How Recent NABERS Changes will Impact Your Building

NABERS Energy Benchmarking Tool

NABERS (National Australian Built Environment Rating System) has provided an energy benchmarking tool to the property industry for 20 years. It provides ratings for energy, water and waste for the built environment – based on actual use of the facility. It gives building owners the support to accurately measure energy output to track their energy-saving progress.

As of the 1st of July 2021, NABERS has updated its energy tools to align with the changes to the National Greenhouse Accounts (NGA) emissions factors. The NGA Factors give companies the methods they need to measure and estimate carbon output. These changes to the emission factors will be updated every 5 years and will have an impact on NABERS results across all buildings within Australia.

What are the changes?

NABERS are making the change to how it calculates a building’s star rating to ensure businesses with more carbon-neutral energy sources are receiving higher ratings. The changes should incentivise the real estate industry to electrify their buildings to achieve long term carbon-neutrality. To better reflect the carbonisation of different energy sources, gas consumption is no longer perceived as green energy, as it actually cannot be decarbonised. 

NABERS has made these changes to ensure its energy tool reflects the alteration in the energy mix, which has shifted mostly to electricity since it was last updated over 10 years ago. Throughout the last 10 years, the Australian Government has been heavily investing in renewable energy sources, shutting down coal plants to decarbonise the grid in Australia. Most buildings are striving to attain a net-zero outcome by 2030, which has seen a significant increase of solar penetration in the grid and use of other renewable energy sources; 

Click here to see a more detailed analysis of the potential changes and effects on your building >

How will this affect your building?

Building’s that use mostly gas will soon see a slight decrease in rating results. By 2025 and 2030 buildings with high gas use will have their ratings significantly penalised. However, buildings that use electricity and less gas will see an increase in rating results.

To assist your business with the change, NABERS has developed an Emissions Prediction Tool which enables you to estimate the impact of the NGA changes on your business. This new tool uses the latest NGA emissions factors to calculate future ratings, taking into account the decarbonisation of the grid. The tool allows you to forecast your rating in 2025 and 2030, assuming your energy output remains the same. To see how your building’s energy rating will be impacted, download the Emissions Prediction Tool available for free on the NABERS website. 

How should you minimise the impact on your business?

Optimise your building performance, by ensuring you have the right sustainability practices in place. Adhering to an overarching energy-focused framework will allow you to investigate problems and optimise building performance more sustainably.

There’s a variety of energy-focused strategies you can implement to ensure you are not affected by these changes. This includes:

• Selecting the right building and energy management systems for your buildings.
• Tools needed to track building performance, reduce operating costs, and support NABERS as well as other sustainability initiatives.
• Implementing a variety of air, water and other energy conservation measures to not only enhance your energy efficiency but also improve tenant comfort satisfaction. 

If you want more guidance, get in touch with our NABERS experts at Conservia. We act as advisors, managing and executing the projects to help building owners and operators reduce their energy output. We provide guaranteed reductions in operational costs and greenhouse gas emissions, mitigating your investment risk, so you can future-proof your NABERS ratings, and ensure you’re meeting your energy sustainability targets.

We strive to make your building 5 stars and beyond, taking a holistic approach to reducing your carbon output and improving your building’s performance by designing, deploying, and post-development optimisation and tuning activities. This ensures our energy-saving measures will deliver guaranteed results. To find out how we can help reduce your energy output and increase your NABERS rating, contact us here. We’ll make sure you won’t be left behind.