As with other Australian cities, the City of Adelaide and South Australian government’s development plans are both predicated on high growth. But is a massive increase in building and infrastructure necessary to meet what are questionable population predictions and demand for new housing?
This article challenges the “big build” mentality especially from the point of view of embodied carbon and its impact on climate change mitigation. Can Adelaide needs be met instead by adaptive reuse of existing stock and less new construction?
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The City Plan 2036 involves urban design and strategic planning processes that “outline our spatial vision, goals, and strategies for future sustainable growth and development across the City of Adelaide for the next 10 years”. Although forecasting 46,559 people by 2041 in its own documents, the City puts forward two scenarios: high growth – for a population of 50,000 by 2036, and low growth – for 36,000 people by 2036.
However, the City Plan Forum Series was focused on high growth: “As a city with double the population, what will be different about Adelaide in 2036?” and “What are the bold moves required to get us there?” (bold, not modest moves). Pre-empting the City Plan, five towers between 15 to 28 storeys recently approved for one site may be bold, but are they sustainable?
Similarly, the Discussion Paper on the Greater Adelaide Regional Plan (GARP) claims:
“We need 300,000 new homes” to accommodate an additional 670,000 people over the next 30 years (by 2051). “That would be a 46 per cent increase on today’s population, based on a high-growth scenario. We need to be ready to make sure we can accommodate this growth in a sustainable way”.
But is this highgrowth strategy based on moresingle-person housing and increased immigration really justified?
While admitting that “since 2011, Greater Adelaide’s population has only grown by 167,000 people”, the State Planning Commission envisages an increase of around 8 per cent a year. And is this sustainable, when – contrary to sufficiency principles – an additional 100,000 homes will be constructed upon “greenfield” land?
Both plans allude to climate change mitigation and sustainability as possible while pursuing accelerated growth with “efficient use of resources”. For example, the City Plan expects to “grow sustainably”, and “thinking about how to create the future city we want means redoubling our commitments to net zero”. The need to respond to the climate emergency by constraining material-driven growth appears entirely lacking.
The climate emergency and sustainability
The SA government declared a climate emergency in June 2022 covering mitigation and adaptation, and set goals to reduce state greenhouse gas emissions by more than 50 per cent below 2005 levels by 2030 as a step towards achieving net zero emissions by 2050.
Whilst these ambitions are positive and exceed the Australian government target of 43 per cent reduction by 2030, they are still not enough. Scientists have demanded a 75 per cent cut by 2030, and reaching net zero by 2035. They say“…as a wealthy developed nation with a large footprint, it [Australia] should be doing more”.
Increased ambition is consistent with the IPCC 2022 report on mitigation, requiring urgent and dramatic action to peak emissions by 2025 and “bending the curve”, with a focus on sufficiency, efficiency and renewables.
Sufficiency involves a set of measures that avoid demand for resources (such as energy and materials) while enabling wellbeing for all within planetary boundaries. Sufficiency and demand-side reduction policies are critical in limiting global warming to 1.5oC, with the potential to reduce emissions in most sectors by 40-70 per cent by 2050, as the IPCC 2023 emphasised..
The importance of sufficiency and constraining the growth in new floor area – especially in more industrialised countries – is also highlighted in the Breakthrough Agenda Report/Buildings 2023 for COP28. The report states:
“Sufficiency measures must complement the role played by efficiency, behaviour and renewables in the mitigation of emissions, as growth in floor area is outpacing the existing efforts to decarbonise the sector. There is a need to further develop and encourage focus on sufficiency policies and interventions in the sector…The impact of sufficiency efforts needs to be more widely understood, with implementation efforts led by developed countries which have a larger floor area per capita to repurpose, and less pressure from population growth and urbanisation”.
The report also recommends :
“To advance the role of sufficiency within the sector, countries should co-ordinate on harnessing common definitions, establishing international tracking metrics (such as the growth of floor area per capita), identifying effective sufficiency policies, elevating platforms for sharing and advancing the topic within the sector”.
Embodied carbon
Recognising and measuring the upfront embodied carbon of building products and construction can play a major role in reducing emissions and making a policy shift towards sufficiency. Without intervention, embodied emissions are forecast to grow from 85 per cent of the total carbon emissions of Australian buildings by 2050, from a baseline of only 19 per cent in 2019.
However, national and state approaches remain heavily based upon reducing operational emissions (Scopes 1 and 2) via energy efficiency and renewables, while largely neglecting the need to reduce embodied emissions (Scope 3) in materials, products and construction of buildings.
New projects are expected to reduce embodied carbon by 40 per cent by 2030, measured in terms of carbon intensity (kg CO2e a square metre), which fails to constrain growth in floor area
When embodied emissions are recognised, this is mainly related to use of so-called low carbon materials; for example, new projects are expected to reduce embodied carbon by 40 per cent by 2030, measured in terms of carbon intensity (kg CO2e a square metre), which fails to constrain growth in floor area. As the Breakthrough Agenda Report 2023 has signalled, new sufficiency metrics are required – such as measuring embodied carbon per capita.
