Cape Quarter to undergo greening transformation

The Tower Property Fund has set a clear strategy of occupancy cost reduction across the board for all the buildings within the fund's portfolio, with a strong focus on greening underpinning the fund.

"Tightly managed and controlled operational costs mitigate pressure on headline rentals allowing for predictable and sustainable growth into the future," says Marc Edwards, CEO of Tower.

Lighting retrofit

Amongst the initiatives that will be rolled out at the Cape Quarter is a lighting retrofit in all the common areas as well as the basement parking area.

"All the florescent lighting in the parking area will be retrofitted with LED lighting," explains Simon Penso, national facilities manager for Spire Property Management, the managing agents of the Cape Quarter. "The cove lighting in the common areas at the Cape Quarter will be replaced with LED strip lighting - allowing for a visual upgrade as well as the obvious energy use reduction."

"It has been calculated that this lighting retrofit alone will result in an approximate 805,360kWh reduction in consumption per year as well as an approximate 885,896kg reduction in annual CO2 output. We will also be offering package deals to the tenants at the Cape Quarter who would like to also undergo a lighting retrofit," says Penso.

Fan sensors

Another initiative that will be rolled out is a basement fan sensor system. "Currently the extraction fans within the parking basement at the Cape Quarter run constantly. Now, sensors will be installed that will monitor the carbon monoxide levels and switch on the extraction fans only when needed. It is estimated that there will be a 70% reduction in the running time of these fans resulting in an approximate 527,352kWh reduction per year and an approximate 580,087kg reduction in CO2 per year."

The Cape Quarter already has waterless urinals as well as an active recycling programme in place. "Currently it recycles approximately 40% of all the waste generated on site. We are investigating the viability of a bio-digester to process all the wet waste that comes from the restaurants at the Cape Quarter as well as a small bio-diesel plant which will turn all the vegetable oil from the restaurants into bio-diesel to fuel the centre's generator, which is used whenever the municipal grid is under pressure," says Penso.

Pilot building

Other initiatives that are being researched for future roll-out are escalator sensors that will only power the escalators when someone is on them, heat pumps as well as the installation of PV solar system. The Cape Quarter has been accepted as one of the pilot buildings for the new Green Building Council's Existing Buildings Rating Tool, which will allow the centre to obtain a Green Star Rating.

Edwards explains that Tower will also use the Energy and Water Benchmarking Tool of the Green Building Council,which will allow them to measure how a building is performing in terms of energy and water consumption compared to industry norms.

"Recent global research has shown that green buildings outperform normal buildings significantly - on average achieving rental premiums of 6%, capital value improvement of 12%, while reducing operating costs by 30%," explains Edwards. "As the fund's flagship building we will be rolling out these green and occupancy cost reduction measures at Cape Quarter first, but this will soon be followed by similar initiatives at all of our buildings within the portfolio."