How meaningful is commercial building disclosure for building users and property market

Since the introduction of Commercial Building Disclosure, buildings' physical performance is more than building grades and has become a highly relevant issue in building sales and leases activities and of property market participants. This study is to look into a possible strategy that could reduce energy consumption and improve visual environment in the Australian office buildings. Being a preliminary study, this paper relies on a data set derived from Building Energy Efficiency Certificate (BEEC) Register over the past 12 months in Melbourne CBD, Melbourne remainder area1 and other Victorian areas. Based on the data analysis, Nominal Lighting Power Density (NLPD) has been calculated with a mean of 14.3 W/m2, which falls into 'Median' lighting power, but closer to 'Poor'. A majority of the Victorian office buildings tend to have a 'basic' level of lighting controls (N=146, 81.5%), indicating simple manual switch in a large area. Although the introduction of Commercial Building Disclosure has not been able to drive the existing office owners to fully or partially refurbish their buildings, it does not mean that the impact of Commercial Building Disclosure is not significant. The importance of Commercial Building Disclosure is that it will help to narrow the information inequality between office owners and tenants as a third - party energy certification system. The current Commercial Building Disclosure, however, does not seem to take actual lighting performance or building users' perception into account. In order to improve Commercial Building Disclosure, the study concludes that a realistic target for office electric lighting through an inventory of energy use in conjunction with building occupant comfort in the Australian office buildings of different age is required.