Influence of carbon tax on office buildings in South Africa

Abstract

Greenhouse gasses (GHGs) contribute to global warming and climate change. Countries are combatting climate change and its negative impacts by significantly reducing their GHGs and are moving toward zero-carbon environments. Countries must adopt greener building technologies, design and construct net zero-carbon buildings and implement carbon taxes to combat the effects of climate change.

The most efficient way to eliminate or reduce GHG emissions is to implement a carbon tax. The Carbon Tax Act (Act No. 15/2019) of South Africa (SA) was only introduced in 2019 and with this recent introduction, there is limited information available regarding its impact on office buildings in the country. The influence of the carbon tax on developers who own both new and existing office buildings in SA is currently unknown.

The mixed-method approach with prescriptive analysis was used as a research method and data was obtained from structured interviews and a comprehensive literature review to design a SA carbon efficient office building model promoting carbon emission savings.

Data was collected where the interview responses and previous Project studies of EDGE were entered into recruitment logs to successfully track the data and the use of the EDGE application. All commercial property developers were approached to be part of the study as they play an integral role in the development of existing and new commercial buildings in SA.

With only a few available guidelines or no proper model specific to SA’s climate conditions that could be followed by developers to develop or refurbish commercial buildings to be carbon neutral or net zero. However, there was not a proper model specific to SA’s climate conditions that could be used by developers to assist them in developing more sustainable buildings. The study findings indicate that the office building model designed for SA optimises energy efficiency, contribute to long-term cost savings for developers and reduces the impact of the carbon tax payable on office buildings that they can use.

Recommendations include for the further exploration of study are to assess SA’s ability to meet the 2030 and 2050 net zero targets, the cost to become net-zero compliant and identify potential gaps in administering carbon tax and carbon credits.