Sydney has draft environmental upgrade agreements: the race is on
It’s got Richard Branson and his Carbon War Room and potentially billions of dollars of investment in the United States. Australia is also in on the act and Melbourne and Sydney are vying to be the first to market.
It’s the race to roll out the first batch of energy efficiency retrofits for commercial buildings that pay for themselves through savings on the power bills, and use private investment funding repaid through local government rates.
The City of Sydney has recently posted a draft template for what an environmental upgrade agreement template might look like and Parramatta and North Sydney councils are close behind. The NSW Office of Environment & Heritage has posted a set of guidelines for the state wide legislation that governs the agreements.
Melbourne already has its guidelines for a program confined initially to its 1200 buildings program and could be close to the first deal involving a building of more than 40,000 and a retrofit worth between up to $14 million. Continue reading
Strategic Asset Management
Property owners are now emerging from survival mode and searching for opportunities.
One of the first steps is evaluation and gaining a better understanding of their existing portfolios, to make the best of what they’ve got – given constraints on availability of finance. Typically the portfolios are older, B grade and ripe for opportunity.
Strategic Asset Planning provides short, medium and long term views on minimising cost, managing risk and maximising returns through continued due diligence.
There is a positive trend towards this approach starting with understanding baseline data in terms of condition, performance and environmental and regulatory compliance in such a way that is cost effective, meaningful, useable and enduring. It is vital to know what data needs to be collected and how it should be best used and managed for maximum effect. Continue reading
