What is driving action to get off gas in the City of Melbourne?

​City of Melbourne (COM) has a Climate Emergency Plan which includes a commitment to “transition Council operations from fossil fuels”. This includes commitments to go gas-free with new builds and large redevelopments and converting their top ten energy-using buildings by 2030, and the rest of their buildings by 2040.

They are in the process of refreshing their emissions reduction plan for their operations, a five-year plan coming to the end of its life. It has driven large projects such as streetlighting upgrades and MREP (renewable energy power purchase agreement), which have made great progress in reducing emissions from electricity so gas is now becoming a strong priority.

​After the end of 2019 when Melbourne declared a climate emergency, this strategy identified ten priority areas to accelerate action where it would be most impactful. Getting off gas was one the first of those actions.

“Find out where your gas is, what the priorities are, and narrow the effort from there.”

North Melbourne Recreation Centre.

What has happened so far? ​

The first step was to identify where gas was being used across all council buildings. They ascertained that 85% of their gas use came from ten buildings - mainly pools and office buildings. These became the “top ten” buildings to convert.

They did individual on-site audits of 14 buildings - the rest were desktop audits (using equipment registers). They didn't audit buildings that were being redeveloped as they were already being reviewed.

Melbourne then conducted a feasibility study and created a ten-year road-map for 40 buildings – covering almost every single one of their gas meters.

They haven’t completed many conversions yet, but have caught the majority of new developments and redevelopments. These have been mainly (80%) heating systems in recreation centres, admin buildings and town halls and about 20% have been hot water systems. There have also been a handful of cooking and other appliances.

​The commitment to making Kensington Recreation Centre gas-free in the redevelopment process (currently in the procurement stage) has been a big win.

What have been the benefits?

The roadmap has identified cost savings through:

• Being able to buy fewer offsets.
• Coordinating works so as to install electric chillers and boilers at the same time (this costs less than a conventional system)

There can also been operational benefits. Heat pumps can be modular so allow additional redundancy to be built into the system, if one module is down for maintenance the other modules can keep operating. this works well for the facilities management team because shutting down a rec centre for a couple of days is very unpopular with the public.

​The environmental benefits are in transitioning council operations away from fossil fuels.

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What’s next?

COM will be electrifying sites according to their road-map, which includes assessment criteria to prioritise and sequence actions. Assets coming to the end of their lifetimes are targeted first and rather than a typical like-for-like replacement will be upgraded with heatpumps instead. Domestic hot water units will be replaced when their life-cycle ends. This approach makes efficient use of budgets and embodied emissions.

Rather than focusing on total elimination of emissions, because the final “bits and pieces” of emissions are very hard to eliminate, Melbourne sees there is more value to be gained by looking at the emissions in their supply chain and influencing others. Melbourne is pushing the envelope by looking at  the scope of their emissions reduction plan and looking for emissions reduction opportunities in events, procurement and embodied emissions .

Although they have publicly committed to converting all buildings by 2040, they have given themselves an internal stretch goal of completing full electrification by 2030.​

​​What have been the challenges?​

Technical challenges have included finding enough space for heatpumps in plant rooms. If there is not enough space within existing plant rooms you may need to find space outside and in the high density of the city this usually means building a platform on the roof, you need a structural assessment, and add additional costs to the project.

Consultants often advise electrical upgrades (e.g. to switchboard and transformers) but this can often be based on assumptions about peak demand. In Melbourne peak demand is driven by cooling needs on hot days and therefore unlikely that using a heat pump for heating will exceed this peak. It can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars to upgrade a transformer, so having the in-house knowledge to challenge consultants’ assumptions is incredibly important.

​Budget is a real constraint on converting existing gas systems. Sustainability is often viewed as a 'nice to have' so it will be challenging in the next year because of covid-related budget constraints. With a defined timeframe to get the roadmap works completed, any delays will increase pressure, and could mean missed opportunities that will end up costing more to address later.

How is it being led and embedded in the organisation?

The Zero Carbon City team are responsible for this action within the Climate Emergency Plan and work with all of the teams that manage and deliver buildings, including the design team, the capital works team, recreation, parks and procurement.

There is a good shared understanding across the council that the policy is “no new gas” and there is a good level of buy-in on the ten-year roadmap.

There is a strong relationship between the design team and the Zero Carbon City team. When internal clients approach the design team with their needs or projects, the design team will in turn consult the Zero Carbon City team during the design process. The capital works team then delivers the project, and eventually they are handed over to the property team for ongoing management and maintenance.

This approach works well because other teams have different priorities (such as minimizing maintenance) whereas by working with the designers and the finance team who oversee the capital works bidding process, the Zero Carbon City team are able to ensure that going gas-free is considered a priority from the outset, and is prioritized through the internal bidding process. This prioritization of sustainability also means project managers are more likely to consult the team or do their own legwork to incorporate sustainability into their bids.

​The ZCC team also support sustainable projects by seeking grants and other financing options, and this has the added benefit of insulating any sustainability measures from future budget cuts, as the funding depends on those sustainability measures.

​What advice does COM have for other councils?

“Look at case studies of others who have done this, e.g. Brimbank, Moreland City Council and Monash University (including a biomedical science lab and a residential building). Use these to circulate the idea. Your typical engineer will question feasibility so you need to show examples that have worked, for example Tasmania and New Zealand don't have much gas and yet have colder climates than we do. Audits also help to get property teams on board.”

​“Find out where your gas is, what the priorities are, and narrow the effort from there.” Having council endorsement is very useful - get it into your climate emergency plan.

Melbourne is happy to share their RFQ with other councils.
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