Beneath the sea of well wishers and good humour at the NABERS + CBD conference in Sydney on Friday, where the rating system celebrated its 25th anniversary, you sensed the quiet confidence of an industry that had come of age.
The air of maturity was unassailable. People had a job to do and they knew what it was. Much had already been achieved. Huge plans were fomenting for deeper transformational change that would fan out from the top of the commercial property sector into most other commercial property sectors – and those in the public sphere.
The Commercial Buildings Disclosure system, or CBD, that mandates offices of 1000 square metres or more to disclose their energy rating and was now admired in many other parts of the world, was finally expanding.
New CBD sectors
Within its encompassing arms would soon come – via a process of consultation, engagement and potential rollout schedule – a vast array of sectors: hotels, shopping centres, data centres, public hospitals, residential aged care, retirement living, warehouses, cold stores, schools, retail stores, high education buildings, supermarkets, private hospitals, medical centres and public buildings like sports facilities and galleries.
And that’s just what’s in store in the policy area.
Pressure and change were now embedded throughout the economy. Sure there was still a massive amount of work to do – but think of it like an avalanche at the very top of the mountain.
From the finance and insurance community demands were growing for physical and financial/investment climate resilience.
The nasty planet trashing trends underway threaten the business model of these industries and they’re highly focused on how to keep their investments viable.’
It’s action, data and metrics that matter now more than ever. Policy frameworks around disclosure are there to help.
Also driving the acceleration is the pressure upwards – from grass roots activists and the huge range of stakeholders all the way to the bosses running our super funds. And beyond that our politicians.
From several speakers came the reminder of the brutal wakeup calls the world has faced in recent times of fires and floods at home and deathly searing heat in other parts of our globe. These were the visceral issues that underpinned this sea of collaborative determination.
Embodied carbon ratings
If anything at all disturbed its surface it was delightful eddies from little submarines of disruption you could pick from small group chats between sessions, looking to subvert the public strategies on ways that could accelerate the net zero transition even faster.
On embodied carbon ratings tool underway through NABERS one scenario imagined how landlords might feel if they owned a gorgeous new tower rated six stars for energy and green buildings but whose embodied carbon came with just a one or two star ticks. While down the road the ugly duckling that had been repurposed and upgraded scored all round sixes.
Why not housing?
Another question came from a leading architect who wanted to know why so many sectors were included in the expanding CBD scheme but not housing. (Maybe it’s time to take down the lobby groups who make even miniscule improvements in sustainability in the housing industry so difficult – our personal contribution to the tiny submarines fleet but we suspect there’s a lot of others willing to join if we could start the official program. Anyone?)
Immature data sets
Next was a concern that the data set for the new swathe of sectors coming into the purview of CBD would not be mature or big enough to be accurate or fair – as the commercial sector was, given it had a deep level of penetration of NABERS ratings before CBD got cracking. Our go-to expert on these issues said, so what? “If the NABERS ratings are shown to be unfair or poorly based they can fix it. That’s what actually happened with NABERS Office Energy in Victoria a few years after the scheme’s launch.”
What about some minimum standards?
From the stage too some came more disruption.
Frankie Muskovic national policy manager at the Property Council of Australia for instance flagged minimum energy performance standards, or MEPs for buildings, as Europe has.
Why not? And how strange we don’t already have it.
Scale and complexity are the challenges
Davina Rooney chief executive of the Green Building Council of Australia said, “the thing that we need now is scale, how do we get scale, putting in minimum standards through regulation, putting it through investment policies”.
There were taxonomies out for consultation on frameworks for finance deals but it’s complex, she added. A lot of the work was “joining the dots”.
Buildings can do so much heavy lifting
NABERS director Carlos Flores said it was clear NABERS was regarded globally as “one of the most successful programs” in any country. But whatever the climate targets for 2030 were. it was clear the built environment sector had massive potential to scale up achievements. A lot of buildings could relatively easy achieve 30 or 40 or even 50 per cent energy savings, he said.
“We’re creating an ecosystem where lots of owners want to do that and benefit from better ratings and better targets.”
Part of it was the building up the skills that could deliver results and that too was ready to scale up.
The commercial sector was incredibly fortunate, to have aligned policy, he said and it was a contrast to the complicated policies of the residential sector.
We needed to tackle the residential space as well, learning from the big successes of the commercial area.
“We should protect that and really seek to elevate and strengthen it and work diligently to fixing and putting in place the foundations we need on the resi side of things.”
Some of the work might have flown under the radar in recent years but that would not be the case moving forward, he said. Industry and governments had worked collaboratively under the banner of NABERS and it was important that everyone would “lean in on this”. So that the next 10 years would not be like the past 10 years.
The silence in the room
What there was no sign of at this engaging and optimistic conference was the nuclear energy bomb that Opposition Leader Peter Dutton had just dropped on the nation and which, according to an unending number of experts, is designed specifically to keep burning coal and gas as long as possible.
Neither was there a hint that anyone at this event thought the promised silver (or yellow) bullet could suddenly do all their work for them and they could pack up and go home for a well earned rest – job done.
In the distance some might have picked up the approaching thud of the political wrecking ball again using this industry to blitzkrieg its way to Parliament House Canberra, with its message of: stop everything; do nothing; here’s the nanny state to the rescue with no less than half a trillion dollars of public money to build a nationalised nuclear energy system that would make the energy efficiency transition redundant.
They might have mused how strange it was that certain parts of the political spectrum view the market as sacrosanct but only when it’s to their benefit. When it suits, it’s socialism all the way.
But for this industry, despite all this, it’s clear there’s no challenge that can match the decade of inaction that it’s just survived.
Thing is it’s too late; the machinery of the sustainability and net zero transitions has been cranked up – and there’s no stopping it now.
It’s yeah, nah… seen that: let’s get back to work.