Wednesday, January 12

This morning we met with Matthew Hyder with Legacy Property (a native Texan of all things). He and his former boss formed Legacy about two years ago and primarily focus on consulting work at this time. The majority of their developments are residential communities, ranging in size from 70 lots to 1,200 lots. He provided a brief overview of his company and their services, development in Australia versus in the states, and his involvement with sustainability. He touched on the Building Sustainability Index (BASIX), which is for residential development only. What is great about this system is that a builder is required to get his building certified per the requirements of this system before they will be able to pull the occupancy permits. This is a perfect example of how it can be good for government intervention in sustainability. Programs like this are, in my mind, the best way for government to get involved in sustainability. Having all of the sustainability programs being voluntary give the owner/builder too many excuses not to do it. When it comes down to it, the dollar and cents are the bottom line. Implementing a baseline that a builder must meet is a good start.

Matt also discussed the National Australian Building Energy Rating System (NABERS). This system is for commercial developments and is based on performance only. You are required to get you building certified if you plan to lease a 2,000 sqm space or larger for more than a year.

When asked if he plans to incorporate sustainable practices in his residential neighborhoods, Matt said that it’s very hard to unless you privatize the entire neighborhood (streets, utilities and all). The thought behind this is to have smaller infrastructure systems installed because the residential lots will have less demand because they are being building with sustainable systems such as Michael Mobbs’ house. Matt said that he honestly never thought of it that way, but that the idea sounds logical. I my opinion, unless it is built into the neighborhood’s development plan that each house is built in such a fashion that it will only draw X amount of utilities per year, then the City will not allow their system to be intentionally undersized. Yes, houses are built with more and more water and energy efficient components and these sustainable systems are becoming more prevalent, but there is always that concern that you get a block of houses that decides not to do any of those things. If that happens and the City has an undersized infrastructure system, then they open themselves to issues that they would never want.

Again, I think it come back to education. Builders and consumers need more education as to the overall benefits of sustainability and I really think it needs to be focused on the cost savings more than anything. Nothing is more enticing than money. Also, a lot of people these days have the mentality that the current environmental issues are not their concern because they’ll be long and dead before they become truly harmful to themselves.

Later this afternoon, we met with Robin Mellon, the Executive Director of the Green Building Council of Australia (GBCA). The GBCA has created the Green Star rating system, which is comparable to the LEED rating system created by the US Green Building Council. The GBCA’s primary focuses are to “Rate, Educate and Advocate” sustainability. They are a not-for-profit organization that was created in 2002 and now has over 900 member organizations. They are big proponents of government advocation of sustainability. Going back to what I’ve said in previous days blogs, most people think only in dollars and cents when it comes to commercial development. Having local, state and federal government mandate certain requirements is a way of forcing sustainability into commercial development. Overtime, it will begin to become industry standard to put in these measures.

Towards the end of his presentation, he discussed what they’ve seen as the cost implications of implementing sustainable systems into their designs. To get a project a 4-Star rating, construction cost is about 2% higher, a 5-Star rating is about 5% higher, and the sky’s the limit on a 6-Star rating. They found it hard to pinpoint a cost for 6-Star rated projects because they tend to be very over designed, and therefore have an inflated cost. He made it a point to tell us this, because he feels that there is still a stigma that sustainable development is upwards of 15-20% higher than standard construction. A few years back, yes, this was definitely the case. Now, the products and systems that are being specified for sustainable systems are more readily available, therefore have a lower cost.

The very end of his presentation consisted of going through each of the Green Star credit categories and discussing a project that has stood out for what they did in that regard. He discussed a project that had a tri-generation energy system that not only powered its building fully, but supplied power to adjacent buildings as well.