DUBAI: Saudi Arabia’s national real estate developer ROSHN is targeting a 50 percent reduction in its homes’ energy bills, according to a company head.
The firm’s Director of Sustainability Waleed Al-Ghamdi spoke with Arab News on the sidelines of the 2023 UN Climate Change Conference, noting that the company is averaging 18 percent less energy consumption compared to the required building code in the Kingdom.
As a subsidiary of the Public Investment Fund, the entity has been mandated to develop sustainable urban communities with about 400,000 homes as part of the Vision 2030 plan laid by Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman.
Al-Ghamdi said: “Our typical buildings or typical homes that we design, our customers save on average about 18 percent energy compared to the Saudi building code.
“So, we are above and beyond what the legal requirements are. The same applies to water. The same applies to our accessibility to public spaces and proximity to daily services.”
To attain a 50 percent decrease goal, the company is facilitating purchasing agreements for new technologies and partnerships while ensuring that the purchasing price for the customer remains unaffected.
The company’s presence at COP28, as part of the region’s delegation, serves as a means to “keep abreast of what is happening on the global scene,” said the director.
“We build communities within existing cities. So our integration is important in addition to scouting and understanding what’s happening with friends and peers and vendors and suppliers, and also being abreast of what the trends are moving forward, specifically when it comes to decarbonization and also financing of those,” Al-Ghamdi added.
The company is mandated to build infrastructure and public amenities alongside the homes within its developments. This leads to a large supply chain that depends significantly on multiple vendors, and enforcing sustainability standards down the supply chain proves to be a challenge, he explained.
“Sustainability in the supply chain is not something easy for any company globally to manage. But one of the ways that we try to manage that is through signing certain partnerships with the suppliers and vendors within the region and helping them improve,” said Al-Ghamdi.