Photography by Scott Rodgerson on Unsplash.
The Federal Government’s Net Zero Built Environment Sector Plan (BESP) sets a pathway to reduce emissions by 62–70% below 2005 levels by 2035, and to reach net zero by 2050. Queensland’s sub-tropical and tropical climates, rapid growth, and exposure to cyclones, flooding, and heat stress make this agenda especially urgent.
Key Implications for Queensland Architects
Electrification and Energy Efficiency
The Sector Plan calls for a transition away from gas and towards fully electric systems for heating, cooling, hot water, and cooking. For architects in Queensland, this means designing buildings that optimise passive cooling and ventilation, integrate shading and reflective materials, use of energy-efficient appliances, and reduce reliance on energy-intensive air conditioning/mechanical systems.
Retrofitting Queensland’s existing housing stock, including traditional Queenslanders and older social housing, will be essential to achieve both comfort and emissions reductions.
Embodied Carbon and Materials
Operational energy use is no longer the only focus; embodied emissions from materials like concrete and steel must also be addressed. Architects will increasingly need to evaluate the carbon footprint of their material specifications, favour low-carbon alternatives such as engineered timber, and design for disassembly, modularity and prefabrication.
Adaptive reuse of existing building stock, particularly ageing commercial and retail buildings in Brisbane and regional centres, offers a major opportunity to cut embodied emissions while revitalising communities.
Climate Resilience
From 2025, the National Construction Code (NCC) will embed climate resilience as a formal objective. In Queensland, this requires design responses tailored to local risks: cyclone resistance in the north, flood mitigation in low-lying urban areas, and strategies to reduce urban heat in rapidly growing regions such as SouthEast Queensland. Architects will need to integrate resilience not only at the building scale but across precincts and landscapes, using green infrastructure, water-sensitive design, and urban shading strategies.
Standards and Regulation
The Plan signals progressively higher minimum performance standards and greater transparency through expanded disclosure requirements for both operational performance and embodied carbon. Importantly, it recognises the government’s ambition to invest $10 billion over the next decade to expand the world-leading NABERS disclosure scheme, enabling a wider range of building typologies to report demand-side performance. Concurrently, the transfer of NABERS emission factors to Class 1 housing under NatHERS will commence, aligning residential energy ratings with nationally consistent, science-based carbon accounting. Architects should anticipate these rising benchmarks across housing, commercial projects, and government-funded infrastructure, and be prepared to guide clients in meeting these evolving expectations.
Equity and Access
The transition to net zero must not leave vulnerable communities behind. Low-income households, , and remote communities are often the most exposed to poor building performance, high energy bills, and climate risks. Architects have a critical role in advocating for and delivering housing that is energy-efficient, affordable, and culturally responsive, ensuring that the benefits of healthier and more resilient buildings are shared equitably.
- Stay up-to-date with forthcoming NCC updates and advise clients on how to prepare for higher performance requirements.
- Build practice capability in embodied carbon assessment and a lifecycle design approach. Particular skills and capacities should be considered, such as working with renewable energy, PVs, battery storage, smart energy management, retrofitting skills, working with salvaged/reused materials, materials with recycled content, low-carbon materials, local material skills, design for disassembly, material passports, circular procurement with suppliers, waste-to-value material supply chain, modern methods of construction, design for disassembly (set up for retrofit), modular and prefabrication and energy modelling, embodied carbon tools skills.
- Apply passive cooling strategies and climate-responsive design principles tailored to Queensland’s sub-tropical and tropical conditions.
- Champion retrofit and adaptive reuse projects as cost-effective and low-carbon alternatives to demolition and rebuild.
- Use Queensland-specific case studies to demonstrate the long-term value of sustainable, resilient, and equitable design solutions.
- Champion QLD development of minimum rental standards for energy efficiency.