Sustainability
NET-ZERO NATION BUILDING: INDUSTRY PUSH OR POLICY SHOVE?
Author: Phil Bartsch Urban Developer
The big push is on for Australia to become a net-zero nation and there is no question a lot of the heavy lifting will need to be done by the property development sector. Figurehead founder Joe Grasso, Mitchell Brandtman partner Maoibh Russell and Hip v Hype’s Gavin Ashley with The Urban Developer’s Taryn Paris [left] during the panel.
“We’re a fair way behind as an industry,” he says. “But there’s definitely not enough incentive at the moment. Ask all the developers out there how they’re being incentivised to go down these pathways. They’re just not. “And market conditions are just so tough. “It’s so hard to run a construction site these days and has been for the last few years, that it’s difficult to get outside of just surviving and into this [net-zero] world.” However, Figurehead has proven it can be done with the delivery of its 11-storey carbon-neutral office building 116 Rockeby at inner-city Melbourne’s Collingwood. ‘Unfeasible’ Asked how he made the project’s feasibility stack, Grasso pulled no punches: “We didn’t.” “It’s a long-term asset hold for us,” he says “It’s our own building. It’s our new corporate head office. So there was a different mindset around how we structured our feasibility. “But simply, it probably cost us circa 15 to 20 per cent more to go down the path of a 5.5 NABERS sustainability rating and then having a platinum WELLS certification,
The construction and operating of buildings accounts for 40 per cent of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions. But so far the industry has been slow to grab the barbell for the transition to achieve the Australian Government’s targeted net-zero emissions by 2050. And according to industry experts, it is a hard sell given the prevailing industry challenges and the push will likely need to come to policy shove. “Definitely, I think we’re going to need a lot of policy to drive this change,” quantity surveying group Mitchell Brandtman partner Maoibh Russell told a panel discussion at The Urban Developer’s flagship Urbanity conference on the Gold Coast. “We’re looking at DAs every day for new developments and there’s nothing in them at the moment about net zero. “So I think for people to have to make a change it is going to have to be enforced.” But she quickly adds: “At the moment, developers are finding it very expensive just to build what they’re currently doing without the additional factor of net-zero building”. Joe Grasso, founder of Melbourne-based construction group Figurehead, agrees.
10 – August / September 2024
Powered by FlippingBook