Within South Australia, state planning policy 5 (SPP 5) and Planning for Climate Change 2023 mostly overlook embodied and scope 3 emissions, although briefly mentioned in the latter: “To aim for carbon neutrality and consider embodied carbon – investigate how to calculate embodied carbon meaningfully…”
While the Greater Adelaide Plan highlights mitigation: “Climate change mitigation seeks to reduce the release of GHG emissions to the atmosphere, including reducing the sources of emissions…”, embodied carbon is not mentioned.
Embodied carbon is also missing from the Climate Action Plan 2022-2025 for the City of Adelaide, which – along with many of its counterparts – cannot truly be a carbon neutral city while continuing to overlook this elephant in the room.
Analysis of the City of Adelaide and Greater Adelaide Plans
We now seek to broadly estimate the embodied carbon that would be generated by the Plans, and to highlight its significance.
The current resident population in the city is 26,120.
According to the State of the City Report 2023 Update 17,374 more residents are expected by 2041, requiring the equivalent of thirty-six 36storey apartment buildings over 18 years. Under the high-growth scenario, though, the ambition is 50,000 residents by 2030, an additional 23,880.
This estimate was based upon Realm Apartments, Adelaide, comprising 309 apartments over 36 stories, with a total area of 40,000 sq m and costing $100 million. Assuming an embodied carbon intensity of 500 kilograms of CO2 emissions a sq mfor an apartment building, this will lead to a net increase of 720,000 tonnes of CO2e embodied emissions in total, which equates to a scale of 40,000 tCO2e a year.
To this should be added the major new “city shaping” projects (mainly commercial) currently in the pipeline, as promoted by Adelaide Economic Development Agency and comprising around 350,000 sq m of new floor space.
Based on a metric of 600 kg CO2e a sq m as the embodied carbon intensity for commercial buildings, this will result in a total of 200,000 t CO2e emissions over 18 years, or 11,110 tCO2e a year.
Hence, total embodied carbon increase for the City of Adelaide over 18 years is estimated to be at least 920,000 tCO2e, which equates to 51,110 tCO2 e a year. This compares with the 2020 community emissions for the City of just under 1million tCO2e, representing an increase of around 5 per cent. The City has claimed its emissions have reduced by 21 per cent between 2007 and 2020 – a reduction of about 1.6 per cent a year. On the other hand, taking into account embodied carbon would result in increasing the rate of emissions.
Greater Adelaide Regional Plan
Even though Greater Adelaide’s population has only grown by 167,000 since 2011, that is projected to increase by 670,000 in the next 30 years (by 2051) due to increases in immigration and single person households. The State Planning Commission envisages the need to “build more houses, a lot more houses. 300,000 new homes are needed by 2051 to make Adelaide’s housing affordable and accessible for everyone”.
The average floor size of Australian homes is around 186.3 sq m and increasing. Previous studies revealed that the embodied carbon intensity of residential buildings is around 412kg-432 CO2 e a sq m for low rise buildings.
On average, this will cause a whopping scale of an extra 23,585,576 t CO2e embodied emissions for 300,000 new homes in Greater Adelaide over the next 28 years, equivalent to 842,342 t CO2e a year.
This estimate does not include the substantial embodied carbon associated with new transport and utility infrastructure required to service new subdivisions.
Total
Based on the calculations above, the annual increase in embodied emissions will be at a scale of 892,452 tCO2e for the City and the Great Adelaide Region combined, associated with the projected new developments. Relatively, this represents 4.1 per cent of 2021 SA emissions totaling 21,500,000 tCO2e.
Discussion
Within the papers accompanying the City Plan update and GARP, the growth imperative is given precedence. By accelerating growth while “redoubling” their commitments to net zero the state government and City Council wish to have their cake and eat it too!
Growth policies were highlighted by senior government politicians at the Capital City Committee’s Adaptive Reuse Forum on 5 May 2023, ironically following the International Sufficiency Summit held the previous evening.
They do it better in France
On the other hand, France and other jurisdictions have shown that sufficiency policies, such as energy sufficiency, can deliver societal and environmental benefits without material-driven growth.
According to Association négaWatt, sufficiency can have “a positive impact upon jobs”, while “an energy transition based on sufficiency, efficiency, and renewables would provide economic, social, and environmental benefits”.
Adaptive reuse downplayed
While adaptive reuse is a laudable strategy to regenerate parts of the city and convert vacant CBD buildings to apartments, entirely consistent with sufficiency principles, it is downplayed in the draft City Plan. Hence, any gains and investment from such a strategy may be negated by accelerated new ”city shaping” projects, including multiple high rise apartment buildings.
It is difficult to equate such major building and infrastructure with ambitions towards carbon neutrality and tackling the climate change emergency.
The prevailing view, as evidenced by the Premier’s remarks, is that new projects such as the former Franklin Street Bus Station Redevelopment, comprising two towers each housing 392 people plus a 208-key hotel, can be “carbon neutral”.
This project is claimed to be “a showcase of the very best of sustainable construction within a development that is targeting carbon-neutrality precinct wide”, via the use of sustainable building materials, reduced energy consumption and the like.
Such potentially misleading statements, which rely upon the use of future offsets, reveal a lack of understanding of embodied carbon and the critical need to reduce constructed floor area now to contain global warming to 1.5oC by 2050.