Aussie tools

As a nation of sporting fanatics, Australians are attracted to record-breaking statistics – but there’s a few that we would do well to avoid. Australians live on the world’s driest occupied continent, we are the third highest users of water per capita and we have the dubious distinction of being the second highest energy consumers per capita.

Energy was a term that, until recently, did not appear in our national building regulations (actually, those are also a relatively new concept, but I will save that for another forum) – but at last things are improving. Our Building Codes now include provision for enhanced energy efficiency in commercial buildings and they may even be up to UK standards, circa 1936!

Australians live with a legacy of poor water management and planning while confronted with a resource that is temporally and spatially variable, limited, and not necessarily located in areas of high demand. About 26% of the country’s surface water management areas, mainly in the south east of the continent, are close to or have exceeded sustainable extraction limits.

Many of you would find it farcical that Australians are only now starting to debate water recycling as a fundamental element in any future water management strategy. The very concept of recycling waste water for drinking would leave most Australians aghast.

Their preferred option is a two billion dollar desalination plant, a few hundred metres from where Captain James Cook first landed on Australian terra firma, which would increase the total energy consumed in NSW by a staggering 5%. However, after a huge public outcry, community opposition has killed off this proposal, at least for the time being.

The water and energy problems we have in Australia are fundamentally the same the world over, and there is sufficient credible evidence to demonstrate that Sydney’s water problems could be resolved for the next 35 years through recycling and reduction initiatives alone.

Is benchmarking the answer?

Australians might be some of the world’s worst polluters, but we are also among the best benchmarkers

Australians might be some of the worst polluters in the world, but we are also among the best ‘benchmarkers’, and herein may lie part of our salvation.

One of the keys to the more efficient use of water and energy is to establish recognised benchmarks for performance. The Australian Building Greenhouse Rating (ABGR) scheme is a relatively new and nationally recognised benchmark that measures the greenhouse performance of a building or tenancy (or both) and awards a star rating of one to five.

It is getting to the stage where building owners can’t let space and developers can’t get leasing commitments without being able to deliver a good ABGR performance, so they are now desperately trying to improve the energy performance of their buildings lest they be left behind – and this is a voluntary scheme!

Benchmarking is now moving into the realm of measuring the full environmental performance of buildings, with the development of a scheme called NABERS (National Australian Built Environment Rating System). When fully implemented, this system will rate a building’s environmental performance, measuring energy use and greenhouse emissions, water use, refrigerant use, storm water, landscape diversity, toxic materials and indoor air quality.

Energy aside, the only element of the new scheme currently available is NABERS Water. It’s early days, but industry watchers are hopeful that this will have the same impact on water use as ABGR is having on energy.

Of course benchmarking is only a tool, but it is something the layperson can relate to, and properly applied will help non technical people appreciate that things might need improving.

Perhaps this is just as well, because at present over 90% of New South Wales is drought-declared, Perth has exhausted most of its natural ground and subterranean water supplies, and there are serious supply problems in Melbourne, Adelaide and Brisbane.