GREEN BUILDING RETROSPECTIVE: More than two decades ago, the modern green building movement squeaked, groaned and finally stumbled into life. The weight of its undertaking was both thrilling and enormous with responsibility. Its early cohorts dug ever deeper into the business as usual of buildings and cities they’d been taught to admire and emulate, and they innovated instead. They built data, science and finally, political heft to change the game.
But what was it like on the ground for those early birds of the revolution? Who were the brave leaders – the nerdy folk who wrote the climate science with its inconvenient truths? The future-focused entrepreneurs and private investors who could see the writing on the marketing wall was a deepening shade of green?
In this first retrospective article on the green building movement, Sue Salmon who was instrumental in getting the ABGR ratings system (now NABERS), off the ground, tells her story. We invite you to tell yours! Send your submissions and ideas to editorial@thefifthestate.com.au with the subject line Green Buildings Retrospective.
I had the truly exceptional experience in my career of working with not one but two physicists. My understanding and confidence in what physicists were capable of, thanks to these experiences, allowed me to proceed into unknown territory fearlessly. (Perhaps being born on a farm, the eldest of eight and not a brother in sight for years, added to that confidence, for if something was to be done at my father’s request, no matter how difficult, it would be up to me.)
When I started my work at the Sustainable Energy Development Authority (SEDA) on the Building Greenhouse Rating, the Australian commercial property sector was totally unknown to me.
The inspirational physicists in my working life were Dr Bill Hare at the Australian Conservation Foundation and Dr Paul Bannister, who at the direction of SEDA, developed the methodology based on operational building energy performance for what was initially the BGR, then the Australian Building Greenhouse Rating Scheme (ABGR) when we took the program national and finally NABERS, when the scheme began to cover different building types.
My confidence in the intellectual underpinning of the programs I was presenting was complete thanks to the abilities of these two physicists.
Whether this was arranging the very first presentation to the NSW parliament in 1988 on the effects of the runaway greenhouse effect, directed by Bill Hare, running a campaign to protect the old growth forests of south east NSW (Bill again) or transforming the commercial property sector’s response to building energy efficiency and driving owners to disclose this performance publicly to attract tenants, I had an unshakeable confidence that we had intellectually sound foundations for these transformative campaigns and program.
Designed as a market transformation program
Twenty five years ago Cathy Zoi was the inspirational chief executive of SEDA. Cathy had managed energy programs in the US Environmental Protection Agency and made the Clinton White House an exemplar of energy efficiency. With her background, we actively discussed what would represent market transformation of the commercial property sector. I dreamed of “For Lease” hoardings on office buildings declaring a current ABGR rating along with the tenancy size and other relevant specs. I also dreamt of new office buildings designed to achieve a high level of greenhouse performance once operational and settled.
A well designed marketing component of the ABGR program was critical to successfully transforming the market. Getting the design of the program’s logo right was a consideration because aesthetics are valued in the sector.
Also, it had to deliver a clear message to tenants as to what was implied by the one to five and now six-star rating. In the early days, before tenants were educated to ask for ABGR base building ratings that were current, there were buildings with ABGR plaques announcing ratings that were well out of date.
To uphold the integrity of the program, it was tempting to ask building owners to remove plaques in these cases. We did not do this because we did not want to deter owners from rating buildings. A building with a ABGR plaque, albeit an expired one, was still a way to draw attention to the program although it was an issue I struggled with. I’m hoping that now the NABERS program has this in hand, that building owners maintain up to date ratings because they want a high performance portfolio of low greenhouse emitting buildings and they want to be able to provide current ratings to interested tenants.
The C and D grade building challenge
Another matter that challenged us from the outset was how C and D grade buildings might be engaged. In the early stages my focus was on premium, A and B grade buildings and I left the program before this challenge was addressed. Perhaps that challenge remains and the market transformation is not complete.
Importantly, Cathy Zoi’s US experience meant she understood that market transformation took time. I remember so many SEDA staff meetings where all I had to report was the number of meetings with which companies, while other SEDA staff were kicking goals. Cathy gave me the four years needed to begin to achieve market transformation of the commercial office sector.
The market context for the introduction of ABGR
Understanding the market dynamics in which I was introducing BGR/ABGR to commercial building owners is instructive. Comparatively, energy was cheap and at the same time there was an unfolding, competitive energy market. Most won’t remember the energy company commercial where a company underling is seated in first class in front of senior colleagues because she has saved the company hundreds of thousands of dollars by negotiating a long term energy supply contract. Companies were making very substantial savings just by signing up to long term energy supply contracts with newly corporatised energy companies.
My challenge was to get building owners to use a SEDA appointed assessor to rate the greenhouse performance of their office portfolio risking the possibility they would find out they had a portfolio of buildings with 0, 1 and 2 star performances at a time when no one was asking questions about the greenhouse impacts of energy use in office buildings.
Although the rates of return on investments were there, the lack of a demand side driver coupled with potentially relatively costly building energy system upgrades across a portfolio made owners very hesitant. No one wanted to disclose a 1 or 2 star rating, everyone wanted a portfolio of 4.5 and 5 star buildings.
At this stage I did not have a government tenant policy as a demand side driver in place to goad owners into action.
