Part 2: Lessons Learned from Benchmarking International Building Efficiency Standards and Their Certifications' Applicability to Historic Buildings
This multipart case study blog post explores the challenges of applying green building standards and certification schemes to historic city cores with an application to the unique built environments of Downtown Cairo and Alexandria. To overcome these challenges, we propose a new green building standard—customized to Egypt’s historic urban fabric and based on building audits conducted in Downtown Cairo. The effort strengthens and complements Egypt’s past and challenged green building certification efforts which are similar to many countries with rich inbuilt heritage but slow-moving greening efforts. This case study was prepared based on several years the OHK team spent planning the revalorization of Downtown Cairo and developing a ten-year regeneration program currently being implemented.
This is part 2 of the blog post summarizes our benchmark study across several green building certifications used internationally. Also, it offers recommendations on adapting commonly-used building efficiency standards to historic buildings’ upgrades in historic city centers such as Downtown Cairo.
Egypt’s Housing and Building National Research Center (HBRC), in conjunction with members of what is today known as the Egypt Green Building Council (EGGBC), developed the Green Pyramid Rating System, and in 2015 the EGGBC (then an independent NGO) developed TARSHEED. Both are green building certification systems (GBCs) that include a battery of building resource efficiency standards and performance thresholds. Both, however, are non-compulsory and not intended to be legally enforceable; rather, these are voluntary mechanisms that reward high-performing projects with recognition, similar to international certification programs like LEED (an American standard with broad international use) and the British BREEAM. This photo shows the famed 1950s-built Nile Ritz Carlton hotel (previously the Hilton) which borders Tahrir Square’s Nile bank and sits in the middle of a ~1,500 mixed building stock that amalgamates nineteenth-century architecture styles. The surrounding and largely European architecture (of the period 1860 to 1940) defines the historic significance of Downtown Cairo. This hotel however stands witness to Downtown’s post-1940 architecture influenced by an international style and American architects. Of Downtown’s total building stock, a considerable proportion cannot easily benefit from local or international green certification schemes due to cost or standards’ fit issues that deem them inappropriate for historic buildings’ renovation. Incidentally, the Nile Ritz Carlton hotel, owned by the Egyptian Government’s Misr Hotels Company, recently underwent a publicly-funded ~US$65 renovation plan without any green building certification. Photo © OHK Consultants.
Comparing the Application of Local and International Green Building Certifications in Downtown Cairo—the Case of LEED, Austria’s klima:aktiv and Egypt’s TARSHEED
The key to encouraging green building rehabilitation in Downtown Cairo will be to link improved building economics and resource consumption with a stronger green building certification. Neither of the two green building codes active in Egypt today—the international LEED or the domestic TARSHEED systems—is designed to address the economics of rehabilitation interventions, particularly in the challenging historical urban fabric of Downtown Cairo. Nevertheless, the latter offers the opportunity to resolve some of these challenges. Rather than proposing yet another code system in a market that already has considerable competition among brands, we will explore how this locally-driven system can evolve its existing certifications towards a standard applicable to Downtown’s historic buildings.
The klima:aktiv certification program from the Austrian Climate Protection Initiative that was launched to offer a bundle of sustainability measures of regulation, taxes, and subsidies. The klima:aktiv ‘passive house’ criteria is similar to the German ‘passive house’ standard and has become critical for receiving housing subsidies in Austria. It offers a catalog of criteria developed to achieve the klima:aktiv standard based on a point system and is intended to comprehensively represent the needs of the residential housing and buildings in general and their effects on the environment. This photo shows a variance in the building stock of Vienna’s Innere Stadt (first district) that is similar to Downtown Cairo. The 1910-built Art Nouveau style building with the observatory dome, known as the Urania, sits right next to the Wien River and the modernist Bundeswettbewerbsbehörde (Federal Competition Authority) building (green building in the photo). Photo © OHK Consultants.
