ANZ builds its own green house

Australian
Thursday 3/5/2007 Page: 19

ALMOST on cue, the wind picked up and the dust flew as ANZ boss John McFarlane turned the first sod yesterday for the nation's most environmentally sustainable office building, to be built on a barren stretch of Docklands real estate in Melbourne. In three years' time, the same kind of stiff breeze will be powering six wind turbines perched on top of the gleaming, 10-storey ANZ tower, helping the bank generate 10,000kW hours of electricity a year. The turbines are part of an expected capital outlay of about $250 million on a series of environmental measures designed, among other things, to make ANZ carbon-neutral through the purchase of enough renewable energy to offset its greenhouse gas emissions.

ANZ spent $16 million on electricity last year and emitted a total of 185,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide. It is not, by any means, the first local corporate to promise carbon-neutrality. National Australia Bank said in March it would do the same by September 2010, following the lead of Rupert Murdoch's BSkyB operation in Britain. Then-Westpac chairman Leon Davis said at last year's annual meeting that the bank would become carbon-neutral, having already cut emissions by 45 per cent since 1996.

Mr McFarlane, who will retire before the end of the year, downplayed the competitive aspect. "Westpac has done some great things, and good luck to them," he said. "I don't think the environment is a competition; the right thing is that everyone does it." ANZ's plans for the nation's greenest office building come amid a gladiatorial, pre-election contest between John Howard and Kevin Rudd on climate change and sustainability.

Labor's policy is to slash greenhouse emissions by 60 per cent on 2000 levels by 2050. Mr Howard has said that any emissions target embraced by the federal Government would not "wreck the Australian economy and destroy jobs in the mining industry".

The ANZ building, coincidentally, will produce 60 per cent less greenhouse gas emissions compared to the average commercial building equivalent to the removal of 3600 cars from the nation's roads each year. Mr McFarlane was careful to steer a non-contentious path yesterday when asked if he thought Australia should aspire to such a target by 2050, in line with Labor policy. "It's easy to design a new building for such a massive reduction but Australia already exists, and therefore to change the whole country is much, much harder," he said. "It's more a government matter than for me, but certainly the world is heading in that sort of direction."

ANZ's estimated $250 million capital outlay includes $34 million of environmental features for the $512 million Docklands project, which will be home to 5500 staff from 2010. Apart from the wind turbines, the features include solar sliver cells, a landscaped roof, stormwater reuse, water recycling, air conditioning with 100 per cent fresh air and a trigeneration plant where natural gas will be used to simultaneously generate electricity, heat and cooling.

The purchase of renewable energy to offset ANZ's carbon emissions will cost a further $5 million a year, and Mr McFarlane announced plans yesterday to finance new capacity in the renewable energy sector. The cost was not disclosed, but the projects will be chosen through a competitive tender process to be unveiled in the coming months. The ANZ chief said his personal preference was to be a direct owner of the projects. "But we've got to do a negotiation, and giving away too many boundary conditions in the lead-up to that is probably not too smart," he said. As for the turbines, Mr McFarlane chuckled when it was suggested they could be painted in ANZ's signature sky-blue. "There's a nice sort of ring to that; that would be the coolest way of doing it." he said.