Dubai's first reserved parking space for green vehicles

Nearly 84 parking spaces in the Dubai Airport Freezone Authority’s (Dafza) latest parking building is for ‘green’ vehicles, Emirates 24|7 can reveal.

Dafza's upcoming projects displayed at the Big 5 event. (Parag Deulgaonkar)

“We have built a multi-storey car parking building that can accommodate 835 cars. Of these spaces, we have devoted 84 space for green vehicles, mostly electric cars,” Adel Ghafan Saeed, Senior Executive Director, Engineering and Information Communication Technology Division, Dafza, told this website during an interview at the Big 5 event.

“There is a growing demand for space in Dafza. We are going for an expansion, but before we commence construction, we already completed the car parking building,” he revealed.

Dubai has been among the very few cities in the Middle East to have introduced green building codes.

“Besides,” Saeed disclosed, “Dafza has also completed modernisation of its central cooling plant and has doubled the capacity by 40 per cent to meet its expansion plans.”

Moreover, the adoption of energy efficient technologies is leading to savings of 15 to 20 per cent in energy bills.

“We have invested a lot in the modernisation of the cooling plant. In the last two months, we have noticed that our bills have come down by 15 to 20 per cent.”

Saeed added that Dafza has also invested in retrofitting its existing headquarters with new green technologies and has even applied for a Leed rating, as per the government regulation, ensuring government buildings to be sustainable.

Dafza reported a 31 per cent increase in net profit and a 30 per cent jump in sales revenues for the first half of 2014 compared to the same period last year.

During the period, the free zone witnessed a 67 per cent increase in new customers and 17 per cent growth among existing customers.

The overall occupancy rate of offices rose by 23 per cent with the number of new company registrations going up by 14 per cent.

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