The City of Sydney’s Sustainability Leadership Event on Tuesday night was partly a retrospective on the work the City’s done over several years to advance the sustainability in key built environment sectors.
In part it was also a calling card to the federal government to open up its creative mind – and wallet – and let this thing flourish nationally.
To make sure the message hit home Assistant Minister Climate Change and Energy Jenny McAllister was among the leaders invited to address the full house audience at the recently renamed new building at the NSW Art Gallery Naala Badu.
There was quite a list of achievements outlined by the resilient and long-standing Lord Mayor Clover Moore and for once we’ve decided to include the list in full, so you can judge for yourself.
The thing is that, quite apart from the numbers in terms of emissions and money saved and companies and buildings taking part, the City now has quite a few tricks up its sleeve on how to influence behaviour change, possibly the hardest change factor of all.
We know from hard experience that the logic, the science and sometimes even the money – will fail to shift the agenda unless we can get that one thing done right up front.
Think of garbage and recycling. It’s almost impossible to impart the understanding of materials and how to dispose of them correctly. And to make the learning stick.
One of the crowd favourites of the night was Roger Stanford from EML (Employers Mutual Ltd) who outlined his team’s gamification solution to make that learning fun and engaging.
Moore outlined four key programs that the City has dedicated nine staff to rolling out, both for the benefit of its stakeholders and to show leadership to others.
It’s got a track record in extending influence beyond its borders.
In resilience Beck Dawson’s team at the city has managed to engage all of the metropolitan area’s councils in a program that’s been widely acclaimed.
Many will say, this is as it should be because Sydney is probably the most well resourced local government in Australia given it’s the favoured Australian headquarters for most of the biggest corporates operating in this country.
Its main program over around two decades has been CitySwitch, which aims to encourage the occupants of the city to aim for sustainability outcomes.
Key goals are energy efficiency, renewable energy, waste and recycling and social engagement dividends through some of the programs it’s run to generate motivation.
Already it’s reached other local government sectors such as the City of Melbourne, and other councils such as Adelaide, North Sydney, Ballarat, Yarra and Waverley.
Its corollary is the Better Buildings Partnership, designed for the owners and its opportunity is clearly to work in concert with its tenant stakeholders, which the City of Melbourne has now joined. (Adelaide, Perth, and the rest, where are you? Especially Brisbane where the branded “green” Olympic Games will soon shine an intense spotlight on performance.)
The timing is perfect
It couldn’t be a better time to grow both CitySwitch and the BBP.
The corporates are getting pressure from their financiers, from government on sustainability disclosures and from their stakeholders who are beating the drums of engagement (check out the pressure Woodside has come under in recent times from eco activist shareholders many big institutional investors.)
Around the traps we’re hearing some tenants are jumping ship on their leases because the owners don’t have a decent net zero strategy in place. And that poorly performing buildings are being sold at throwaway prices (being picked up by Japanese investors, we hear. But what they’ll do with them we don’t know. Maybe they want to change the memory narrative of a few decades back when they bought at the top and sold at the bottom.)
Property investors at the top end of town are doing just fine. We hear this over and over and hope that complacency doesn’t take hold. But it’s the commercial buildings a few steps down from that top tier that are still struggling.
The Feds understand, sort of, how important buildings are to the net zero challenge and it released its long awaited National Energy Performance Strategy, sadly to not much fanfare given its modest goals and budget.
As several of the speakers pointed out on Tuesday night, buildings consume around half the energy generated in the grid and big savings can be achieved with very little capital investment.
Again, the human factor – behaviour change – can achieve a lot.
And even at the very successful top end those property owners and managers can do a lot more. Often as these programs reveal it takes the dogged commitment of generally just one person to make organisations change.
A great example of persistent and different thinking we need to keep bringing to the table is that of Craig Roussac of Buildings Alive.
Roussac, despite the resources of the big built environment organisations, has succeed in getting the notion of load shifting onto the national broadsheets engaging Sydney Morning Herald’s lead economics writer Ross Gittins to tackle the story.
A collaboration with Australia Institute’s Richard Denniss didn’t go astray in that foray. But this is exactly how you get cut through to the national political agenda – big names, logical simple solutions and the weight of opinion and reach.
Shifting loads sounds nerdy but it’s simple – you use most of your energy when the sun shines, during the day, as in Australia or when the wind blows, during the night, as in Europe.
“A concerted government program to develop the demand side in the NEM might be able to organise load shifting in 30 per cent of in 2025 and 60 per cent in 2026 and 90 per cent in 2027 if work starts in late 2024,” argues Roussac in the paper he co authored with Denniss.
To be fair, the Feds do include load shifting in their NEPS.
So if commercial buildings – especially the B and C grade buildings and below – are struggling despite the attention, imagine how hard it still for other sectors that have remained off the radar because it’s “too hard” or because of trenchant resistance. Shopping centres, we won’t go into in any big way. Suffice to say they aggressively opposed having anything to do with the Commercial Disclosure Program (CBD) when it was rolled out to the commercial sector and is now hailed internationally as a leader in behaviour change ecosystems.
Nevertheless, some of the sector’s leaders pushed past the opposition and achieved good results regardless.
But spare a thought for the hospitality sector, once described to us as all glamourous facade for the hotel guest and behind the curtains the metaphorical little old man peddling as hard as possible to keep the lights on and Band-Aid the leaky bits.
The City of Sydney has tackled that sector too, through its Sustainable Destination Partnership and representatives on the night outlined their fledgling wins.
But one of the hardest of all to tackle is the apartment sector where about half of the Australian population will soon live.
New apartments are hard enough to get up to a quality sustainable level of comfort (let’s not mention affordable) but the really hard part is converting existing apartments.
Yet as you can read in Moore’s speech the City has managed to reverse the drain of carbon and money on 15 apartment buildings though its Smart Green Apartments work. Moore says the Smart Green Apartments has helped save $9 million for owners corporations costs on behalf of occupants.
Again the successes might not be a lot in terms of numbers but it’s the learnings and modelling that the City wants to leverage and roll out to other councils and likely interest groups.
Imagine how complex are the human factors in negotiating unengaged, uninformed and sometimes obstructionist apartment owners.
So more than the hard dollar and carbon savings (which are very much linked) it’s the knowledge gained from the negotiations that the Feds and state governments nationally can leverage.
It’s true the Feds have announced a $100 million for local governments to lift the sustainability in their own buildings, led by Linda Scott who also attended on the night, through her work as president of the Australian Local Government Association. However, it’s councils’ constituents’ assets that also need a leg up.
The City of Sydney spends around $600,000 on its team’s salaries and associated costs to run the four programs mentioned on the night and it’s handed out $2.9 million in grants to associated members.
But to reach other councils and other organisations, it needs a major injection of funds. And it’s raring to go.
Latching onto an existing system is a great way to circumvent the potential pitfalls of new policy delivery when a lot of experienced staff at the federal were shoved off by the previous government and the current crop may still lack experience on the ground.
When it comes to wheels it’s a brilliant idea not to not reinvent them.
The seven presenters who charmed the audience with their projects were:
- Lina Rico-Gomez, Charter Hall
- Jackie McKeon, Business Renewables Centre Australia
- Aaron Callaghan, Caley Apartments
- Gabrielle Pavicic, Green Building Council Australia
- Roger Stanford, EML
- Mei McNamara, Manager ESG, Salter Bros
- David Young, Accor Hotels
