Current News

CEF To Make LOC Building Green

Thursday, 04 February 2010 11:01

SAFA House, the new headquarters of soccer in South Africa, is situated next to Soccer City in Nasrec, south of Johannesburg, and is the headquarters of the LOC (Local Organising Committee) for the Fifa 2010 Soccer World Cup to be hosted here in South Africa in mid-2010. Needless to say, the facility will be a hub of activity and a very visible example of modern South African building design.

Unfortunately SAFA house, upon its completion, turned out to be a hugely energy inefficient and generally unhealthy building, with inadequate but high consumption lighting, necessitating the installation of extra desk lamps (doubling the energy consumption), outdated lamps, ineffective energy controls and much more. (The entire building had only one main light switch, resulting in all lighting being left on 24 hours-per-day, seven days-a-week.)

CEF, through its involvement in the national Carbon Offset Working Group of the LOC, became aware of this problem and promptly offered to assist in making SAFA House more energy efficient. As South Africa is committed to reducing the World Cup carbon footprint in 2010, it was imperative that SAFA House be a shining example of efficiency, as most local and international media and World Cup dignitaries were likely to spend some amount of time there. (In many of the participating countries, such as those from the Nordic regions, ‘green energy’ is already legislated in many forms, and many of these countries are investors in clean energy projects in South Africa.)

CEF, through its National Energy Efficiency Agency division, then arranged an energy audit of the facility and organised funding for implementation of the project, which was kindly granted by the French Development Agency. Contracts were concluded with SAFA on 10 December 2009 and contractors were duly appointed and the greening of the building was begun, at no cost to SAFA or the LOC.

All existing 50W halogen lamps were replaced with 11W energy-saving Compact Fluorescent Lamps (CFLs), and a system of motion sensors installed, which will automatically switch off lighting in areas where no motion is detected for a set period of time. In addition, 2 x Solar Water Heaters (SWHs), have replaced all traditional electric geysers. Energy consumption targets have been set, and a real-time energy monitoring system displays updates throughout the day, showing exact figures of energy consumption, so that anything over target can be quickly identified and the necessary actions taken, to rectify the situation. Furthermore, and with some minor changes to the central glass dome, more natural light is utilised, further reducing the need for energy-wasting artificial light.

All these measures, completed in the first quarter of 2010, have turned SAFA House from a potential ‘energy’ eye-sore, into a flagship building, showcasing South African initiative and commitment to a cleaner, healthier and more energy efficient environment.