The Emergence of Egyptian Voluntary Green Building Certifications and Applicability to Downtown Cairo
Egypt’s two standards reflect the varying implementability of green building certification systems (GBCs) between government-led efforts and civil society initiatives. In Egypt, the latter enjoys a degree of more flexible governance and greater agility (though this does not, inherently, make these standards more effective). The TARSHEED system reflects this agility. Though not explicitly tailored for existing construction, let alone the Downtown Cairo’s unique historic fabric, it is an important milestone in the realm of building resource efficiency and a point of reference for greening Downtown’s building stock. By being a member-driven organization with an affiliate membership program, the EGGBC has aimed to create a certification structure “by stakeholders for the stakeholders.” This self-regulation, together with strong representation from design and development practitioners in Egypt, has enabled it to overcome some of the challenges that face regulatory instruments. We identify three main characteristics of the TARSHEED certification system, with an eye towards its ability to overcome implementation challenges.
First: Intentiveness to Egypt’s Green Building “Gap”—Domestic programs are challenged by a fundamental contradiction within the Egyptian market. Firstly, uptake of GBCs in general in Egypt is constrained by unaffordability, a lack of perception of benefit, an absence of linkages to existing regulatory programs, and an absence of funding, such that GBCs are most appealing to the new construction projects of multinationals operating in Egypt. Secondly, those multinationals prefer a strongly branded GBC, which is best met by programs like LEED. These factors have strongly reduced the adoptability of local GBCs. TARSHEED has sought to address this by making itself affordable and simple, and by making an effort to develop a strong brand.
Second: Responsive to the Particularities of Egypt’s Residential Buildings—The economics of “greening” existing buildings in Egypt is highly challenged by the conditions of the buildings, their fragmented ownership, and the relatively high costs of renovation and certification. These challenges are exacerbated in residential buildings and even more so in Downtown Cairo, given the tenant-owner dynamics of rent control. Moreover, LEED’s certification scheme for existing buildings Operations & Maintenance Recertification (EB O+M) – does not address historic buildings and, again, like the rest of LEED standards, is not suited for localization. TARSHEED has distinguished itself from LEED and other international peers by evolving standards and customizing them to Egypt. In doing so, it has offered considerations that are specific to Egypt’s residential buildings and bridged part of the gap between systems like LEED and Egyptian conditions.
Third: Approachability Given Simplicity, Cost and Ease of Application—TARSHEED offers a single certification level, and uses an evaluation process that verifies achievements through a straightforward credit system. Comparing it to LEED proves this point. Instead of the seven categories of LEED, TARSHEED focuses on five, and instead of the complex LEED scoring scheme, it has a simplified method. For a building of the scale typically found in Downtown, LEED certification costs would range from $5,400 to $8,400, while TARSHEED ranges from $825 to $2,300.
This photo shows the pre-renovation status of the circa 1890s-built Italian-Renaissance-style ‘La Viennoise’ landmark building in Downtown Cairo. It is a polygonal-shaped three-story building on Champollion Street that was briefly used as an embassy for the Austro-Hungarian Empire in the early 1910s and most recently as a hotel. For the past few decades it has fallen to neglect until it was acquired by the Al-Ismaelia for Real Estate to redevelop it. OHK Consultants approached Al-Ismaelia in 2017 with a plan to certify the building renovations under a green building certification. OHK planned to use La Viennoise as a testbed for evaluating existing certifications and for developing a new certification system specific to historic buildings that can be applied to similar historic buildings in Cairo and eventually Alexandria. The photo was taken during a resource audit and feasibility study conducted by the OHK team to evaluate the prospects for applying LEED, TARSHEED, and klima:aktiv from 2016 to 2018. Photo © OHK Consultants.
