It’s been another big week at The Fifth Estate.
Most importantly, we’re thrilled to share with you the first copy of our new digital quarterly magazine, TFE Review. Its big focus is on how our buildings can work as batteries to deliver the net zero transition – the theme of our masterclass in late August.
Speakers and audience alike were as highly engaged as we’ve seen. Which stands to reason, given the challenge, the urgency and the enormous rewards embedded in the opportunities.
The notion that our buildings can be part of the net zero transition through their role as an effective batteries is an elegant proposition. They can store abundant free clean solar energy during the day and use it in shadier times.
The problem is delivering on the promise.
As it’s nearly always the case in the huge challenges before us in the built environment – we have the technology; we have the know-how; and we even have the finance if we scratch a little. The hard part is politics, or the human engagement.
We’re asking experts and senior executives to change the way they do things, to take a risk, to think of taking more holistic views of their business and making a new and different business case.
Craig Roussac of Buildings Alive set this story in motion with his acclaimed work on Buildings as Batteries. His article to explain the process is one of his classics and we urge you to read it closely.
Craig’s big focus is the colossal energy consumed by big buildings in our CBDs. But there’s more than commercial buildings that can play part in that challenge.
While most of us have been getting on with our busy schedules the trend to online shopping has been changing the property game. Vast buildings with enormous roof spaces have sprung up around the country on city fringes to manage the delivery of parcels from manufacturers to our front doors. The new Amazon building in Melbourne will be the size of 11 MGC football fields.
These warehouses or big sheds as they’ve been affectionately called by the people who work among them, are no longer just shelves and stacking equipment, with a few managers keeping things ticking along. They now often have sophisticated energy hungry computer technology driving operations, along with high skilled people sometimes running regional headquarters form the offices embedded in the facilities.
All of this means much bigger power needs than ever.
Many advocates of a fast net zero transition eye off the potential of these vast roofs to collect solar energy. And the Building Code of Australia now requires that new warehouse roofs are strong enough to take the panels. Previous iterations were flimsy, designed pretty much to just keep the rain off. But that solar energy’s not for sharing we heard in our briefings – logistics companies want that energy for their own needs, and redundancy in case the grid goes down.
Even more interesting is how to use the solar to collect energy in batteries, which can then be sold as a service to tenants. Companies like Dexus are deep into resolving exactly how attractive that value proposition is.
So batteries are definitely the flavour of the decade.
And these can also come via the building itself, electric cars that are charged in a building or trucks that charge at a warehouse.
The world is changing
We asked the audience if they thought that if we deployed enough EVs we could manage the needs of the cities with EVs. The answer was a resounding, “yes”.
Ex the new energy beasts in our midst, data centres, that is.
But that’s another story.
Enjoy first issue of TFE Review!