Slow uptake of energy-efficiency ratings
Buildings
New Zealand has 30 buildings and eight offices with Governmentbacked energy-efficiency ratings, but they are a fraction of the thousands of buildings in the country.
The NABERSNZ energyefficiency ratings tool has been here for seven years, imported from Australia and adapted for New Zealand.
It’s mandatory in Australia for buildings and offices of more than
1000 square metres to have a NABERS rating but voluntary in New Zealand, and that’s the issue, according to the New Zealand Green Building Council chief executive Andrew Eagles.
‘‘The key problem is it’s not regulated. We would see significant increases if Government said ‘we are asking for NABERSNZ on buildings that we lease’. They have said they were going to do that. David Parker [Environment Minister] said that, but we haven’t seen it yet,’’ Eagles said.
Eagles said that would mean everybody wanting a Government tenant would have to be rated, ‘‘so we would see a dramatic and immediate uptick’’.
The Government is the singlebiggest tenant in the country with office space of about
1.2 million sqm. NABERSNZ is run by the Green Building Council on behalf of the Energy Efficiency and Conservation Authority (EECA).
It gives entire office buildings or individual tenancies an annual rating of zero to six stars on how well they use energy. The ratings must be updated yearly, but many do not keep that up.
Government could also require buildings to show what their ratings were, Eagles said.
‘‘They don’t need to say every building needs to be 4-star they just need to say ‘rate the buildings’. That would also see a dramatic increase,’’ he said.
Uptake could also be driven by leading companies in New Zealand like the Climate Leaders Coalition of 120 companies who could require buildings and spaces they leased to have NABERSNZ ratings.
The council has rated one million square metres of office space over the past seven years, but some of the ratings have lapsed.
The 30 buildings and eight tenancies rated at present cover just over 418,000sqm of office space, just over 4 per cent of the estimated 10 million sqm of office space here.
In Australia, around A$1 billion has been saved through NABERS being mandatory. These were benefits New Zealand businesses were missing out on, Eagles said.
Energy data management company ESP chief executive Lincoln Watson said energy efficiency had been quietly achieved by big firms in New Zealand leading the way and a lot of that work went unsung.
Buildings occupied by larger firms dominated the NABERSNZ ratings.
They used a lot of energy so finding savings stacked up for them. While some smaller firms were active on energy efficiency the savings were proportionately less for them and so energyefficiency measures might be less attractive than making savings in other parts of the business.
Landlords were not engaged in energy-efficiency initiatives, while retrofits could be expensive.
Was New Zealand’s large number of older buildings a barrier to better energy efficiency?
Watson said the first rung of energy-efficiency measures were easy to implement to get a good return.
But a longer term plan required capital and the spending competed with other business needs and could sometimes not happen. Retrofitting a building was not cheap, and strata holdings in buildings made upgrades difficult.
ESP was seeing an increasing number of clients, with larger buildings, going for a NABERSNZ rating and had 10 in the pipeline.
Having accurate energy use data was a driver for change.
ESP monitored and managed 600 sites in New Zealand for energy data use.
Buildings and tenants could not keep control of energy use without energy monitoring and management, Watson said.
‘‘We are also seeing increasing drive from property managers to help their landlords improve buildings and optimise value,’’ Watson said. As businesses started to educate themselves to reduce their carbon footprint they would make changes on energy efficiency too.
‘‘We understand businesses are looking to reduce city-based leased premises.’’
They were sizing up more flexible suburban office space.
‘‘If and when new tenants come into the city they will choose environments that can help them get to net zero carbon and reduce their operating costs at the same time.’’