TARSHEED can be seen by green building professionals as a correction that can overcome the compatibility and promotional shortcomings of other nongovernmental and international GBCs. The TARSHEED system is growing, with its Residential (New Construction) v1.1 (2016) currently active and further certification levels being rolled out for Commercial (New Construction) v2.0 and Community v2.0. A Commercial Renovation (v2.0) certification is being introduced and will be discussed in greater detail in Part 3 of this Case Study. To examine whether TARSHEED can be applied to Downtown Cairo’s building stock, three questions arise. In principle, can TARSHEED’s standards be applied to existing buildings given that most of its credits are structured for new construction? Further, can it add considerations to its current certification structure to cover historic buildings in Downtown Cairo based on recommendations and guidance from OHK? And, what elements can OHK recommend it borrows from international GBCs that do have provisions for historic buildings? Finally, can OHK push the envelope and help modify the standard to make it apply to historic buildings in Downtown Cairo and take it a step further to certify a renovation effort underway in Cairo for a historic building of value?
The key to encouraging “green” building rehabilitation in Downtown Cairo will be to link improved building economics and resource consumption with a stronger green building certification. Neither of the two GBCs active in Egypt today – the international LEED or the domestic TARSHEED systems – is designed to address the economics of rehabilitation interventions, particularly in the challenging historical urban fabric of Downtown Cairo. Nevertheless, TARSHEED, as we discussed in Part 1 of this case study, offers the opportunity to resolve these challenges. Rather than proposing yet another GBC system in a market that already has considerable competition among brands, we will explore how TARSHEED can evolve its existing certifications towards a standard applicable to Downtown.
The OHK team assessed over one hundred buildings in Downtown Cairo to better understand the feasibility of green refurbishments that might qualify for certification. This photo was taken inside the Davies Bryan & Co merchant-built gothamesque building (circa 1910) which borders three main streets in Downtown Cairo, Mohamed Farid, Adly, and Abdel Khalek-Tharwat streets. Colloquially known as the “Chourbagui” building (the namesake of its later owners), it is one the largest single buildings in Downtown and is a prime candidate for applying a green building standard in its renovation works. It offers a considerable efficiency opportunity given its size and its mixed commercial-residential uses. Photo © OHK Consultants.
Best Practice Anatomy of a Green Building Certifications: Applying LEED, Austria’s klima:aktiv and Egypt’s TARSHEED to Downtown Cairo Historical Buildings
OHK’s view is that the creation of new levels of and enhanced standards for green building certification can be approached based on previous efforts—best practices and existing codes and standards. It is better to leverage an existing system and brand to pick up “market traction” among building owners. Also, the technical expansion of the standards and adaptation should have at its core auditing and application to actual candidate buildings. In Egypt, TARSHEED has already signaled to the market that it is ideal for most of Egypt’s building projects (outside of the narrow segment of multinational commercial buildings that will likely continue to select LEED) by virtue of its simplicity, affordability, and local specificity. In terms of technical adaptation, however, there will almost certainly be gaps in the applicability of TARSHEED’s standards (created for new construction) to historic and existing structures.
We proposed to address these gaps by borrowing best practice elements from Austria’s Klima:aktiv, a GBC with performance metrics that correlate to a building’s historic significance. Klima:aktiv is highly regarded for the comprehensiveness of its approach and uniqueness of its design, with more than ten years of experience and over 400 buildings certified, spanning new construction to renovation of historic buildings. Within this context, OHK evaluated three existing GCBs, namely, TARSHEED, Klima:aktiv, and LEED, and assess the applicability and rigor of each in the context of five aspects. The radar diagram below maps the findings.
