Shining a spotlight on secrets to sustainable buildings

When it comes to sustainable buildings, City of Melbourne recognises the challenges. Our most recent figures, from 2023, show buildings in the city contributed nearly 60% of our municipal emissions. Nearly 40% from commercial buildings. Nearly 20% from residential.  

If we don’t create more sustainable buildings, we’ll fall about 23% short of the net zero target for 2040. 

 At City of Melbourne, here’s what we’re doing. 

• We’ve developed a Retrofit Melbourne Plan.  
• The Plan contains 11 initiatives to accelerate commercial retrofits.  
• We provide plain-language Guidelines for Adaptive Reuse on our website.  

• And we created the Green Factor Tool a free website that measures the green infrastructure credentials of your development.  

   

  Examples in Melbourne show what’s possible.  

• Charter Hall and Brookfield recently retrofitted the landmark Southern Cross Towers – rebranded as East End Place, at 111 Bourke Street.  
• 1 Hotel and Homes just opened. It’s a clever adaptive reuse of the old Goods Shed at Seafarers Rest. 

In Melbourne, you don’t need a permit to change the use of most buildings in the city. We’ve done this already with a facility called Make Room, where we turned a storehouse into supportive housing.  

All this and more was showcased and explored at a recent Melbourne Climate Network and EnergyLab event 'Secretes to Sustainable Buildings' 

An enlightening discussion was had around the opportunities, the innovative solutions and what the city is doing to help make our buildings more sustainable. 

A big thank you to Arup for providing the perfect 6 Green Star office for the event, and of course to Adam Jones, Libby Phillips, Sam Ringwaldt and Autumn Qu for being on the panel and sharing your expertise with us.
 

Because Melbourne is Australia’s greenest city – and the fastest-growing – we are the best place for your brilliant ideas to find support and capital.   

 For our next ecosystem event on August 21 register here