30 Nov 2022
A message from the CEO Davina Rooney
“Australia is back” as a constructive, positive and willing climate collaborator, said Climate Change Minister Chris Bowen during the 27th United Nations climate conference, COP27, this month.
But as IPCC chair Hoesung Lee noted, the voice of science on climate change “could not be sharper, stronger, and more sobering” and “the time for our collective action is now.”
The world is like a teenager who left their homework until the night before it is due. After 20 years to prepare and plan, we are now in the last-minute scramble. The disorderly transition is underway.
How do we, as an industry, respond?
We double down in the decade of action.
We do this by electrifying our buildings at speed and scale. (Check out our article about the amazing launch of the Cooksafe Coalition in this issue of Green Building Voice.)
We build highly efficient, fossil fuel free homes that healthy, resilient and powered by renewables. (And with hundreds of Green Star Homes registered for certification this year, the market is finally on the move!)
We broaden our scope to tackle upfront carbon and circular economy thinking, to work with manufacturers to influence the supply chain for sustainable products, and to collaborate with governments to embed Green Star into social infrastructure. (All this, and more, outlined in our new three-year strategy).
We lead from the front, even when the road is rocky. (And we are thrilled to announce our new board members Anthony Boyd, Julie Coates, Selina Short, Courtney Smith and Guy Templeton, and to honour our departing leaders Susan-Lloyd Hurwitz and Tanya Cox, this month.)
We treat climate resilience with the same urgency as the global race to net zero. (Find out how two GBCA members are racing towards resilience in this month’s Green Building Voice).
And we celebrate the success of our peers and partners. (A standing ovation for BlueScope and Q Building for being finalists at the WorldGBC Asia Pacific Leadership in Green Building Awards.)
Our collective approach is working. Green Star: a year in focus 2021-22 reveals that more than 51 million sqm of building space is now Green Star certified.
What’s more, the percentage of users who are ‘extremely satisfied’ with Green Star rose by 13% in just one year – a great outcome as the industry transitions to the more challenging benchmarks in Green Star Buildings.
For those of us who were doing our homework 20 years ago, the disorderly transition we now face can seem unfair. But we must be grateful for each sign of progress, and to keep stepping up and striding out together on the pathway to net zero.