Shopping Centers Today is the news magazine of the International Council of Shopping Centers (ICSC)
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green approaches are becoming increas- ingly common among the developers of the Middle East. "In 2014 we launched our new sus- tainability strategy that covers all our op- erations and asset types, which are malls, hotels and communities," said Ibrahim Al Zubi, head of sustainability at Majid Al Futtaim Properties, whose Mall of the Emirates, in Dubai, has LEED Gold cer- tification from the U.S. Green Building Council. The firm's City Centre Mirdif, completed in 2010 in Dubai, and its Fu- jairah (United Arab Emirates) City Cen- tre, completed in 2012, both have LEED Gold status too. "LEED Gold requires our malls to be designed to high levels of energy and water efficiency," Al Zubi said. "We now aim to achieve LEED Gold cer- tification on all our developments." Developers in the Middle East and North Africa region have used both LEED certification and its U.K. equiva- lent, the BREEAM standard, as a foun- dation for assessing their projects. But they have not stopped there: Abu Dhabi has developed the PEARL standard, and Qatar devised QSAS. New government buildings in the Emirates must have at least two-star rankings, according to John Grant, author of Made With: The Emerging Alternative to Western Brands From Istanbul to Indonesia. "Most in the West would probably regard the Middle East as lagging behind on sustainability," said Grant. "The stereotyped view is one of flashy overconsumption to match a glut of wealth from oil production," he said. "The story I heard on the ground was rather different." Until recently, oil-and-gas-rich coun- tries in the region relied on their own reserves to meet energy needs with little concern about having enough left over to export in the future. But that attitude has been changing for several reasons. In this part of the world, where rainfall is prac- tically an anomaly, potable water is pro- duced primarily from energy-guzzling de- salination plants. This constant demand for energy, coupled with the demand for electricity to keep air conditioners running, let alone to make a 1 million- square-foot mall reasonably comfortable on a blazingly hot summer afternoon, is an increasing drain on a finite resource — a drain that could eventually hurt a country's GDP. By 2030 Saudi Arabia may need half its oil production just for its own growing population, according to news reports. The need to conserve is thus a higher priority than ever. "Whether you're speaking to the gov- ernment in Abu Dhabi or Saudi Arabia, they realize that they can't keep using all this power for water and electricity, because it's completely unsustainable," said Matt Kitson, regional director in Qatar for U.K.-based design-engineering consultant firm Hilson Moran. The en- ergy cost does add up, concurs Al Zubi. "Sixty to 70 percent of our electricity consumption feeds the cooling systems in our assets," Al Zubi said. "That on its own is a significant sum of money, so it is in fact an incentive for us to become more energy-efficient." Majid Al Futtaim Properties has developed its own Green Star rating system for "assessing the sustainability of our tenants' stores," Al Zubi said, because it helps "them to incorporate energy-efficiency features and water-sav- ing features." Among these are low-flow taps and water-consumption monitors. "We also use treated waste water, where it is available, for irrigation of landscap- ing," Al Zubi said. "Future malls will in- corporate the use of indigenous desert species to reduce water use." Kitson has been working in the Middle East for about a decade and speaks on environmentally responsible design and sustainable solutions at na- tional and international summits across the region. Sustainability means more than just putting panels on a mall roof or over a carport. "The project's got to be economically viable, have a social 64 S C T / O c t O b e r 2 0 1 4 c o v e r e d s t r e e t s a t t h e a v e n u e s i n e e p c u s t o m e r s c o o l . F u j a i r a h c i t y c e n t e r i s a g o l d l e e d p r o j e c t . P h o t o a b o v e : R a m e s h v i s w a n a t h