HJI was contracted by the World Bank (WB), headquartered at Washington DC to conduct energy audit on existing commercial and residential buildings, participate in the Eco City master plan; develop green building evaluation standard implementation manual; formulate incentive schemes for green buildings; prepare implementation plan for monitoring and verification of green buildings; and completing case study on international green building standards, including Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED).

The project is designed to enable the reduction of energy use in each building, and thereby greenhouse gas emissions, through implementation of green building design standards, knowledge transfer, and incentive techniques. Based on national and international regulations and energy audits, the green building evaluation standard implementation manual has been prepared to ensure that the compliance of green building targets and standards in the newly constructed eco-city. The standards are approved and applied to each phase of the project cycle involving zoning approval and site selection; planning; design; construction; and operation.

The incentives schemes are studied to increase the numbers of high-quality green buildings constructed through the implementation of a number of programs, i.e., lower interest loan; tax incentive; carbon credit; etc. The implementation plan for monitoring and verification of green buildings has been developed to monitor and verify the effectiveness of the energy savings.

The comparative study on energy savings of green buildings in various countries and the case-based research on green building evaluation standards including LEED were conducted. The study identified gaps between LEED and project-specific green building standards.