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Key points
While architects and construction contractors have focused on green buildings in recent years, there is still a disconnect between sustainable development and the impacts of climate change
Climate change has the potential for enormous impact on commercial property, from the availability and cost of insurance, to risk exposure and negative impacts on branding
Expectations for pay-back periods from investment in green buildings are changing as more research and experience with sustainability becomes available. |
What will it take to sway the climate change skeptics in the commercial property sector? Will it be the big stick approach of government regulation and insurers refusing to cover projects, or will the carrot of saving the planet and finding new opportunities see building design really coming to grips with the problem?
Environment Business Australia (EBA) is a business think tank and advocacy group promoting commercial solutions to environmental challenges. Its membership includes architects and other property companies, and it has a “loose affiliation” with the construction industry. EBA CEO Fiona Wain says climate change presents a “great opportunity” for avant garde architects, planners and designers to build sustainable cities.
“Some architects are thinking along these lines, but you’ve got a lot of other people thinking along the lines of the training they received way back, when climate change wasn’t on the agenda,” she says.
“If you are building on the east coast of Australia, you are going to get some severe weather patterns.
“The news that is coming out of science is not good at all. There is no way that sea levels are not going to rise. We don’t know where the new areas of vulnerability currently are. There are some operators who have been taking it seriously for a long time but, as a profession, they are in the process of just starting to take it seriously.”
Wain warns the commercial property industry needs to look at costs and benefits in terms of “life cycle”.
“Governments bear the costs of most major infrastructure in this country, whether it is water, gas or electricity. Why are tenders still being given to the lowest bid?” she says.
“Very rarely is the collateral damage of avoidance cost spoken about. We need to be looking at the cost, plus value of a project.”
Wain says the 150 institutional investors and fund managers taking part in the Carbon Disclosure Project, who control more than $55 trillion worth of assets, are saying they do not wish to be exposed to carbon liability.
“The big insurance companies are seriously looking at whether they will underwrite going forward and there are coastal areas they will not underwrite in the future,” she says.
“It will bite the commercial property industry in terms of litigation, loss of insurance cover, loss of reputation and loss of competitive edge.
“Climate change presents the potential for new opportunities and jobs. We are going through a transition phase and there is a commercial opportunity for leaders in every sector. They are going to have to read, and understand what they read.
“Using a skeptic or a denier as a scapegoat is really copping out. There are moves around the world to build the next competitive edge and it is going to be the leaders who act now who are going to create a new market and take a really big slice of it.”
Davis Langdon associate director Michael Manikas believes the impact of climate change will be felt in the next 10 years, claiming the short-term result will be design and development of more efficient buildings, rather than [concentrating] on those at risk from climate change.
“I think architects are orienting their buildings more and looking at things like the angle of the sun, but I don’t see them building in any risk associated with extreme climate conditions,” Manikis says.
“I think architects, contractors and developers are still heavily focused on the now and not the future.”
Davis Langdon is currently involved in projects with universities, which tend to be more active in the area of climate change, as they have a long-term view of their investment and infrastructure.
“The commercial property industry has a short-term vision, a ‘sell it’ approach,” Manikas says.
“In the pure CBD centric market most of the big developers don’t do anything other than five-star Green Star, but whether they are doing it for the right reason is to be questioned. A lot are just doing the minimum required to get that five-star rating.”
Arkhefield partner and architect Andrew Gutteridge admits moves towards a more integrated approach to climate change, which involve all players, are in their infancy.
He says Building Information Modelling (BIM) technology, which provides 3D computer modelling of a building and its services, allows projects to be studied for their energy efficiency before construction.
“We are an enormously wasteful industry. An enormous amount of waste happens during construction,” he says.
“This idea of prototyping our buildings – rather than fast-tracking them to industry and getting them up at any cost – is a real mindset change in the industry.
“As we pull back and get a bigger vision of the world and see the whole game and get to bring all the players together, we can ensure it comes out in the long term as efficiently as possible.”
In 2008 Leighton Properties and Brisbane City Council unveiled Queensland’s first cogeneration plant in a commercial building in the Green Square North Tower in Fortitude Valley. The plant uses natural gas as opposed to coal-powered electricity to run the generator and to operate the chillers for the air conditioning.
This facility, together with other sustainable design initiatives in the building, will provide annual savings in energy of 530,000 killowatts, equivalent to the usage of 80 houses.
Leighton Holdings executive director Andrew Borger says the plant in Green Square North Tower results in a 70 percent reduction in emissions compared to a normal office building and 20 percent more than the Federal Government’s reduction target for 2050.
He says the industry has been slow to embrace the significant savings that can be attained in green buildings, including a 25 percent reduction in water and energy use compared with the 3 to 4 percent initially projected.
These projections also put the timeframe on “pay back” for having a green building at 30 years, but in reality it is around 10 years, says Borger.
“We need more of the success stories to be told to the market place,” he says. “Building green equates to higher profitability. When market forces see a capital benefit in doing something, that’s when things will take place.
“In the next five years you are going to see a significant move towards the 89 percent of existing stock being retrofitted in some way.”
Australian Green Development Forum president Mark Thomson says part of the problem is that the architecture profession lacks the mandate from its client base to be proactive on climate change initiatives.
“Unless this is specifically identified in an architect’s project brief, it will not be addressed and architects will not necessarily identify this to their structural engineering project team,” he says.
“The primary reason for this is the perception that construction cost will be increased and current industry code compliance solutions are accepted as being appropriate until challenged by others.
“Some dedicated architectural professionals are intuitively implementing passive design solutions which, by adopting the principles of good design, will minimise the impact of natural disasters.”
Dean Butcher, business unit manager of Cardno SPLAT – a landscape architect design team which leases space in Leighton’s Green Square North Tower building – says there remains a “long way to go”.
“As long as developers and builders can get away with not having to apply these issues, the focus won’t be put on them and it won’t be necessary for us to do it,” he says.
“In places like South East Queensland where the agenda is growth, there is little concentration on sustainability.”
