The City of Cape Town is proud to announce that it has received Energy Performance Certificates (EPCs) for three of its municipal buildings. We can only manage what we measure, so EPCs are a critical first step to reducing our energy use. The City is the first in South Africa to achieve this feat. This is good news for customers as more resource efficient facilities make service delivery more cost effective. In addition, energy use in transport and the built environment are the main contributors to harmful emissions that are causing climate change. It is important that the City leads by example by taking climate action as it will take a team effort to successfully tackle climate change. We need to clean up the activities, fuels, materials and waste products that cause emissions, while making sure we meet our essential human needs and grow the green economy.
The three City buildings that have received energy performance grading are:
- A municipal office block at 44 Wale Street in the Cape Town CBD: Grade C
- The Omni Forum municipal office block in Kuils River with a photovoltaic system: Grade B
- The Bellville Civic Centre on Voortrekker Road, which is a multi-purpose building providing office and community recreational facilities: Grade B
‘Apart from being the first municipality in South Africa to achieve this, these City facilities are also the first non-school government buildings to receive certificates. Energy Performance Certificates indicate the amount of energy used in a building in kilowatt hour per square meter per year (kWh/m2/annum). It is then measured against a nationally regulated benchmark. This allows building owners to not only know how much energy their building uses, but also to compare this performance against other buildings of a similar type.
‘Establishing this energy baseline is the first step to identifying how energy performance can be improved; leading to cost savings and a reduction of harmful carbon emissions associated with a building’s operation. It is therefore a valuable step towards achieving the Net Zero Carbon Municipal Buildings Target by 2030 and the broader city-wide ambition to be Carbon Neutral by 2050.
‘Successful climate action is to the benefit of our communities, our health and personal wellbeing. We encourage all residents, organisations, businesses and stakeholders to join the movement for climate action by taking steps in our operations and daily lives to reduce harmful emissions. Small actions can lead to big results. The City’s climate change response and resilience campaign, Let’s ACT. For a Stronger Cape Town aims to encourage residents, communities, businesses and organisations to take urgent climate action,’ said the City’s Mayoral Committee Member for Energy and Climate Change, Councillor Phindile Maxiti.
National Government gazetted regulations on 8 December 2021 requiring all government buildings over 1 000 m2 within specific occupancy classes to publicly display an EPC within two years. The City has since introduced the EPC Compliance Initiative to ensure the implementation of these regulations, while also using this as an opportunity to bolster our building energy data collection systems through our state-of-the-art SmartFacility® platform.
With over 100 municipal buildings requiring an EPC in the Cape Town metro the EPC Compliance Initiative was designed to enhance collaboration across City departments and to reduce the time and cost associated with compliance. It is also important that the City walks the talk and helps to motivate all building owners to enhance energy efficiency. This two-part process provides an opportunity to test the methodology for EPC completion and to bring this learning in to the larger compliance process, while internal data collection continues.