The people crucial to ABGR’s uptake
When Chris O’Donnell, then head of Investa Property Trust understood the benefits I’d been outlining to his staff and finally broke ranks saying Investa would rate its office buildings using ABGR I looked at the large pile of Investa business cards I’d accumulated in talking to every potentially influential person in Investa (a pile of business cards larger than for any other property company).
At last, enough people in an organisation understood what ABGR offered. I was not party to the internal discussions in Investa’s decision making process but all my meetings with them helped achieve the result I was after.
Chris Luscombe at Mirvac provided insight by explaining to me that property owning companies were really just like footy teams – super competitive. I understood if I could get one to move then the others wouldn’t want to be left behind, and so it proved.
But still there were many, many business cards, many, many meetings and many follow-up contacts to see if any other companies had made decisions to use ABGR. Many people must have been tired of receiving calls from me but perseverance delivered in the end. All these years later I reflect on my interactions with DEXUS, so many meetings, so many calls, such a prestigious portfolio yet so much reluctance to act publicly. I hope DEXUS are now up with the leaders.
Staged development of ABGR
We started the program in NSW since SEDA was a NSW government agency, even though we understood that we needed a national program because office portfolios were held across states and territories.
Because we expected only a small number of buildings would initially require ratings, we trained three NSW engineers as accredited assessors to use the methodology to conduct ratings.
This staging of the program meant that there were not a lot of disgruntled assessors who expected volumes of work; it provided an opportunity to refine the training for assessors so it could be later presented to engineers in other states as well as increasing the number of assessors in NSW commensurate with the growth in demand.
For the scheme to be national we needed to engage the Commonwealth and other state governments, which I did by establishing the ABGR Technical Committee. Staging the program’s rollout nationally was important to the market’s confidence in the program and hence its successful uptake.
As industry’s confidence in the rating grew, in part due to training more engineers to conduct ratings, thereby disclosing the basis on which the methodology was developed and applied, the industry also realised that new buildings could be designed, constructed and marketed as delivering a specified level of greenhouse performance.
This was an important turning point in embedding the rating in the way the sector did business so we responded to this opportunity by developing the ABGR Commitment Agreement.
Owners were now able to promote the operational greenhouse performance of their new building to potential lead tenants even before the design phase, so long as they had signed an ABGR Commitment Agreement. It required the property developer to use an accredited assessor to conduct an ABGR rating and disclose the actual operational performance of the building once the building had settled. This was definitely another significant development for the transformative powers of the ABGR rating. It meant new office buildings would be designed from the outset to be energy efficient.
In the initial stages of embedding ABGR, the supply side had to be ready before I could get the demand side, namely government tenants initially, to drive demand. Standing next to NSW Premier Bob Carr at the launch of the first ABGR Commitment Agreement, which Lendlease signed to make their new Sydney head office 5 stars, I took the opportunity to set up a demand side driver.
Bob Carr was the premier who conferred national park status on the South East Forest I was fighting to save, so we knew each other. At the Lendlease event I suggested to him that we needed government tenants to seek tenancies in 4.5 and 5 star buildings to drive the uptake of the ABGR rating tool. Several days later the premier’s office was in touch to ask for a policy proposal whereby government tenants would make a building’s greenhouse performance one of the criteria to consider when seeking new rental space. At last, the supply and demand sides would be driving ABGR uptake forward.
Wobbly moments with the potential to derail ABGR
Initially, the BGR methodology was designed to rate only a whole building. The SEDA team tasked with managing the development of the rating tool met with Peter Verwer, the Property Council of Australia’s chief executive officer, to brief him on what SEDA was proposing to transform the commercial office sector.
They returned from the meeting thoroughly deflated. Peter told them that it would never work, that they did not understand the office property sector, that tenants and landlords would not co-operate and it would be impossible to obtain energy use, occupancy, floor space information for all the tenants in a building, as well as the base building’s energy use. Peter Verwer’s sharp but informed critique was essential in helping develop an ABGR methodology that matched market realities.
In response Dr Bannister made changes to enable the tool to rate a base building, a tenancy and a whole building separately. The ABGR program was on track to respond to market particularities.
Another incident with the potential to derail the program was the first meeting of the National Technical Committee that I was establishing to take the program national. Support from the industry seemed imminent but was then withheld.
The fact that SEDA was a government agency with a track record allowed me to retain the confidence of state and Commonwealth officials and the ABGR National Technical Committee was established to take the program national.
Importantly, NSW was supported by the other jurisdictions to manage the program on their behalf, and still today, a national program is managed by a NSW department. It was always important to me that ABGR was managed in government – and not by industry – imbuing the program with a high level of integrity, avoiding conflicts of interest and a likelihood that the program would be watered down if it was in industry’s control. I was determined to retain government management of the program on my watch.
The Fifth Estate recently interviewed the executive director of the UK’s Better Building Partnerships, who talked about the introduction of NABERS to Britain. Here was the NABERS rating and the Commitment Agreement going to work in another jurisdiction. Now all those reduced greenhouse emissions and other environmental impacts from Australian and New Zealand buildings will be added to by better performing British buildings.
And now…
As I write these reflections I’m living on the farm where I grew up, the place where I developed resilience, patience and above all a deep love of nature and a determination to work for nature. My confidence in the transformative effect of an operational, performance based rating tool continues to be realised. I thank everyone who over the last 25 years has contributed to the success of the program and taken my early work forward.
