The City of Sydney, Eureka Funds Management and Frasers Property have signed an environmental upgrade agreement (EUA) – the first EUA the city has signed – to install a trigeneration plant at the Central Park development.
Future residents of the Central Park development being built by Frasers Property and Sekisui House on the former Carlton & United Breweries (CUB) site will be supplied with low-carbon thermal energy under a green finance agreement signed with the City of Sydney.
The City of Sydney, Eureka Funds Management and Frasers Property have signed a $26.5 million environmental upgrade agreement (EUA) – the first EUA the city has signed – to install an efficient, gas-powered trigeneration plant that aims to cut carbon emissions at the Broadway development.
Frasers will use the EUA funding to install 2 megawatts of trigeneration capacity, running on natural gas and producing low-carbon thermal energy, and providing heating and cooling for 3000 residences and 65,000 square metres of retail and commercial space in 14 buildings at Central Park. The stage one trigeneration energy centre will also supply low-carbon electricity to the multi-storey Clare Hotel and the mixed-use Brewery Yard building.
Finance for Frasers’ EUA will be provided through The Australian Environmental Upgrade Fund (TAEUF 2) established by Eureka Funds Management Limited (Eureka), the Australia and New Zealand Banking Group (ANZ) Limited, and the Australian Government backed independent company Low Carbon Australia Limited (LCAL). Eureka is the trustee of TAEUF 2 that finances energy efficiency projects.
An EUA is a voluntary agreement between a building owner, a finance provider and a local council, made possible by changes to the Local Government Act in 2011 to encourage building upgrades. Under these agreements, the financier provides the building owner funds for the upgrade and is repaid by a charge on the land called an Environmental Upgrade Charge (EUC). The council issues an EUC to the building owner each quarter when it sends out its rate notices and forwards the money it receives to the financier.
Work on the new trigeneration energy system is now underway and will be completed and commissioned by December 2013. The plant will be housed in a multi-level subterranean bunker, which is part of the existing heritage Brewery Yard building. Environmental consultants WSP Group calculate that Central Park’s 2 megawatt plant could reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 190,000 tonnes over the 25 year design life of the plant.
“It’s good to see Frasers take advantage of the smart, cheap financing now available to pay for new technologies that can dramatically reduce carbon emissions,” Lord Mayor Clover Moore comments. “This is the first EUA the City has signed, but hopefully we will soon be part of many more of these voluntary agreements, delivering great results for business and for the community.”
“We are delighted to work with the City of Sydney to take this first step into a greener future for Sydney,” Guy Pahor, CEO of Frasers Property Australia, states. “In this way, Central Park will act as a model of environmental standards for future large-scale mixed-use urban regeneration projects.”
