The need for retrofitting to achieve sustainability of Malaysian buildings

Abstract

Malaysia is a country that is progressively developing that uses energy as the main input for its continuous development. The increasing demand and consumption of energy subsequently led to increase concentration of greenhouse gas emission and resource depletion. To cope with the challenges in mitigating adverse effects and sustaining energy, Malaysia has made efforts in emphasizing on the green building initiatives in the building sector. This has been demonstrated through promulgation of policies (i.e. NTGP, NPCC), impetus in developing ‘greenness’ (i.e. GTFS, GBI) and government-owned green buildings manifests. Considerable attention on green building initiatives can be seen through the increasing number of new green buildings that are presented in the GBI executive summary. However, the existing building stocks remain with less attention. Furthermore, there is a lack of consideration in retrofitting these existing buildings as a mean to contribute to sustainability. Therefore, this paper presents and reviews the measures that have been taken towards Malaysia’s building sector and the emphasis of retrofitting existing buildings to contribute in the sustainability movement.