Papua New Guinea conglomerate, Steamships Trading Company, has undertaken a major retrofit of its corporate headquarters in Port Moresby to significantly lower the building’s carbon footprint. The property is the first commercial building in the South Pacific to be accredited under the Excellence in Design for Greater Efficiencies (“EDGE”) green building certification scheme created by the International Finance Corporation (“IFC”), a member of the World Bank Group.
The three-storey building, known as @345 (previously Burns Haus), is home to Steamships, as well as its hospitality and property subsidiaries, Coral Sea Hotels and Pacific Palms Property, and the work was carried out by Pacific Palms, in collaboration with IFC. High-performance glass, insulated roofing, and more efficient cooling and lighting systems are expected to deliver energy savings of 39%, while water management systems will reduce consumption by as much as 35%. Combined with embodied energy savings of 69% from the passive materials used in the renovation, the newly "greened” building will prevent 60.4 tons of CO₂ a year being released into the atmosphere. Pacific Palms Property is now working with the national utility, PNG Power, to further reduce the environmental footprint with a pilot solar energy scheme; the building has also been certified by Green Business Certification Inc.
