The opening plenary panel of the 2024 NABERS + CBD Conference set the scene on how we can build momentum for the next 25 years, covering energy efficiency, electrification, embodied carbon and the impact of the built environment on nature.
NABERS Director Carlos Flores reflected that “buildings that started to disclose their NABERS rating 12 years ago use 42% less energy today.” Australia’s office market is “moving at the fastest speed” to reduce energy consumption of any in the world. Australia must now apply these leadership lessons to the entire built environment to meet the three challenges of energy efficiency, electrification and embodied carbon.
Anthony Lean, Secretary of the NSW Government’s Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water (DCCEEW) shared that more than 2,500 individual buildings and tenancies took part in NABERS in the last financial year, and Australia’s 13 years of leadership in GRESB, the global real estate sustainability benchmark, is “because investors, owners and tenants have embraced NABERS like no other,” Anthony said.
Francesca Muskovic, National Policy Director at the Property Council of Australia, encouraged the audience to consider impacts of disclosure. “Could the Renewable Energy Indicator or new NABERS Embodied Carbon rating be disclosed?” she asked. Expanding disclosures had clear commercial benefits, she said. The Property Council has championed the CBD program “because it has saved our members million and million of dollars... $1.7 billion in energy bills. That's a reason to pay attention to it,” she said. Buildings with higher NABERS ratings are also more valuable buildings.
Green Building Council of Australia’s CEO, Davina Rooney said that every “sleeper sustainability issue” – climate, biodiversity, affordability and resilience – has “woken up.” For built environment professionals the challenge is to do “everything, everywhere all at once”. “That's why we are lucky to have programs like NABERS –because it takes us further and faster together.”
Watch ‘Building momentum for the next 25 years!’ and other sessions from the 2024 NABERS + CBD Conference here.