Facilities Management Sector Leading the Change for Greening Hong Kong’s Building Stock

Ir Dr Cary Chan, JP

Executive Director, Hong Kong Green Building Council

Abstract

Existing buildings are responsible for a significant proportion of the environmental and social impacts in Hong Kong.

While a number developers have been making efforts to enhance the built environment of their portfolio, the large bulb of existing buildings are still doing the minimal. Statistics indicated that only 1 % of the building stocks globally have carried out green retro-fitting.

As a lot of the existing stocks are being managed by FM companies, the FM sector should be playing an influential role by working with their clients to migrate the environmental and social impacts of their portfolio.

There are now many drivers driving building owners such as investment funds and REITs to improve and report the ESG performance of their portfolio. Some building owners are now actively working with their FM from formulating strategies to implementing improvement works and reporting.

The FM sector should build up their own capacity as well as the buildings. These can include 1 Qualifying staff for building energy efficiency, health & Wellness, green building labelling, climate risk assessment, information management and for the future smart building operations. 2 form strategic partners with various technology providers to create synergies and 3 retro-fit the buildings and use of green finance.

Biography

Ir Dr Cary Chan, JP is a professional engineer and is currently the Executive Director of Hong Kong Green Building Council with the vision of driving the green building agenda for Hong Kong.

Cary is regarded as an expert on building energy efficiency by the industry. Cary has carried out a lot of researches relating to the enhancement of building energy efficiency. Up to now, a number of his work have won international awards.

Over the years, Cary was active members of over 10 advisory councils and committees of the Government of HKSAR and he was appointed Justice of the Peace (JP) by the government in 2017 with his immense contribution to Hong Kong community. Cary was awarded Honorary Doctorate by University College of Estate Management (UK) in December 2019 due to his outstanding contributions to the industry on sustainability.

Cary has been playing a leadership role in sustainable buildings within Hong Kong and abroad. He played a key role in establishing Hong Kong’s Green building assessment tool back in 1995. In 2019, he has put “Advancing Net Zero carbon emission” as one of HKGBC’s main focuses. His strategy is well recognised and welcome by the local industry and the World Green Building Council. He’s been nominated as WGBC APN Chair on 1 July 2021.