Climate change & energy

Methodology: This report uses the Australian Government's Department of Climate Change National Greenhouse Accounts (NGA) Factors Workbook (November 2008) to calculate Scope 1, 2 and 3 emissions from the following sources:

• Electricity,
• Gas,
• Refrigerants,
• Fuel: petrol, diesel, LPG and ethanol 10%.

The 2009 WRI Workbook CO₂ Mobile (version 1.3) has been used to calculate emissions from air travel. The 2003 Workbook was used to derive the medium haul emissions factor.

Scope 1 incorporates fuel use in our vehicle fleet, gas burned in our office, industrial and retail assets and refrigerant emissions.

Scope 2 covers base–building electricity purchased for our office, industrial and retail assets and our corporate tenancies.

Scope 3 covers transmission and production losses from purchased electricity, gas and fuel and emissions from employee travel (flights and car hire).

Emissions from Stockland's UK operations are calculated according to the UK Government's DEFRA/DECC Greenhouse Gas Conversion Factors for Company Reporting. We have used 2007 grid factors for electricity, and 2007 GCV factors for gas.

Emissions boundary: All figures are Australian operations only, unless otherwise stated. For FY09 we are reporting according to our 'operational control' boundary under the National Greenhouse and Energy Reporting Act (NGERA). We report on the base–building electricity and gas consumption and the resulting greenhouse gas emissions from the office, industrial and retail assets for which Stockland has operational control.

Tenant usage is not included, except where Stockland is the tenant. The GHG emissions from Stockland's four largest office tenancies were 1,621,578 kgs of CO₂ for calendar year 2007. This figure has not been included in the above totals. Stockland's tenancy consumption for FY09 has been included in the above data. A number of industrial properties with immaterial energy consumption have been excluded from this report. These properties are included in our NGERA boundary and will be reported on in our NGERA report.

Stockland's UK emissions and energy data is collected for assets whose energy budget is greater than £5,000 a year. Data is from invoices, and is 85 per cent complete for electricity and 77 per cent complete for gas. We have extrapolated 12 months worth of data from those figures.

Boundary: We use the same 'operational control' boundary for our intensity figures as we use for our total figures. Electricity and gas consumption for those assets for which Stockland has operational control are divided by the floor area of those assets. Only assets with a full 12 month data set for electricity consumption are included. Due to the limited number of industrial properties under our NGERA operational control boundary, we have not included an intensity metric for our industrial portfolio.

Boundary: Data is from Australian operations only. This data captures 100 per cent of base–building electricity purchased for all office, industrial and retail assets owned and managed by Stockland for FY06, FY07 and FY08. For FY09 we have reported against an 'operational control' boundary. We report on the base–building electricity consumption of the office, industrial and retail assets for which Stockland has operational control. Tenant usage is not included, except where Stockland is the tenant. The electricity consumption of our four largest office tenancies was 1,701,058 kWh in calendar year 2007. This figure has not been included in the above totals. Stockland's tenancy consumption for FY09 has been included in the above data.

Boundary: We use the same 'operational control' boundary for our intensity figures as we use for our absolute figures. Electricity consumption for those assets for which Stockland has operational control are divided by the floor area of those assets. Only assets with a full 12 month data set are included.

Boundary: We report on gas purchased for all office, industrial and retail assets owned over which Stockland has operational control. We report this data as a total for Stockland, as well as totals for our office, industrial and retail portfolios, to enable comparison of the performance of the different asset classes over time.

Electricity and gas consumption data is collected for assets whose energy budget is greater than £5,000 a year. Data is from invoices, and is 85 per cent complete for electricity and 77 per cent complete for gas. We have extrapolated 12 months worth of data from those figures. Our electricity data has a confidence factor of 61.25 per cent for FY08.

The creation of Commercial Property resulting from the consolidation of our retail, office and industrial businesses has provided us with the opportunity to streamline our data processes.

Harmonisation has been undertaken to produce a single Commercial Property data report for data submission. The assets are still benchmarked separately, which is appropriate due to their nature and usage profiles. However, the reporting undertaken for operational assets has been simplified, and is accessible to the entire Commercial Property business. The energy ratings for our office portfolio has become a particular market focus, and business strategies based on the energy data have been created for critical sites showing greater implementation of environmental data into business decision making.

FY09 is the first year that we have collected and reported greenhouse and energy data for our residential assets. This has been driven by our responsibility to report under the National Greenhouse and Energy Reporting Act (NGERA). The estimates provided have included a combination of site sampling, emissions assumptions and estimates and extrapolation. We recognise that we need to significantly improve the accuracy of our emissions reporting. Emissions estimates for FY09 by business are outlined in the table below. In summary our total emissions for the Residential Business in the current financial year is approximately 19,700 tonnes of CO₂–e (carbon dioxide equivalent). The total emissions from the four Retirement Living properties that we have determined operational control for is 2,582 tonnes of CO₂–e.

Emissions from our contractors will be captured via monthly health, safety and environment (HS&E) reporting. We have run a pilot with civil contractors from Queensland and NSW for the monthly HS&E reporting in June and will use the outcomes of this pilot to inform the roll–out of reporting to all projects and contractors for which we have a reporting obligation in July 2009. Contractors are required to report all NGER data including electricity, gas, fuel and use of explosives as well as reporting on water use and waste management.

Our own emissions on projects will be collected through our accounts management tool. Our electricity, gas and fuel invoices will require consumption figures to be entered before payment is approved. This is likely to be implemented by early 2010.