Building a green future
An Australia-first tool is helping commerical building owners advance their sustainability efforts.
While many Australian homeowners have embraced sustainability initiatives, such as solar energy, commercial buildings – which account for 24 per cent1 of national electricity consumption and 10 per cent of greenhouse gas production – are trailing behind. There is an opportunity for the sector to drive down emissions and the first step is understanding its carbon footprint.
“Tangible actions need to be implemented for our planet,” says Paul Rippon, Executive Director of Clarence Property Group, which manages a property investment portfolio worth about $1 billion. “The responsible use of natural resources is a hallmark of how we manage our commercial rental and development properties.”
Clarence Property joined the pilot of the Commonwealth Bank of Australia’s (CBA) Green Buildings Tool to track various initiatives, including the installation of solar energy systems, on 20 of its properties. “The interactive digital tool is a useful checklist and planner for our existing commercial properties and forms part of our due diligence when acquiring new ones.”
CBA wanted to offer its commercial property customers a free, intuitive tool that made it easy to identify a range of energy-efficient upgrades and quickly assess the benefits. “We saw there was a need for small and mid-market commercial real estate owners to understand the operating efficiency of their buildings,” explains Michael Bennett, General Manager for commercial property at CBA. “It can be challenging for those owners to invest the resources to discover these things.”
To build the tool, CBA partnered with Netherlands-based CFP Green Buildings, a company that has been offering a green building tool through partnerships with a number of global banks since 2016. CFP worked closely with the National Australian Built Environment Rating System (NABERS) during development of the product. “It was important that the output of our tool correlates with what the NABERS output looks like,” says Bennett. “It doesn’t replace that system but if a client’s building already has a NABERS rating, the tool picks that up.”
That’s key for Clarence Property. “NABERS has been around for over 25 years and through the installation of state-of-the-art air-conditioning systems, sensor-driven LED lighting, water harvesting and solar power, we’ve led the charge to help our office buildings achieve 5- and 6-star ratings,” says Rippon. The Green Buildings Tool helps the property group plan how to attain carbon-neutral ratings, as it has already done with an office building on the Gold Coast.
Since CBA launched the tool, more than 400 customers have joined and 1000 buildings have been assessed. “Customers have told us it saves them a lot of time and money compared to going to a third-party energy consultant,” says Bennett. “The tool gives them information in real time and clarity around the kinds of improvements they can make to their buildings.”