BEEC

BEEC or Building Energy Efficiency Certificate is a certificate that must be registered by the Commercial Building Disclosure or CBD national registry before a commercial building is allowed to advertise for a lease or purchase to potential interested parties. The BEEC is mandatory from 1^st November 2010 and after a 12 months transitional period a full implementation is planned for 1^st November 2011. BEEC has 3 components but only the NABERS assessment of the BEEC is required to be submitted in the transitional period.

BEEC

Overview of BEEC

The Building Energy Efficiency Disclosure Bill 2010 has passed the parliament and now is applicable all across Australia. The Bill requires owners of commercial office buildings of more than 2000 m² of NLA to disclose theirs building's energy efficiency performance under the Commercial Building Disclosure scheme or CBD in form of a Building Energy Efficiency Certificate or BEEC.

The NABERS component of the BEEC is applicable from 1^st November 2010 but the full implementation of the BEEC with all its components will commence from 1^st November 2011. Based on the current requirements of the Bill a current and registered BEEC certificate is required if the building owner want to advertise the building for sale, lease or sublease. This practically means that no form of marketing is allowed to take place from the commencement date without a BEEC. The government will establish an online database of all the eligible buildings which have achieved a BEEC and only a registered certificate is allowed to be addressed in the marketing material. There are civil penalties associated with failure to comply with this regulation.

The CBD scheme aims to introduce the potential tenants and purchasers of commercial spaces to have meaningful and credible energy efficiency performance information about their future occupancy in form of a BEEC and so to add another metric to the evaluation process of an office building for lease or purchase.

A BEEC has three components;

• The energy efficiency rating of the building in form of a NABERS Energy base or whole building certificate
• An assessment of the lighting systems energy efficiency of the tenanted area of the building that can be expected to remain unchanged when the building is sold, leased or sub-leased
• Advisory and guidance materials on the potential energy efficiency performance improvement initiatives of the building

There is a transitional period before the BEEC full deployment in which only the NABERS rating section of the BEEC needs to be submitted to the national registry. This transition period starts from 1^st November 2010 and will be a 12 months period. During the transitional period a BEEC is considered to be registered by the government national registrar if the NABERS rating is issued before the start of the transitional period. After the transitional period is finished all three components of a BEEC must be registered in order for a building to be able to advertise for lease or purchase. The BEEC will be valid for a period of 12 months after which it must be renewed and registered again by the building owner to the national registry for BEEC certificates.

The tenancy lighting assessment component of the BEEC is aimed to measure the performance of the currently installed lighting system against the best practices and deliver this information to the incoming owner or occupier of the building. The advisory material portion of the BEEC is not an energy audit and is not specific to each building. The details of these components are yet to be announced by the government.

An additional training is required by existing NABERS Accredited Assessors for the CBD scheme in order for them to be able to issue a BEEC certificate in the future. Details of this training session is not yet known and will be announced in early 2011.

All building owners have been advised by the government to perform a NABERS rating before October 2010 if they are planning to sell or lease their office space. There are certain categories of exemptions from a BEEC registration applicable to some types of buildings which a building owner can apply for if their building meets the exemption criteria.

The Building Energy Efficiency Disclosure Bill extends to all Australian states and the external territories. Two government bodies managing the CBD scheme and BEEC certification are the Australian Government Department of Climate Change and Energy Efficiency and the NSW Department of Environment, Climate Change and Water. CBD scheme is a commitment under the National Strategy on Energy Efficiency for the Council of Australian Governments or COAG.

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• BEEC
• NABERS
• Mandatory Disclosure