BEAM Society 5th Anniversary Conference

Jan - Feb 2016

BEAM Society 5th Anniversary Conference

January 30, 2016

BEAM Society Limited (BSL) hosted its fifth anniversary conference at the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre on 25 September with an aim to facilitate discussion on sustainable development of existing buildings in the city. Over 400 experts from the government, academia and environmental advocates from local and abroad joined the conference. BSL is honoured to have Wong Kam-sing, JP, secretary for the environment of the HKSAR government as guest-of-honour and also launch the BEAM Plus Existing Buildings Assessment Tool v2.0.

Prof John Ng, chairman of BSL, commented, “Green building is inevitably a development trend. BSL has been promoting BEAM Plus assessment tools over the past five years and has achieved encouraging results. We have contributed much to the continual improvement of our built environment and also to the advancement of Hong Kong as a whole. Celebrating our five years of success, as an assessment body, BSL will further invest in promoting our assessment tools to different stakeholders.”

BEAM Plus New Buildings has been better received by the industry since the launch of BEAM Plus Assessment Tools. Thus, BSL’s target is to further invest into promoting BEAM Plus Existing Buildings. BSL also launched BEAM Plus Existing Buildings Assessment Tool v2.0, in support of the Energy Saving Plan for Hong Kong’s Built Environment by the government. Version 2.0 is an extended version of the previous Comprehensive Scheme A with the newly added Comprehensive Scheme B and Selective Scheme. The new version allows for greater flexibility for the participants.

Wong said, “The environment bureau will announce a report on climate change before year end, which will propose a series of measures on emission reduction and adaptation on climate change so as to enhance the sustainable development of Hong Kong. Buildings take up 90 percent of the energy consumption in Hong Kong and account for about 60 percent
of greenhouse gas emissions. The sustainable building design guidelines together with BEAM Plus assessment tool set a framework for the building industry, paving the way for a Green living.”

With a clear mission to enhance a healthy development of the society and economy of Hong Kong through the promotion of BEAM Plus Assessment Tools, BSL aims to create a sustainable and eco-friendly built environment for all. In the past five years, BSL has helped reduce energy use by 30 percent with the adoption of BEAM Plus Assessment Tools. This represents a major step forward in the course against climate change. Altogether, by the end of 2013, BEAM-Plus-v1.2-certified buildings saved 140 million MW for Hong Kong (equals to 95,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide emission). This marked another milestone of BEAM Plus Assessment Tools’ contribution to the environment and to the sustainable development of Hong Kong.

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