hile all the talk is about clean energy, the Federal Government should focus on green buildings as a cost-effective yet relatively quick and easy response to climate change, a recent conference on environmentally sustainable building was told.
In his address at the‘Green Cities 07’ conference, held in Sydney in February, Che Wall, chair of the World Green Building Council and joint managing director of Lincolne Scott consulting engineers, called on the Government to provide incentives for energy efficiency, research and development, and rehabilitation of older buildings, and to develop and participate in an international carbon trading scheme that recognises carbon saving through building energy efficiency.
“The message from the UN’s inter-governmental panel on climate change was clear: we need to urgently change our behaviours, our industries and our cities, and we need to look to solutions that will achieve a rapid and meaningful correction to our negative impacts upon the planet – and green buildings fit the bill, not capital intensive infrastructure, sequestration or alternative energy generation such as nuclear power,” Wall, the 2004 Prime Minister’s Environmentalist of the Year, said.
“McKinsey & Company’s recent cost curve for greenhouse gas reduction showed that the most cost-effective way to significantly reduce our greenhouse emissions is through our building stock.
“After all, while buildings around the world contribute more than 30% of total greenhouse gas emissions, building green can deliver a 50% reduction in carbon emissions over conventional building, at nominal or nil additional cost, and improving the performance of existing buildings can achieve a 30% reduction in energy demand from commercial and industrial buildings.
Wall said that the interest and response to the Green Cities 07 Conference was testament to the fact that the Australian property industry has already embraced green building.
“It is time for government to do its bit by effecting some simple policy changes that would create real incentives to build green and thereby cut greenhouse gas emissions,” he commented.
Specifically, Wall called on the Government to focus on demand reduction in preference to new infrastructure investment, as this has the benefit of a far quicker lead time and significantly reduced capital investment; provide fiscal incentives for the rehabilitation of existing assets to meet Australian best practice green benchmarks as 98% of the building energy demand in Australian cities is from existing building stock; develop an international carbon trading scheme that recognises carbon saving through building energy efficiency; expand the present research and development tax concession scheme to provide extra incentive for projects with measurable sustainable outcomes; co-ordinate all incentives and education streams around a common green measurement system, specifically Green Star.
“The market has made major achievements in sustainability and these should be built upon,” said Wall. “The last thing that will assist sustainability in our cities is to increase confusion by adding further dimensions to how we measure green.”
Wall also called for the continued development of urban centres, arguing that the city skyline should be the new iconography of the environmental movement.
“The assertion that the city is in some way worse for the environment than rural communities is unfounded and yet misunderstanding continues to be perpetuated by those who champion a green future,” he said. He also noted that while cities such as New York and London are commonly considered ‘ecological nightmares’, they are, in fact, models of environmental responsibility. The majority of the population travels by public transit, by bicycle or on foot, and the majority live in some of the most inherently energy efficient residential structures in the world: apartments. – Dael Climo.