Beginning with two "green" office buildings to be completed in 2007 and 2008, property developer Ayala Land has made it a standard to incorporate energy-saving and environmentally-sound technology and procedures into its office projects.

According to Teddy San Juan, head of construction management for the Corporate Business Group of Ayala Land, the company has adopted many of its green building features from the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) rating program, a set of reliable standards and evaluation criteria adopted by 6,000 real estate experts, government and other non-profit organizations.

This LEED rating program is the benchmark for sustainable buildings in the US, San Juan said. Other countries like Australia and India have similar rating programs.

The first green building to be completed by Ayala Land will be at the UP North Science and Technology Park in Quezon City; the second will be at Ayala Land’s proposed 1,600 hectare growth center in Canlubang, Laguna named Nuvali.

When haphazardly planned, buildings are among the largest consumers of energy and water, said San Juan. Picking up from LEED studies, Ayala Land’s first Technopod, as its BPO office buildings are called, in Nuvali will generate significant savings in electric consumption primarily by avoiding a southern or western orientation. Buildings with such orientations generally become heat traps.

The Technopod at Nuvali includes a series of ramps on the western portion of the building which catches the scorching afternoon sun.

Vic Ahorro, deputy head of construction for CBG, relates that the design of architectural planners LV Locsin & Partners insulates most of the work stations from afternoon heat thus, significantly impacting energy consumption earmarked for air-conditioning.

Still another effort to cut back on electricity consumption will be the integration of picture windows in both the Nuvali and the UP North Science & Technology Park Technopod projects. Wide windows allow natural light to filter into work spaces cutting down the energy used to light the space as well as provide employees with views of the landscaped surroundings.

An air-conditioning system that will use a district cooling approach in both developments mean bigger energy savings.

In both campuses, which will be made up of a series of low-rise buildings, there will only be one centralized facility each for producing cool air rather than the standard way of allocating one airconditioning system per building. The centralized facility will produce ice at off peak hours when electricity is cheaper and use this ice to cool the system during the day.

Ahorro also points out that toilet flushing is the single biggest use in any office complex. For this purpose, recycled water – rather than water of drinking quality—will be used in the UP North Science & Technology Park and the Nuvali Technopods.

In the UP office campus in particular, water will be recycled in a nearby sewage treatment plant operated by Manila Water. The reused water will then be piped back to the building and earmarked for the toilets and for watering plants.

With these recycling systems in place, water consumption in both the UP S&T Park and the Nuvali campus is expected to plunge by as much as 50 percent in comparison to that in buildings of similar sizes.

As part of its efforts to develop more "green buildings," an office tower that will be constructed by Ayala Land and other partners at Bonifacio Global City to house the Philippine Stock Exchange will go one step further. The building to be completed by 2010 will be designed so that every work station will be no further than 12 meters from a window and natural light.