There is no lack of talent, ambition, research or good intent when it comes to sustainability solutions, according to Jess Miller, former deputy lord mayor of Sydney and sustainability advocate.
In her new role as the director for A New Normal Sydney, the disruptive outfit founded by Ross Harding of Finding Infinity, Miller helped curate a series of project blueprints in Sydney that could kick off new thinking – and new low carbon action.
The project, covering everything from the electrification of a major city building owned by ISPT to how to convert redundant office space to housing, in a collaboration between Goodman and Other Architects was on the table.
Miller tells The Fifth Estate an exhibition of 16 prototypes with big zero carbon and sustainability ambitions was curated for the recent Vivid Sydney festival to identify solutions that seem “stuck” and to “bring together some of Sydney’s best and brightest to come up with a conceptual solution”.
A key consideration, she says is that each project must pay for itself within 10 years, and “create impact at scale”.
Extracts from some of the projects and plans follow:
Ending landfill – through a sustainable shopping centre
A team consisting of Second Edition, Heleana Genaus and Mud Australia has proposed a shopping centre fitout comprised of sustainable construction materials made of recycled waste.
The solution involves a versatile, disassembled fitout system that utilises unused B-grade construction materials. Part of the fitout uses B grade Lutyens bricks by Natural Brick Co that are made from locally sourced recycled materials from various waste streams.
The bricks are a standard size, durable, and easily assembled or disassembled, meaning retail fitouts can be adaptable while reducing environmental impact and cost effective.
The method is cost effective for new businesses, reduces waste, promotes environmental stewardship for commercial fitouts and revitalises empty retail spaces.
Examples of successful similar cases across the world include:
- XFrame in Australia has reduced construction waste and assembly time using circular construction technology and is 100 per cent reusable
- Buiksloterham in Amsterdam, the Netherlands is a neighbourhood founded on circularity and commits to an 80 per cent circular use of materials, creating a digital inventory and creating public spaces using reused materials – such as the bridge behind its Central Station
Creating Organic Energy – through waste to energy
Food waste generates methane, a greenhouse gas that’s 28 to 36 times more potent in landfills than carbon dioxide. A team of Hill Thalis Architecture’s Urban Projects and Landcom came up with AGora, an organic waste to energy plant based in the heart of Glenfield sporting hub.
The proposed system can treat up to 25 tonnes of food waste per day, diverting 1 kilogram of food and garden organic waste per day per household from landfill.
The plant can produce up to 20 kilolitres of recycled water, 12.2 megawatts/hour of heat, 11.6 megawatts/hour of electricity and 2 to 2.5 tonnes of fertilisers for local reuse.
The plant will feed this energy into the sporting hub of Glenfield, feeding free and constant energy into local sports and the surround community. Besides free food, water, energy and fertiliser, the build will also include using hybrid timber construction and recycled materials, e-mobility to deliver food and crop waste, and a community garden utilising urban hydroponics, aquaculture and biogas for community barbecues.
Examples of successful similar cases across the world include:
- Disneyland in Florida has installed a large anaerobic digester that treats 120,000 tonnes of food waste a year, providing 5.3 megawatts of heat and energy for the park
- ARTI in India has designed an anaerobic digestor system on a household scale, which processes 1-2 kilograms of food waste daily, supplying 1000 biogas plants daily in South India. Cooking with biogas saves approximately 0.3 tonnes of carbon dioxide per year
Urban Cooling – through indigenous biofiltration
According to Blue Green a startup dedicated to reimagining urban climate Rushcutters Bay (Yaranabe) and its adjacent parkland (Kogerah), despite being Sydney harbour’s most culturally significant places, will see much of it underwater from rising sea levels, and it is estimated to be completely decimated by 2100.
The venture provides a platform for Traditional Owners to have a voice in the solution, which the Yaranabe people of the area cared for until 1895.
The project hopes to explore the idea of building slight elevation to a shady foreshore, introducing a purifying forest of mangroves or oyster reefs and restoring the canal’s banks to its indigenous biofiltration habitat.
Examples of successful cases across the globe:
- Seoul converted its Gyeongui railway line into a forest in response to its average summer temperature increasing by 4.3 degrees Celsius between 1976 and 2016.The city also aims to reduce the urban heat island effect by creating 1000 gardens and 1000 forests to lower its temperature by 2030
- California’s prototype strategy of increasing Sacramento’s tree canopy coverage by 25 per cent could save residential buildings up to 40 per cent energy savings. Even neighbouring cities, Phoenix and Lake Charles, could see a 25 per cent increase in residential energy savings.
Electrifying Architecture
3XN x ISPT x CBRE x Positive Futures
The following is an excerpt from Jess Millers’ report on George place in Sydney
The challenge was to understand how to electrify existing commercial buildings in ways that help achieve net zero, deliver returns to investors, reduce the risk exposure of assets, support tenants and take full advantage of the decarbonisation of the grid and reduce the risk exposure of the asset.
The team managing the project recognised that the ongoing use of gas in commercial buildings was a carbon liability but realised through the process of doing the work that decarbonisation was less about technical fixes and more about building trust and consolidating productive relationships between all stakeholders – investors, owners, tenants, property managers and government.
In developing this concept, the team decided to raise the ambition of electrifying one building and instead to tackle the challenge at the precinct scale.
The issues of governance and finance inevitably came up. In short, it’s complicated.
Considerations included:
- the state of existing energy infrastructure within the building such as heating and cooling plant, generators, submain, switchboard and substation capacity– it’s hard to argue to upgrade infrastructure that is either new or still has years of operational life left.
