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Publication Date

June 2018

The building sector is one of the main contributors to climate change with its high energy footprint. However, the potential of this sector in reducing greenhouse gases at low cost to get fair returns offers a win-win scenario for planners and environmentalists. In addition, they do offer substantial advantages to customers like property appreciation, reduction in electricity and water consumption, reduction in waste generation, use of green and less energy-intensive materials in construction and preservation of greenery. Despite the environmental and economic advantages offered by the green buildings, the shift has been difficult due to multi-faceted barriers. The objective of this paper is to quantitatively identify, rank and prioritize the barriers to the adoption of green building using the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP). The study identifies 20 specific barriers which are classified in four categories- (1) Policy and Market Barriers; (PMB) (2) Financial and Economic Barriers (FEB); (3) Information, Promotion and Education Barriers (IPE) and (4) Managerial and Organizational Barriers (MOB). Seven groups of stakeholders - builders, potential occupants, architects, engineers, project managers, contractors, and government representatives took part in the ranking and prioritization of barriers. Calculation of local and global weight reveals that IPE barriers are ranked high and PMB comes second whereas FEB and MOB lag much behind with lower global weights. Among the top seven specific barriers, lack of expertise in life-cycle cost, lack of information on benefits on green buildings, lack of labeling and lack of infrastructure and training are the barriers which belong to IPE barrier category. Weak enforcement of building codes, the absence of incentives and high capital costs also find space among top seven specific barriers with high weights.

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