Egypt and Viet Nam Green Building

FIAS is actively supporting a shift to a low-carbon and sustainable economy in Egypt and Viet Nam. It has established regulatory and policy frameworks that are driving competitiveness, coordination, and mainstreaming of standards and processes in key strategic industries. In the Egypt Green Building (GB) project the aim is to contribute to an increase in the stock of EDGE-certified green buildings and thus improve resource utilization and reduce carbon footprint. Similarly in Viet Nam, FIAS is supporting to help make the country’s buildings and cities more climate resilient, promoting a safe and healthy environment for residents while mitigating the social and financial impacts of natural hazards.

In the Egypt Green Building project, IFC has developed green building certification system called EDGE, or excellence in design for greater efficiencies, focused on making new residential and commercial buildings more resource efficient. EDGE is comprised of a web-based software application, a universal standard, and a certification system. IFC is working with the Ministry of Housing, Utilities and Urban Development which hosts the Housing and Building Research Center (HBRC) in Egypt, which oversees Egypt’s Green Building Council. In addition to these stakeholders, the project is working with the private sector mainly through the Real Estate Development Chamber as well as relevant associations and financial institutions. The project has accomplished significant milestones since its inception, notably the EDGE certification of more than 97,000 m2 of floor space. In supporting the development of green building stock component, the project team facilitated the delivery of the EDGE expert training to 24 candidates from the HBRC and the Mortgage Finance Fund. As part of the advisory services to the private sector, the project team has been supporting the certification of a new 11,836m2 hospital building in New Cairo. As agreed in the previous reporting period and following its review by the HBRC, the market assessment report was finalized and delivered to the client. During this period, 98,239 m2 of building floor space in Egypt received post-design EDGE preliminary certification and 66,819m2 received post-construction EDGE certification. The project team continues to promote the EDGE certification in the Egyptian market, notably through dedicated meetings with large developers, large corporations, and other stakeholders. Furthermore, the project is improving the awareness of FIs on green buildings and EDGE with the goal of standardizing information that can be used to develop green building finance products.

Likewise, the Viet Nam Green Finance Umbrella, and companion Green Building Project, aims to accelerate the development of the green finance market in Viet Nam by providing support to innovate financing solutions for mitigation, adaptation, and other environmental-friendly activities, to foster an enabling market environment. The project is transforming Green Building from a niche market to mainstream with EDGE setting the most up-to-date GB standards in each market segment. The Viet Nam Green Building program is leveraging the existing EDGE platform in Viet Nam and working directly with building stakeholders to maximize energy and water savings and facilitate green materials by mainstreaming design, construction, retrofitting, and financing of green and zero-carbon buildings. The program is strengthening and expanding on the platform in Viet Nam to certify an additional 2 million m2, using the more aggressive targets in version three of the EDGE application and more zero-carbon ready projects.

IFC is targeting Viet Nam’s top 20 property developers for technical support on GB implementation and to develop and communicate GB business cases to raise awareness and influence investors and developers. The program is demonstrating green retrofit and zero carbon implementation and benefits through actual certified projects. In the first six months of the four-year Viet Nam Green Building GB program, EDGE became the most popular GB certification system with 492,080m2 of total preliminary EDGE certified floor space, contributing 71.8 percent of total GB-certified floor space in this period. Residential projects remained the top contributor with 298,162m2 of floor area receiving preliminary EDGE certificates. A total of 1,578 new green homes with reduced resources consumption were added to the green housing market. Despite a real-estate market downtrend set in motion by global economic shifts and shortage of investment capital, awareness of GB and demand for GB certification saw significant growth. Nearly 700,000m2 of green certified floor space was introduced, a 50 percent jump in the same period.