Commercial building specialists are eyeing the Government's new $100 million "green" investment fund to help upcycle New Zealand's old buildings.
Engineering consultants Beca said there was a huge opportunity to improve New Zealand's building stock, now believed to be belching out 20 per cent of New Zealand's carbon pollution.
Beca building services engineer Ben Masters said the 20 per cent estimate included the carbon emissions impact of extracting raw materials, manufacturing building components and demolishing and disposing of building waste during construction.
New builds generated a huge amount of carbon pollution, Masters said.
The trend for developers to consider low carbon emissions options such as timber missed the bigger possibilities of re-using existing buildings.
The redevelopment of the 1970s Aorangi House in Wellington, abandoned and leaking and saved from the wrecking ball, was a prime example.
Beca won the World Green Building Council "Leadership in sustainable design and performance " award this year for the transformation of Aorangi House on Molesworth Street.
The refurbishment cost $9m versus $25m for a new build with far less carbon emissions than demolishing and building new.
Natural ventilation, new solar-controlled double glazing, external solar shading, use of the building's concrete mass to store heat in winter and cool the interior in summer were all features of how Beca and design partners Studio Pacific Architecture achieved a building that consumed 64 per cent less energy than a typical office building and performed better than most new commercial properties.
Masters said there was plenty of small "refurbs" but only a few full-blown upgrades like Aorangi House taking place.
Seismic upgrades provided another opportunity to upgrade energy systems as well and help reduce the country's carbon footprint but a lot of that work was bare minimum to comply with the new National Building Standard (NBS).
The green fund - New Zealand Green Investment Finance Ltd (NZGIF) - could help building owners grapple with energy refurbishments, Masters said.
The Government chose to announce the fund at Beca's offices in Aorangi House. And energy efficiency in commercial buildings was one of the projects mentioned by the Government as suitable for fund investment along with electric vehicles, manufacturing processes and low emissions farming practices.
Beca disagreed with an analysis that the fund's goals were conflicting and that there was inherent risk in funding projects the market had failed to back.
A lot more major energy refits could happen but many landlords were strapped for cash so if there was capital available from the green fund on attractive terms that might persuade more to tackle them, he said.
"We see huge potential for it as long as it was structured in the right way."
Energy efficiency made a lot of sense rather than investing in new technology that was not proven.
Tuning a building's energy systems using computers was very cost-effective paying for itself in less than two years and would have a big impact on the 1200 large office buildings in New Zealand responsible for over half of the emissions from office buildings, Masters said.
"We're saying energy efficiency is low risk because its proven to work." It was what the rest of the world was doing.
Engineering building specialist David Fullbrook at eCubed said it was mostly the corporate property companies who were undertaking wholesale redevelopments of existing buildings.
Hundreds of commercial buildings were owned by small property owners, focused on the rentals, rather than on maintenance or retrofitting.
Tenants were attracted to shiny new buildings so it might take a mind shift for redeveloped older buildings to compete with that lure.
Major refits were less expensive than new builds Fullbrook said and had a much a greater contribution to lowering the country's greenhouse gas emissions.
About 90 per cent of New Zealand's building stock was existing and older buildings and only 10 per cent new.
So to reduce carbon emissions the older stock had to be upgraded for greater energy efficiency.
One of the issues with that was that lower energy bills following retrofits benefited tenants rather than landlords because of the way rental payments were structured.
New buildings might have new energy systems but they were not managed well in New Zealand, Fullbrook said.
Many buildings could save 30 per cent of their energy consumption through better tuning and management systems without doing anything else to the building, he said.
Green Building Council chief executive Andrew Eagles said the new green fund was welcome and "at lease some form of support".
"Let's wait and see how that works."
But the single most important thing Government could do was require a NABERSNZ energy-efficiency rating on the buildings it leased.
The Government paid for the NABERS rating tool from Australia but it did not require the owners of buildings it leased to supply NABERS ratings.
"Obviously you can throw money at things but perhaps the bigger step forward would be just for the Government to say when we are leasing we would expect a NABERS certificate on that building."
Landlords would react to that and over time they would improve their energy systems.
Large upcycling building projects
*Aorangi House in Wellington
*Mason Bros building in the Wynyard Quarter in Auckland
*Te Puni Kokiri building in Wellington
*15 Stout Street, Wellington
*Aurora Centre in Wellington
*Auckland Council building at 135 Albert Street
*Kapiti Coast District Health Board building
*Bowen State building and Charles Fergusson tower redevelopment underway now.