Extreme Green Buildings Ebook launch taps a passionate vein for the net zero transition

The launch of the Extreme Green Buildings ebook on Tuesday night could not have been in a more apt location and among a more convivial and energised cohort of industry professionals.

Built, a lead sponsor of the book along with 3E Group, offered its adaptively repurposed head office, crafted from a former sub-station in Clarence Street, as first-hand evidence of the charm and interest that older buildings, whose heritage features are sensitively spliced with modern facilities and standards, could reset our sensibilities and expectations about what a modern office space can be.

Both on and off stage, the discussion focused on demand from the industry for an energy and net zero transition – undoubtedly a huge, complex and demanding job,. But one that benefits from passionate commitment clearly demonstrated from a growing number of people in the built environment. “It’s personal” one observer said.

The indefatigable Joe Karten, Built’s head of sustainability and social impact kicked off with a welcome and introduction, sharing his views – and shooting a few questions in the direction of other panellists from the stage. He was joined by Emma Lucia, director partnerships and business development, for 3E and Carlos Flores, director, NABERS.

The clear conclusion is that the built environment is ratcheting up its goals and commitment on net zero. It’s a huge task and the leaps, incremental at first – like energy efficiency – are now coming in waves of determination as the urgency hits home that we’ve got “just six more summers” until we get to our big, critical, target year in 2030.

In the panel session Joe Karten emphasised the importance of preserving what we have in buildings – the embodied carbon is already captured and useful, as our most precious resource.

His comments in the ebook focus pointedly on this: “Extreme green building of the future will be unbuilding,” he says, “in other words, finding opportunities to minimise the use of new materials, prolong the life of existing ones, whilst continuing to create healthy, dynamic new spaces for people to gather.

“It’s a shift from the cycle of knocking down and rebuilding to refurbishing and breathing new life into existing buildings and reusing the resources locked inside them.”

Carlos Flores has a huge job on his hands as director of NABERS – not only is the NABERS tool extending into sectors such as schools and shopping centres but into embodied carbon measurement as well – which means finding appropriate measures across all sectors.

Since the big jump in electricity prices the market was also jumping, Flores said, but on a scale of 0-100 of where we need to the rated the industry as just out of the starting blocks.

“I think I would give us two stars,” he said.

“We’re not stationary, and there is a lot of momentum, a lot of awareness. But the big challenges that we have are the structural barriers that we haven’t addressed together as a country.”

For example, we can measure embodied carbon, but what we can’t do is measure it consistently. Take companies with “the same amount of resources, the same information and right now that we’re landing on different answers for what that embodied carbon footprint of that building, because they will consider different parts of the building at different stages of the lifecycle, and use different databases for materials.”

“We don’t actually have the infrastructure we need to harness our collective power and do what we did with energy efficiency last decade.”

As a country, in sectors like offices and shopping centres, we save more energy consumption than any building sector in any country, Flores added. “And that was partly because we have things like NABERS and Green Star in the building code – unified, in different stages, different processes – but applying consistency for 10-15 years.”

This resulted in a lot of the work in those markets being about improving buildings, “not about how we’re going to measure – those issues were largely resolved. So, we’re focused on time and energy, better business, better design, rewarding that, and I think an embodied carbon, we’re not quite there yet.”

On the energy efficiency front, Emma Lucia who is a mechanical engineer and spent five years working on the net zero strategy for Monash University before joining 3E in October, saidthe issue of energy efficiency within a broader ESG context was today a critical board issue; no longer a “nice to have”.

Her company works with large property infrastructure assets such as hospitals, schools and commercial buildings. “Across the board, there is a real imperative to secure their energy supply to get particularly with ESG goals… and to ensure that businesses and organisations are listening to their stakeholders.”

And what they are hearing is: “We want to see progress on decarbonisation, we want to see climate action. We know we’re in the critical decade.

“So we’re seeing a lot more degasification plans being requested, which six months ago, barely existed.

“And now what’s interesting, palpable, is that people ask ‘how do we electrify? How do we future proof our assets?”

Even if the cost benefit analysis on the pure numbers does not exist, “the question becomes…. what is the cost of the risk of not acting and not meeting your ESG targets? Are you going to lose investors? Are you going to lose market share how your employees going to walk out the door because you’re not walking the talk that you’re promoting through that ESG strategy? So it’s a really multi-dimensional problem now”.

Joe Karten shared his view that in new builds it was “pretty much going all electric now.”

In the refurbishment space, it was a “mixed bag”.

The issues included ascertaining if the kit was at end of life and whether replacement was on the cards.

Where it’s more complex is where there is limited plant room and the all-electric option takes up more space.

“But we’re working through that and I think the positive message is that more and more people are saying ‘we want all electric and by the way, we’re not I’m going to stop there. We’re going to pair the building’s power supply with the renewable power purchase agreement’.

“So they actually turn on that net zero carbon operation from day one.”

Karten noted that even part way through design at the his company’s work at the Phive building at Parramatta his team was able to unpick an original plan to use gas boilers and cooling towers. “We actually converted it to an all electric mixed mode ventilation, no cooling towers.”

Despite the massive challenges and despite the structural impediments to a fully net-zero built environment, what was clear from the panel, the audience in the room and the contributors to the ebook is that there is no stopping the determination of this crowd in the built environment.

Rounding off the formalities was the digital publishing moment for the ebook, which entailed hitting the send button our Mailchimp newsletter

Happy reading all.