Sam Turner

AECOM
From assessment to impact: Managing decarbonisation across an asset portfolio

The case for decarbonisation is clear – Australian buildings produce approximately 25 per cent of the country’s carbon emissions. Decarbonisation is an imperative to achieve our commitments to the  Paris Agreement – to limit global average warming to no more than 1.5°C, protect asset value, manage climate risk, and maintain a social licence to operate. 

Existing buildings present a unique challenge to the decarbonisation transition, often with complex retrofitting considerations. Asset owners are required to evaluate options to improve resilience, and allocate capital for necessary building upgrades. Typically, asset owners and operators manage multi-building portfolios, where decisions made on asset upgrade works require a targeted and staged approach to achieve an economically efficient transition. Key considerations to maintain asset value include the transition away from fossil fuels, the integration of renewables, and the inclusion of infrastructure to support broader societal carbon reduction (such as electric vehicle infrastructure). This presentation will explore:

• Prioritisation – assessment of priority areas for investment and sharing of risk or opportunities across portfolios
• Procurement – staging and rollout of multiple upgrades across a portfolio
• Cost – hidden costs associated with upgrades, current vs. future pricing, asset level vs. portfolio level funding, and managing investment timing to smooth initial capital spend
• Risk – asset stranding, devaluation of typical asset(s) if upgrade works are not conducted
• Timing – when are upgrades required, impact from grid decarbonisation, staging and prioritisation of upgrade work
• Emissions impact – operation reductions, end-of-life considerations, embodied carbon, managing waste and reuse.

The presentation will address the life-cycle emissions, costs and portfolio implications for the above.

Sam Turner is a senior member of AECOM’s Applied Research and Sustainability group in Melbourne, and has worked as a sustainability consultant for more than seven years on a wide variety of projects.

He has an acute interest in delivering high-performance sustainable buildings and has design experience across a diversified portfolio of commercial, industrial, transport, healthcare, educational and master-planned projects. He also has a keen drive to achieve decarbonisation at scale, drawing on his experience in assessing and quantifying carbon exposure, and working collaboratively with clients to deliver improvement strategies.