ART GALLERY SAVES BIG ON POWER

GREEN.....First green building in Sabah helps fight global warming

By : NURHAFIZAH YUSOF

SABAH’S first green building is helping to stop the world from getting warmer. The 16m-ringgit ($5m) Sabah Art Gallery Conservation Centre can save the government as much as 400,000 ringgit a year in electricity, 297 ringgit in water and cut carbon dioxide emission down by 780 tonnes that will help keep average global warming below 2oC to prevent an environmental disaster.

“This building can save up to one megawatt of electricity per year,” said Masidi Manjun, minister of tourism, culture and environment, as he received the Green Building Index certificate from Boon Che Wee, chairman of the GBI accreditation panel on June 29.

The four-storey building at Jalan Penampang is designed to reduce power consumption by using natural light and solar panels for lighting and air-conditioning. Energy saving lights switch off by themself when there are no visitors at the art gallery. And the main power supply is triggered on days when natural light is lacking or solar panels are unable to power lights and air-conditioners.

Thus electricity consumption will be greatly reduced to 900 kilowatt-hours a day, according to Jennifer Linggi, the curator of the gallery. Power cost will thus be a relatively low 107,000 ringgit a year against about 480,000 ringgit if the building were to run on supply solely from Sabah Electricity Sendirian Berhad, the state’s power company.

The art gallery will also save about 330,000 litres of water a year by harvesting rainwater to flush toilets, clean the building and water the garden. This represents a saving of 32% of the water need of the building. That is enough water for about 1,500 people. But 330,000 litres cost only 297 ringgit because water at 90 sen per 1,000 litres is comparatively cheap.

But making the building environmentally friendly will reduce carbon dioxide emission, blamed for global warming, by 780 tonnes a year. That is the amount of carbon dioxide emitted by 390 people every year.

The figure may not seem significant considering that it takes 1.8 trillion tonnes of carbon dioxide to raise atmospheric temperature by one degree Celsius. But then there are thousands of buildings, many of them many times bigger than the art gallery in Sabah. And taking all the millions of buildings in the world, carbon reduction of the Sabah art gallery is indeed a significant step in the fight against global warming.

Buildings use up 40% of energy, 12% of water and send 40% of waste to landfill. And they thus are responsible for much of global warming and pollution. – Insight Sabah