In the above diagram, benchmarking of GBCs addressed five aspects: (1) Habitat and Contextual Factors—to what extent do the standards integrate less quantitative and more qualitative metrics of sustainability through connectivity and relationships to the surrounding building fabric? (2) Materials and Environmental Quality—how prominently do the standards weigh the usage of sustainable building materials (recycled materials, low organic compounds, etc.)? (3) Relevance to Heritage—to what extent do the standards incorporate considerations specific to the refurbishment of historic buildings, and how much provision is made to counterbalance the limitations that heritage preservation places on refurbishment and renovation actions? (4) Affordability and Streamlining—are the standards geared towards streamlined application processes, and are they consciously taking affordability as a goal? (5) Resource Efficiency (Energy and Water)—how rigorously do the standards track energy and water usage? Understanding usage requires a rigorous analysis based on technical modeling methodologies and software to quantify performance against benchmarks. Based on these aspects as comparison criteria, OHK compared TARSHEED, Klima:aktiv, and LEED and drew conclusions. The principal takeaway we inferred was that there is no one best GBC and that it is better to combine several when considering the application to historic buildings in general and in Downtown Cairo especially. Diagram © OHK Consultants.
We draw several key conclusions:
First: TARSHEED and Klima:aktiv (at least in the latter’s entry-level certification level) are comparable, having appreciable overlap across categories and similar efficiency targets—TARSHEED excels insofar as it includes water efficiency and has tailored its targets to actual construction processes in Egypt; however, in the case of Downtown Cairo these targets may not be fully applicable, given the uniquely European standards employed at the time of their construction. For its part, Klima:aktiv’s historic building focus, which was designed on the basis of an Austrian building stock that shares many of the same features as that of Downtown Cairo, may be considered the golden standard against which energy efficiency in Downtown Cairo can be measured.
Second: Habitat and Environmental Quality Metrics Across all GBCs Need to be Rethought for Heritage Buildings—LEED is the most comprehensive in its approach to habitat and materials and environmental quality. In Downtown Cairo, however, these two aspects – though important are not areas in which historic building refurbishments enjoy substantial flexibility or opportunity for change. The same is true for TARSHEED, which has focused on mitigating negative construction considerations, which is of limited relevance to the existing building stock in Downtown Cairo.
Third: TARSHEED is Likely to be Most Sustainable in Egypt—The prohibitive cost of LEED will likely ensure its continued absence from existing buildings or new construction outside of high-end, corporate offices. Klima:aktiv is an Austrian standard used only within Austria and its twin system, the Austrian Green Building Star (AGBS), which uses Klima:aktiv standards for international projects, requires the involvement of an Austrian team in design and/or construction. These limitations make TARSHEED a more affordable, locally relevant, streamlined process, and particularly a highly promising basis for expansion into historic building standards.
Fourth: International GBCs Can be Accretive to TARSHEED as a Foundational Certification—Achieving TARSHEED can facilitate the attainment of an AGBS rating (provided there is the demonstrable involvement of Austrian expertise), while both can, in turn, facilitate LEED certification. This additive value means that owners of buildings can initially take on TARSHEED as the most cost-effective certification, and can then go beyond that for international accreditation through LEED. The AGBS serves as a bridge, linking TARSHEED to LEED, first by adopting the AGBS standards for historic buildings, and secondly by filling gaps in LEED that would make it otherwise both economically and technically unsuited to Downtown Cairo.
Fifth: TARSHEED Is the Only GBC With Latitude for Change—As a relatively new standard that is still in the process of fully maturing, TARSHEED has latitude for modification of its existing standards and/or creation of new certification platforms. Moreover, the EGGBC has expressed an openness to review and build upon its existing standards, potentially creating a standard focused on existing and/or heritage buildings that can improve TARSHEED’s applicability to the historic cores of existing urbanized areas such as Cairo and Alexandria.
In light of this detailed analysis, we set out to adapt the TARSHEED certification and optimize it for historic buildings based on the Klima:aktiv system. In the context of Downtown Cairo, the key is improving the thresholds for energy efficiency while reducing the emphasis on environmental quality and habitat.
In case you missed reading Part 1 of this blog post, see it here.
Come back and visit the OHK website to peruse our blog posts and read Part 3 about how we formulated and applied a new green standard for certifying historic buildings that adapts and improves on world-leading comparable systems.
To learn more about OHK’s work in green buildings, resource efficiency and urban regeneration and planning, please contact us.