Ammon News - AMMAN - The Royal Culture Centre (RCC) will become one of the Kingdom’s few green buildings with the installation of environment-friendly water and energy systems, officials said on Tuesday.

Central cooling systems at the centre, which currently operate using water, will be replaced by air-run cooling systems, Minister of Environment Hazem Malhas said yesterday.

He made the remarks during a signing agreement between the RCC and the Ministry of Environment, under which the ministry will provide the centre with a $45,000 grant to finance the green building switch.

“Switching to such modern systems also offers economic and environmental benefits and helps reduce energy and water consumption by 40 per cent,” the minister underscored.

The agreement seeks to encourage the public and private sectors to switch from cooling systems that operate on chlorofluorocarbon (CFC) gases to new systems that operate on environment-friendly gases, such as R134a, environment officials said yesterday.

Environmentalists have called for strengthening laws governing the import, export and use of ozone-depleting chemicals, including CFCs, especially since 75 per cent of refrigerants are being released into the atmosphere causing depletion of the ozone layer.

CFCs damage the ozone layer by reducing its ability to absorb ultraviolet rays and allowing them to penetrate into the atmosphere, thus threatening life on Earth, according to environment experts.

The project is funded by the Multilateral Fund for the Implementation of the Montreal Protocol, which has granted Jordan $1 million to assist private and pubic institutions in switching to environment-friendly cooling systems.

Ghazi Odat, director of the ministry’s ozone project, told The Jordan Times yesterday that the total cost for replacing the centre’s cooling systems is JD150,000, 30 per cent of which is provided by the multilateral fund.

Estimates that a 1 per cent decrease in the ozone layer’s thickness would lead to a 1.3 per cent increase in the volume of ultraviolet rays reaching the Earth, according to the ministry.




(By Hana Namrouqa/ Jordan Times)