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4 assets
43,000 m2 total floor area
12,500 tCO2e annual portfolio carbon emissions
Powerhouse museum is Australia’s premier museum of excellence and innovation in applied arts and sciences. Going forward, Powerhouse continues the delivery of its expansive renewal program:
- Powerhouse Parramatta – building their new flagship;
- Powerhouse Ultimo – renewal will deliver international exhibitions within a creative industries precinct;
- Powerhouse Castle Hill – establishing world-leading collection management;
- Sydney Observatory – restoring this national heritage icon; Powerhouse Digital – providing new levels of access to the Powerhouse collection.
Member of Australia Green Building Council
250 employees
Joined in 2023, Signatory of WLC Commitment
1. Commit
Powerhouse commits to reducing their operational carbon emissions and compensating for residual emissions, to achieve net zero carbon in operations by 2025. This target coincides with the renewal of the Powerhouse, which presents an opportunity to embed sustainability and low carbon solutions into our infrastructure, reducing their operational impact on the environment.
Powerhouse also commits to maximising reductions of embodied carbon emissions at new developments and major renovations of existing assets, compensating for any remaining residual upfront embodied carbon emissions, by 2030.
2. Disclose
The Powerhouse Climate Action Plan 2022 -2025 outlines the organisation’s commitments to reducing its carbon impact amongst other commitments and targets towards a more sustainable way of operating. They will track progress of the targets and objectives within this plan and share the results with supporting data, including energy consumption and whole life carbon emissions, through annual reporting.
3. Act
Powerhouse has introduced energy reduction targets to improve energy efficiency and a commitment to eliminating the use of fossil fuels, generating renewable energy on site and procuring 100% renewable energy for the remaining energy needs. Powerhouse will also conduct life cycle assessments (LCA) to maximise the reduction of embodied carbon emissions and compensating for any remaining residual upfront embodied carbon.
4. Verify
Powerhouse commits to measuring and optimising building performance across all operational sites benchmarked against Green Star Performance. Building analytics and utility metering will support the documentation requirements. The Powerhouse Climate Action Plan outlines the objectives to embed sustainability across the organisation’s operations including the verification of building performance through Green Star rating assessments across all sites.
5. Advocate
The Powerhouse Climate Action Plan outlines commitments to influence products and services used along their value chain for better outcomes for museum exhibitions and programs. Procurement criteria for the engagement of external partners and product selection will be reviewed and updated to prioritise more sustainable outcomes. By 2030 Powerhouse commits to going beyond net zero, operating climate positive sites.