Property owners who purchase or use on-site renewable energy will be recognised under a new energy performance measure from the National Australian Built Environment Ratings System (NABERS).
With more than 20 years of data from measuring buildings’ energy efficiency, NABERS is uniquely placed to provide transparency around the use of renewable energy in Australian buildings. This additional transparency is expected to lead to an increase in all-electric buildings purchasing 100 per cent renewable energy.
NABERS director Carlos Flores said that the new indicator has been two years in the making to ensure that it sets a strong framework for how renewable energy is measured and recognised in buildings.
“What we have seen over our two decades of rating buildings on energy efficiency is that ‘what gets measured gets managed’,” he told The Fifth Estate.
“We’ve seen buildings participating in NABERS save 30 to 40 per cent on their energy use over the last decade, and we have seen the impact of how measurement leads to improved energy outcomes.
“The NABERS Energy star rating will continue to recognise how energy efficient a building is while the new Renewable Energy Indicator will complement this by recognising the efforts of those making progress towards running their buildings on 100 per cent renewable energy.”
Launched on Tuesday, the Renewable Energy Indicator provides a percentage score showing how much of a building’s total energy used is from clean renewable energy sources, as well as disclosing the amount of fossil fuels used. It will be included on every NABERS Energy certificate.
He said NABERS was motivated to design the tool because some in the industry wanted to expand their use of renewable energy and be recognised for it. Many stakeholders also wanted an indicator to provide more transparency to support their efforts to reduce on-site fossil fuel, which can otherwise be hard to communicate.
“We are very thankful to the hundreds of organisations, individuals and industry bodies in the building sector, who advocated for and helped shape the Renewable Energy Indicator over the past two years. Their efforts were instrumental in designing a new indicator that is helping NABERS evolve to drive buildings to be energy efficient as well as fully decarbonised.”
Flores said the tool will support a large number of developers that are already designing their new buildings to be all-electric, as well as many others who are setting roadmaps to remove fossil fuels from their buildings.
“We know fully decarbonising our buildings in the next couple of decades will be a major challenge. The Renewable Energy Indicator is designed to meet buildings wherever they are at in their decarbonisation journey and provide them with an indicator to track their path towards zero emissions” he said.
All-electric buildings have lower and lower emissions every year, which industry overwhelmingly asked us to recognise in NABERS ratings
Flores said the launch of the Renewable Energy Indicator follows efforts NABERS is already making to recognise that all-electric technologies are becoming lower in carbon over time, as the electricity grid decarbonises. NABERS adjusted its star ratings to recognise these increased benefits in 2021, with a further adjustment scheduled for 2025.
“All-electric buildings have lower and lower emissions every year, which industry overwhelmingly asked us to recognise in NABERS ratings. The changes we are making to NABERS will see the star ratings of all-electric buildings increase every five years, when NABERS adjusts its star ratings, while those with a major use of on-site fossil fuels will decrease.”
NABERS research shows that retirement living, hospitals and hotels have the largest proportion of fossil fuel usage in their overall energy mix, followed by residential aged care, apartment buildings and offices.
Flores expects that the next few years will be a crucial turning point for buildings to increase their use of renewable energy sources and particularly for office buildings, consumer preferences will accelerate the transition, which will depend on tenants having access to transparent information on the energy profile of the building, including through sources like the Renewable Energy Indicator.
For more information on the Renewable Energy Indicator, visit the NABERS website.
