Investigation into the adoption of green building concepts in commercial buildings: A case of Nairobi County

Abstract

The building industry is one of the major energy consumers and emitters of Green House Gasses (GHG). It consumes 38% of the global energy; and this does not include the usage of other resources such as water. Globally, this has increased the crisis of global warming and has led to development of Green buildings. In the Sub Saharan Africa alone, 56% of energy used is by building operations. Green buildings are marketed as economical, resource efficient and environmentally friendly compared to the convectional buildings. This study investigated the extent of adoption of green building concepts in commercial buildings and the key challenges arising from their adoption with the aim of determining appropriate strategies for implementing them. The study was conducted through a survey method and used questionnaires, interviews, observations for data collection. It also reviewed documented data from available records including journals and books. The study revealed that 93% of the building construction players and professionals involved in the recently sampled constructed commercial buildings in Nairobi were aware of the green building concepts but only 7% of the concepts had been incorporated in the buildings. Using mean item rating scale, it established that lack of enforcement of sustainable building policies (1.81) and incentives (2.43) from the government were the greatest hindrances facing practitioners in the adoption of the concepts. Some of the strategies recommended to promote uptake of the concepts include strict enforceable urban land and planning policies (1.46) and improved enforcement of the sustainability concepts by county governments (2.00). The study concludes that there is need to develop guild lines and policies for enforcement of sustainable building concepts as well as introduction of incentives from both local and national governments.