Central America. Costa Rica promotes the EDGE (Excellence in Design for Greater Efficiencies) certification of sustainable construction, a tool that allows the possibility of constructing sustainable buildings in an efficient way, through the use of available resources, while being able to calculate the carbon footprint of those buildings.
In this way, Costa Rica becomes the first Latin American country to incorporate the EDGE certification system . This label, which promotes green construction and advocates the efficient use of resources in new construction, has become a system of help to real estate developers to design and build new properties, which allow to leave a lighter carbon footprint, while saving money in the construction process.
About 19% of greenhouse gas emissions are produced by buildings. So EDGE is also a proposal by the Government of Costa Rica to reach its carbon neutrality goal by 2021.
The EDGE software tool has a very friendly and intuitive interface, covered with great simplicity for the user. Through this tool it is possible to obtain information on the environmental impact and the cost of improving a building, as well as the savings that could be obtained in the electricity and water bill thanks to the incorporation of improvements. Another of the qualities of this tool is that it allows to make an assessment on carbon emissions, is able to indicate the water consumption of a building and provides information about the consumption of materials from the point of view of embodied energy.
The buildings that hold this certification have savings of around 20% in the consumption of water, energy and materials. According to Ana Quirós, President of the Green Buildings Council of Costa Rica, "EDGE comes to fill a gap in the market and complements other classification systems by offering a simple and affordable certification that is accessible to all and adapted to our local conditions."
The City Express Hotel chain, which already has 3 EDGE certifications, was the first worldwide to obtain the award for Excellence in Design for Greater Efficiencies. The three hotels that have received the certificate have been: City Express Junior Ciudad del Carmen, City Express Irapuato Norte and City Express Junior Puebla FINSA.
These hotels obtained the certification because they demonstrated reductions in energy consumption of 50%, in water of 45% and in materials of 36%, compared to other similar hotels. And in this way, they met the evaluation criteria established by the International Finance Corporation (IFC).
