Think again before you demolish that old office building...

…the greenest buildings are actually well-managed existing buildings.

Existing Buildings, ab Sep-Oct 09.pdf

Published 2 September 2009

Summary

Office buildings constructed during the last five years are, in general, more energy efficient than older buildings. This is, of course, a positive development. However it will take significant time before new buildings transform the commercial office sector’s emissions profile: of the estimated 22 million square metre Australian commercial office market, it is likely that in the order of 83 percent is at least five years behind the times.

The bright side to this apparently sluggish rate of churn through the existing stock is that while operational energy use is one part of the story, embodied energy is the other. A building’s annual operating energy use is typically only a small fraction of the energy required to build and fit it out in the first place.

Based on a brief analysis of two office buildings in Sydney CBD, this article asserts that in practice the embodied energy debt of new buildings will rarely, if ever, be ‘paid back’ through superior operating efficiency. It concludes that while there are many reasons for developing new green buildings, just as there are often many reasons for replacing old, underutilised and dilapidated stock, now is the time to be considering how we can extend the life of buildings by taking a rigorous and long term approach to their design, maintenance and ongoing management.

Roussac, A.C. (2009) "Old star, green star," Architecture Bulletin, Sep/Oct 2009 pp. 14-15