- the constraints of the building(s) including heritage overlays and planning controls
- the upfront cost and payback period
- to what extent precinct electrification for George Place supports organisational commitments to ESG
- current leases and the views, needs and operating context for current investors, tenants and industry bodies
Interestingly, many of these practical realities are as true for a commercial building as they are for the upgrade of a home or smaller-scale building.
The vision:
It became obvious quite quickly that the initial hypothetical desire to electrify George Place required a more systemic and integrated approach. It wasn’t long before the team’s aspiration for the concept surpassed electrification to imagine a more transformative approach to George Place (as you can see from the concept render).
This transformation includes:
- embedding designing with country principles
- stakeholder buy-in, including behavioural change and the role of cultural norms and commitments to sustainability by tenants and throughout the supply chain
- upcycling of locally sourced materials to address embodied carbon
- adaptive re-use of building components
- adoption of technology and high performance elements
- rooftop food production
- green walls and air purification
- social and community space
- engaging with local supply chain and manufacturing
A conclusion was that if it was important to leverage willingness to undertake a significant transformation for as much benefit as possible.
The insight and provoked thought about the extent to which energy upgrades of buildings can catalyse improvements in efficiency, environmental, social and financial outcomes. How do we ensure that in the pursuit of electrification, we don’t become myopic about other performance factors of a building or precinct and miss out on achieving full transformative potential?
In theory, the concept could be turned into a pilot that can have impact at scale.
The context globally and at home
In cities such as San Diego there has been a ban on gas in buildings to help shrink the city’s carbon footprint. Fossil fuels have been banned in new buildings and there are policies in place to decarbonise existing buildings.
Closer to home, regulations are now in place in Canberra to prevent new gas connections. Over the next 17 years, the electrification of government gas assets program will replace gas-powered assets used within government-owned buildings.
For the George Place electrification concept to become a fully funded pilot project and unlock further opportunities to electrify other existing commercial buildings it looks like there needs to be policy intervention, mechanisms and incentives.
Some of the mechanisms that could be explored include:
1.bans: are a highly effective stick approach, but can also incite rage, political division and misunderstanding, further delaying action. So, what do we mean by” banning” gas?
In effect a ban can mean that there is no choice for a developer or asset owner to choose a gas heating, cooking or energy system over an electric one in a new development.
This choice can be enforced by planning controls usually set at the local government, or in the case of the ACT and Victoria, at a state government level.
Already, quite a few NSW councils have added conditions within development control plans for new buildings, which means that if a developer comes to council with a scheme that includes a gas connection it will not be approved.
Interestingly, NSW government developer Landcom has not included a gas connection in any of its new schemes for the past 10 years.
2. highlighting the benefits of electrification (and risks of not). Among the challenges were whether the absence of a gas connection would put off potential tenants – particularly in hospitality.
This is a real consideration, and one that will benefit from the ongoing work of organisations like the Green Building Council of Australia (GBCA) and the Cooksafe Coalition that dispels the myth that cooking with gas burners is better than with induction cooktops.
Another consideration is whether the decision not to get off gas risks properties becoming stranded or exposed assets in future.
Gas, compared to electricity has trebled in cost and renewables will continue to make energy cheaper. Scenarios for asset owners and commercial property real estate service providers will need to consider the [downward?] spiral of gas costs to those dependent on connections as others continue to depend on the network.
3. financial mechanisms that help cover the upfront capital costs of upgrades:
This is an area ripe for exploration by the finance, property and government sector. One of the major barriers preventing upgrades is the upfront capital costs in doing so – despite the almost immediate medium and long-term emissions reduction and cost-saving benefits.
The finance sector, ideally in collaboration with NSW Treasury and property industry experts, are well placed to explore this.
The replacement of equipment such as heat pumps might also offer local manufacturing opportunities if accompanied by preferential procurement of locally made products like heat pumps.
4. fast-tracked planning approvals for developments that deliver on net zero and energy upgrades.
Another potential lever that the government could use as a financial incentive for the property sector to go above and beyond in delivering energy upgrades is to provide a fast-tracked planning approvals pathway through the Department of Planning and local councils.
One solution could be a Net Zero Delivery Unit similar to the case management function role the Planning Delivery Unit plays within the current NSW Planning scheme.
Conversion of office to residential
As office vacancy and the housing crisis continued to rage, Sydney-based Other Architects and commercial developers Goodman had set out to design “Homework” – a concept of converting office buildings into housing.
By retrofitting underutilised commercial spaces into modern, practical and flexible apartments, they can avoid the demolition of large buildings while also improving housing supplies and sustainability.
The concept has already been tested on an unremarkable and partly vacant commercial building in an inner-north shore Sydney business park.
The space was designed to be the saw toothed “industrial loft” of this century, which allows for horizontal expansive and adaptable modes of living outside of current restrictive housing.
It draws inspiration from the 20th century when vacant inner-city factories and warehouses offered refuge to squatters, artists, students and entrepreneurs. The conversion of raw and lofty industrial buildings into hybridised creative and domestic spaces would encourage embracing contemporary life: the intermingling of home and work.
But it wasn’t as easy as reoccupying the space; the design had to open a “collective backyard” utilising the unused outdoor and undercover living space. The ground floor carpark was also converted into local scale cafes and shops. The roof will also allow for a solar and water harvesting installation.
The team hopes to convert undesirable office buildings into flexible housing complexes across Sydney and the rest of the country, helping preserve embodied carbon, materiality and labour.