Vice minister of construction Phan Thị Mỹ Linh delivers speech at the event in Hà Nội yesterday. — Photo baoxaydung.com.vn

HÀ NỘI — A database of energy efficiency in 280 large buildings in Việt Nam’s five biggest cities has been compiled and analysed under a four-year programme by the Ministry of Construction and the United States Agency for International Development.

The first ever National Building Energy Performance Database includes the cities of Hà Nội, HCM City, Đà Nẵng, Hải Phòng and Cần Thơ. The US-funded project, presented yesterday in Hà Nội, aimed to identify energy usage and greenhouse gas emissions of buildings in Việt Nam with a view to reducing emissions in the future, said Vũ Thị Kim Thoa of the USAID Việt Nam Clean Energy Programme.

Thoa said five demonstration projects stimulating buildings’ energy usage in Hà Nội and HCM were also completed, and the buidings were upgraded. The projects consulted the buildings’ designers on using materials and new technologies to save from 22 per cent to 44.5 per cent of energy for the five buildings each year, equalling annual savings of US$170,563, she said. Emissions of over 1,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide would be reduced each year in the five buildings, she said.

The buildings included the Hà Nội Energy Manager Training Centre, the State Securities Commission of Việt Nam, Việt Nam National Construction Consultants Corporation, the Trúc Bạch Building Complex and HCM City’s Capital Place.

Additionally, 2,955 Vietnamese professionals and building owners, 26 per cent of them women, participated in training courses of design, construction and operating green buildings for energy efficiency, she said.

The programme also promoted the use of energy-efficient building materials in the construction sector in order to reduce energy consumption throughout the buildings’ life cycle, she said.

Lương Đức Long, president of the Việt Nam Institute for Building Materials, said the programme would serve as a foundation to compile a plan for reducing carbon dioxide emissions in manufacturing building materials that had large emission levels. For example, the plan scheduled a reduction of 4.37 million tonnes of carbon dioxide emission in producing cement and sanitary ware by 2020, he said.

Assessments

Đỗ Bình Yên, former deputy director of the Institute of Engery Science, said the data samples collected this time had been considerably larger and more reliable than before. They included architectural and construction elements that were not collected before, he said. Data on ventilation, lighting and air-conditioning were added to energy-consumption measurements, he added. "We can say we now have a valuable database to drive energy planning policies forward," he said.

Nguyễn Thị Như Trang, a lecturer at Hà Nội Architectural University who participated in a training course under the programme, said she learned many new things, including energy stimulation allowing her to create a computer model of a building and calculate its energy efficiency. "This was the first time I’d used such software and it was very interesting," she said.

She said she had imparted the knowledge to her students so that they could compare the energy consumption of green buildings and normal buildings.

Nguyễn Công Thịnh, deputy director of the Science, Technology and Environment Department under the Ministry of Construction, said the programme would allow the ministry to assess the current situation of the construction sector and issue a green growth action plan for the construction sector by 2020, with a vision to 2030. — VNS