14 Feb 2019
Tenants have a critical role to play in driving demand for better performing buildings. As large users of energy in the commercial office building sector, there is an opportunity for tenant engagement to help manage building emissions and improve the uptake of cost-effective actions.
A new report by Energy Action for the City of Sydney has found that substantial energy and cost savings can be achieved through the disclosure of tenancy performance by expanding the Commercial Building Disclosure (CBD) program to all building energy users.
The report explores a number of scenarios where the disclosure of tenant energy performance can be used as a tool to drive efficiency outcomes, and makes recommendations for how this could be implemented. Overall, it finds that an expansion of the CBD program to tenancies could provide cost-effective energy efficiency gains. For tenancies with a minimum size of 1000 sqm, the use of mandatory disclosure to drive performance change can present savings up to $187 million, depending on the scope and costs assumed for the policy. For tenancies of this size, the analysis also finds that up to 7,900 TJ of cumulative energy savings is possible and cumulative carbon abatement of up to 1.7 Mt CO2-e by 2030.
Tenancies was identified as one of the key sectors that should be targeted for inclusion by the CBD program in the report Opportunity Knocks: Accelerating energy efficiency for mid-tier buildings, which proposed five immediate actions for governments to realise the opportunities for accelerating energy efficiency for mid-tier buildings. Currently, large sections of the office community are unaware of their emissions output and failing to take the cost effective actions available to them. A regulatory trigger, such as that provided by the CBD Program is a necessary and essential first step towards a commercial building sector that measures and manages its emissions.
Read the Energy Action report here