Environment and Energy: How green is your office building?

The Commonwealth Government has announced the introduction of a national scheme to encourage office building energy efficiency. The scheme is designed to help combat Australia's ever-increasing greenhouse gas emissions of which the commercial building sector is responsible for approximately 10 per cent. It is expected that the scheme will affect approximately 2,170 buildings throughout the country.

The scheme is intended to be implemented in the second half of 2010 in two phases:

1. a national disclosure scheme for large commercial office buildings (that is office buildings which have an area of more than 2,000 square metres); and
2. a possible expansion of the first phase to include other commercial building types such as hotels, retail buildings, schools and hospitals.