement is dual 5-Star Existing Building Performance (EBP) certifications for its Business Park and Corporate Park buildings at Vodacom’s headquarters campus in Midrand (page 84).

In a first for developer Balwin Properties, Kikuyu Waterfall City in Midrand recently received EDGE Final certification. Read more on how this serene complex harnesses energy, water and embodied energy sustainably on page 90.

Our thought leadership contributors in this issue delve into the nuts and bolts of sustainability. On page 68, self-labelled “sustainable capitalist” Phil Barttram contemplates the dislocation in the valuation of underlying real estate in the South African commercial property sector, and what we can do to ensure it doesn’t undermine growth. And then sustainability consultant Anelisa Keke brings us some valuable pointers on how to approach sustainability reporting in South African real estate (page 80).

We hope you find plenty of inspiration in this, our bumper convention edition – see you at Africa’s most powerful green gathering!

Mariola Fouché
Editor

Chair’s Corner

Recently I watched a talk on YouTube® by ex-Google CEO Eric Schmidt, which he presented at Stanford University in the USA. Schmidt later persuaded YouTube® to pull the video as he got into trouble referencing Google’s work-from-home programme as having an impact on their business competitiveness. The talk, entitled “The Age of AI”, centred on the advances, scale and impact that artificial intelligence (AI) was going to have on the world. Besides apparently misrepresenting the extent of Google’s work-from-home practices, I was more surprised by what he had to say about AI’s impact on data centres.

Schmidt spoke of how advances in AI and language learning models (LLMs) will need more data – and hence larger cloud computing, which requires more data centres – and how these businesses needed more funding, with figures ranging from USD 10 billion to 300 billion. He pointed out that he had then done a calculation on the energy required and had told the White House that they needed to “become best friends with Canada” as they had “nice people who had helped invent AI and lots of hydro power” because the USA did not have enough energy.

This got me thinking as to how much of our built environment focus is placed on resource efficiency, particularly in trying to decrease energy intensities towards decarbonisation and net zero carbon. The rate at which this is happening is far too low to mitigate against the large energy requirements and rate of consumption that these data centres are going to need.

I know international Green Building Councils have certification and performance-rating tools for data centres, with a number of data centres already having achieved green status. A “green” data centre is a conventional one that has been designed with maximum energy efficiency and lowest contribution towards environmental impact in mind. According to accounting organisation KPMG, data centres consume around 3% of global energy consumption.

If Schmidt is to be proven correct, we will have to ensure that the building of new data centres (and scaling up of existing ones) will be even more green. According to KPMG, one of the latest advancements in green data centres, ironically, is the use of AI to reduce the Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE) metric. They cite the use of “DeepMind AI” by Google to achieve a 40% reduction in energy used for cooling and 15% reduction in overall energy use. Other advances are the recycling of excess heat. Many examples come to mind.

Swedish internet provider Bahnhof uses the heat rejected in providing cooling for its data centre to heat homes surrounding the central area in Stockholm. The company has found a way to monetise this by reselling the energy from the excess heat to the local utility. CEO Jon Karlung said that “the data centre is a big radiator, and if you live in cold climate, this makes a lot of sense. We pump the heat back and sell it to the utility company. The model for reheating is purely financial. If you get half the money back, it will be very hard for others to compete. If you have a city that’s cold in the winter, you have to heat it up. It’s strange it hasn’t been done.”

Canadian telecom giant TELUS is another prime example: the organisation taps waste heat from its data centre in Vancouver to power the heating and cooling systems of its adjacent USD 750 million mixed-use “Telus Garden” development. In London, telecom company Telehouse has been using excess heat in its Docklands data centre to heat nearby homes and businesses since 2009. Similarly, IBM has a data centre in Switzerland that warms a nearby community swimming pool.

The commonality of these examples is that they are all in colder climates and don’t offer the same opportunities for data centres in warmer or more temperate climates. GBCSA is also working towards a customised rating tool for data centres, and our tool will need to be aware of these nuances and context, pushing for greening in other areas, but nevertheless still seeking lower energy intensities. Perhaps the location of future Southern African data centres needs to be a primary consideration – for instance, placing them closer to lakes or sea water to harness “free” cooling.