wild places | wild happenings | wild news
make a difference for our wild places

home | links | search the site
  all articles latest | past | articles by topics | search wildnews
wild news on wildsingapore
  Straits Times 30 Jun 07
SingPost HQ goes eco-friendly
By Jessica Cheam

ANOTHER building here has gone green - postal giant SingPost this time.

The company will save a cool $1.2 million a year, after carrying out an energy audit and retrofit at its Paya Lebar headquarters. The $2 million project started in November last year. SingPost's retrofitted building will also save an estimated 2,694 tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions.

The chief of the National Environment Agency's (NEA) environmental technology unit, Mr A. Ram Bhaskar, lauded the project at an energy efficiency seminar yesterday at the Grand Hyatt.

Energy services company Trane Singapore, which organised the seminar, had been appointed to retrofit SingPost's air-conditioning plant by property manager CPG Facilities Management.

Air-conditioners are known to be the biggest energy guzzlers in buildings. General manager of Trane's energy division, Mr Lee Eng Lock, said the new plant achieved an efficiency of 0.6 kilowatts per tonne - the amount of energy required to produce one tonne of cooling - which set a benchmark for future projects. This is more efficient than the NEA's benchmark of 0.75 for its Energy Smart Building scheme for office buildings.

'To achieve 0.6 is challenging but achievable, as demonstrated,' said Mr Bhaskar.

CPG's managing director Jeffrey Chua said the project made business sense as the $2 million cost is recoverable in less than two years. Before the retrofit, SingPost's energy bill was $2.2 million a year.

The number of companies conducting energy audits for their buildings is on the rise, noted Mr Bhaskar.

Under the NEA's $10 million Energy Efficiency Improvement Assistance Scheme (EASe), 63 companies have been funded to the tune of $1.4 million to date.
links
Related articles on Singapore: green buildings
about the site | email ria
  News articles are reproduced for non-profit educational purposes.
 

website©ria tan 2003 www.wildsingapore.com