Benchmark Study on Green Buildings - Royal Architectural Institute ...

prevent or discourage the use of alternative and innovative building materials and designs.
Municipal Governments should be regularly reviewing the building codes for their
jurisdictions to make sure they are up-to-date and to periodically raise the minimum
standards for things like energy and water efficiency. This is a mandatory or regulatory
approach to greening buildings and slowly raises the bar for all types of development.
Governments need to be aware of their building codes to make sure they are functioning
properly; delimiting minimum standards for all buildings and making sure new and
innovative practices, designs and materials are included so they can be used legally and
without problem in sustainable building.
Developers prefer and value a process that speeds up planning approvals over minor cash
incentives for green development, which typically represent a very small percentage of
total project costs. A faster approval process can reduce the financial risks and costs
associated with project delays. A fast-track process for green building proposals also has
the added benefit of developing greater in-house company expertise to negotiate and
network with developers of green building features. Governments should make
arrangements in the building permit process to allow for the faster processing of green
building proposals, as this acts as an incentive to get developers to build green. This
might require the training of employees in the approval process so that they become more
familiar with the current state of green building, and can go through plans at a faster rate.
Another incentive for developers to build green is to provide relief of taxes and
development charges. The rationale for providing this relief is in the acknowledgement of
the additional private expense incurred by the developer for the public good, particularly
where the town or city hosting the development may receive measurable benefits.
Although it is not really possible to accurately quantify the public benefits of a green
building to determine the appropriate level of reduction in taxes or development charges,
there should be some amount of fiscal relief for the builders of green buildings.
In terms of fiscal relief, monetary grants are also used to encourage green building.
Grants and funding programs are an obvious way to promote green development and are
used to varying degrees in all the countries reviewed. In each country, however, almost
all if not all green building funding offered was used up, meaning that it is a very
effective method of supporting the green building initiative. Still, if grants are to be an
effective incentive, they need to be large enough to constitute a sizable portion of total
project costs, or at least be part of a package of incentives that would tip the property
owner’s cost-benefit analysis in favour of green development. Also, finding sources of
funding for these large grants is often very difficult, which explains why many green
building grants are government-issued. Nevertheless, grants and funding remain powerful
incentives for green development, and should be used to promote this type of building
whenever possible.
When developers apply to have some land rezoned, the government responsible for the
process should negotiate with the applicant to have them incorporate green building
practices and technologies into the development. The idea is evidently to obtain a winwin
situation between the building company and the overseeing government which
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