Western Australia needs a plan to slash national greenhouse gas emissions whilst improving national living standards and increasing our national competitiveness.
The Property Council of Australia is calling on the Government to assist existing buildings to undertake retrofitting programs and slash emissions as a result.
The Centre for International Economics recently examined existing options for reducing greenhouse gas emissions. They found that a major investment in energy efficiency in existing buildings will deliver reductions in emissions faster and more economically than alternative approaches.
In short, a renewed focus on building energy efficiency could:
halve electricity use in building stock by 2030 and 70 per cent by 2050
reduce National GHG emissions by 30 to 35 per cent within two decades
add back $38 billion each year to the GDP compared to conventional GHG abatement programs, which reduce GDP
“The huge potential environmental and community payoff by retro-greening our existing buildings needs to be encouraged by a meaningful incentives scheme,” said Mr. Joe Lenzo, Executive Director of the Property Council of Australia (WA Division).
The need for an incentives scheme was reinforced at the Property Council April Division lunch today, Monique Alfiris of Lincolne Scott outlined three reasons why there has been a slow uptake of retrofitting:
- “Split Incentives” – Incentives for retrofitting are divided between owners and tenants.
- Comparatively Low Rewards – electricity will be approximately 5% of budget outgoings.
- Distributed And Diverse Nature – tuning up a building is complicated and not for the faint hearted.
“Tuning up the eco-efficiency of Perth’s 1.7 million m2 of commercial office space is no small task,” said Mr. Lenzo, “and we will need green leadership from all levels of Government to speed up the uptake of the most effective form of slashing our greenhouse gas emissions.”
For further information please contact:
Joe Lenzo, Executive Director, Property Council (WA), (08) 9426 1200 or 0419 044 768
