Enigin Update - City of Sydney Plan Office Energy Efficiency Scheme
THE Australian city of Sydney intends to sign 10 agreements over the next 12 months to improve energy efficiency in the city’s office buildings.
A city official said yesterday that the plan is to help commercial building owners to gain access to private capital and to share the upgrade costs with tenants.
Sydney, a city of around 4.5 million people, has set a 70 percent target for the reduction of CO2 emissions by 2030, based on the city’s 2006 energy use. this scheme is a small step to reach that target..
Sydney's sustainability programmes manager, Tom Belsham, is reported by Reuters as saying: "Because it's a relatively new business for us, we want to just offer 10 to start with and learn from how we inter-operate with the business community and finance providers,"
The programme will be know as the “Environmental Upgrade Agreements”, and will see the local council collecting the loan repayments for the financial provider from a buildings owner. Hence the repayments will be as a council charge on the property, meaning that landlords will be able to pass the charge to their tenants, but only once they are enjoying the benefits of lower energy costs.
Belsham revealed that the National Australia Bank, the country’s biggest lender, is ready to take part, with several other financial organisations showing interest in the scheme.
Apart from the financial and repayment plans. the city is also offering energy efficiency grants to the city’s businesses of AUS$40,000 ($40,500) to reduce power bills and emissions.
It is universally recognised that energy efficient buildings will attract more tenants and boost returns for investors.
The City of Sydney’s scheme should see an uptake in energy efficiency retrofits and measures, particularly with the country's recently adopted disclosure of energy efficiency scheme for office buildings. Enigin Distributors in the region are well placed to help building owners to improve the energy efficiency of their properties, quickly and cost effectively, with products and systems from Enigin.
Picture of Sydney skyline at dusk by Diliff (Own work) [CC-BY-SA-3.0 or GFDL], via Wikimedia Commons
