ANALYSIS: NABERS is a global pacesetter in sustainability. In the 25 years since it started it’s had a revolutionary impact on the office sector in Australia. It’s been admired and taken up by other countries. And now it’s making its way into schools, hotels, shopping centres and warehouses. It’s even launched a tool to measure the very fabric of building materials, carbon.
In late November, commercial real estate consultants JLL released a report to show that all-electric office buildings are starting to outperform their peers.
The research pointed to a shortage of these buildings to meet rising demand, and that’s pushing up values. Buildings that can boast all-electric energy are achieving 23 per cent higher rents, 7.8 per cent lower vacancy rates and 55 basis points tighter yields, compared with conventional stock, the agency said.
That’s great news, and points to green buildings as now deeply embedded in the minds – and value propositions – of investors and occupiers alike.
Those close to the centre of those decision makers know what kicked off this radical transformation that has seen financial value ascribed to environmental performance.
And it all started with the NABERS energy rating tool.
In its annual report released earlier this year, NABERS pointed to the clear metrics that prove its value. Over two decades, the rating tool has been credited with removing 15 million tonnes of CO2 emissions from Australia’s mainly CBD buildings. At the same time, it’s generated savings of more than $2 billion in energy bills.
Countries such as the UK and New Zealand have adopted the tool for their own markets.
At home, the tool is now casting its net wider to wider and even tougher fields.
The annual report takes the temperature of its achievements and future ambitions.
Hotels
Getting Australia’s leading commercial property owners has been a challenge. But perhaps an even tougher nut to crack is the hotel sector.
There’s an inbuilt tension in the tourism sector between customers’ perception of that “touch of luxury” and sustainability.
Andrew Buchel, acting head of market development at NABERS, prefers to put it, “the lack of a visible link”.
But as with any innovation, there are always leaders out in front. In hotels, that’s the Australian-based Schwartz Family Company, headed by Jerry Schwartz, a keen advocate of sustainability for years, and CapitaLand, based in Singapore, which has a history of leadership in green buildings.
Together, these two companies manage 6000 rooms, hopefully, enough to get the competition juices flowing in an industry that thrives on co-opetition.
NABERS is being creative in its approach. It’s exploring partnerships with existing sustainability ratings, such as Ecotourism Australia, Earth Check and Green Key.
“It makes sense for our ratings to plug into their systems so we can reduce the barriers for hotel owners and streamline the process,” Buchel said.
The recognition is already going international, with NABERS ratings for hotels now recognised and identified by Travalyst and Google Travel with its “Eco-certified” tag, he adds.
Data centres
Another big “challenge” is the burgeoning – or should we say, exploding? – world of data centres with their voracious appetite for energy and water.
But how do you measure and rank performance?
NABERS starts with an energy measure, through power usage effectiveness (PUE), which is the total building usage over the ratio of the IT equipment energy.
But that leaves water, which is still not measured, Buchel notes.
Shopping centres
Shopping centres are also intense users of energy, partly at least, thanks to the open door policies that they clearly need to welcome customers.
According to Buchel, the expansion of the Co-Assess tool from offices to shopping centres has helped. It lets shopping centre rate their base building and multiple retail tenancy ratings, audited and certified all in one hit, and individual NABERS certificates are issued for each space rated.
At the same time, individual retailers can still get their own rating.
In the aligned area of warehouses and cold storage, it’s still a work in progress, but the good news is that the Supply Chain & Logistics Association of Australia has joined the NABERS National Steering Committee to speed up progress.
Schools
If people in offices, shops and warehouses can expect more sustainable buildings, so should kids.
Schools are a big item on the NABERS agenda with 3500 public schools already signed up across Victoria, New South Wales and the Northern Territory.
Embodied Carbon tool
Among all the tools, however, it’s the new embodied carbon tool that will launch the next major phase of the NABERS’ evolution. This is the measure of the carbon that materials carry within them from source to transportation and usage.
As the industry at the top end improved its performance, its leaders started casting about on how else to contribute meaningfully to our battle to achieve net zero.
Embodied carbon was the next logical challenge. But it’s not easy. The industry was already peppered with a raft of competing rating systems, with confusing results. So Josh Wilson, Assistant Minister for Climate Change and Energy, launched the tool last year.
It promises to provide a standardised methodology that will give project teams confidence to “estimate, plan and deliver carbon reductions, and enable policymakers to set credible targets for the first time,” Buchel said.
Which sounds like it’s just in keeping with the theme that launched the first phase of the NABERS evolution.
Stay tuned!
Read the full report on the NABERS annual report here.