Green days

Certificates, energy audits, national and European directives, pressure from environmentalists – they all go towards making warehouses greenerMladen PetrovWhich sector deserves to be called the biggest environmental polluter? The energy sector, the automotive sector, or could it even be... the real estate sector? Buildings consume 40 pct of the world’s electrical energy, and they can account for up to 70 pct of carbon dioxide emissions. Quite a lot, don’t you think? But luckily this is not lost on the construction sector. Green is in, and it is more and more in vogue in residential buildings, office premises, and now, increasingly, also in the design of warehouses. BREEAM is comingHow a ‘green’ building is defined depends on the country. In Germany the term applies only to energy-saving buildings, whereas in Anglo-Saxon countries the term is understood more broadly, reaching outside the framework of strictly technological specifications and emphasizing iss