Abstract:
More than half of building energy consumption in the industrialised world is used for cooling,
heating and lighting. In Australia, 86 per cent of total commercial building energy use is in these
three areas. The purpose of this paper is to investigate, examine and assess how tenants attitudes
impact on various factors of energy efficiency in high-rise commercial buildings. A structured
questionnaire was sent to sixty randomly selected Organisations occupying office space in high-rise
commercial buildings in Sydney Central Business District Area. This questionnaire was augmented
with formal interviews. Twenty-five responses were received and of these, twenty were analysed.
The results obtained indicated the strengths of the identified factors. The results obtained from the
survey show that tenants restrain the acceptance of environmental issues and implementation of
ESOs in high-rise commercial buildings in Sydney, Australia by demonstrating a confusing array of
conflicting options, attitudes and obligations in respect to the environmental impacts of the buildings
they occupy. The paper concludes with various recommendations to assist commercial building
tenants that will also serve as lessons to be learnt for developing countries.
