Scaling decarbonisation and resilience across Australia’s infrastructure sector

Turning climate ambition into infrastructure outcomes

Australia’s infrastructure sector, which contributes significantly to greenhouse gas emissions, has made significant progress in advancing decarbonisation and building climate resilience.

However, Carbon Crunch Melbourne highlighted a growing tension. While Scope 1 and 2 emissions reporting and reductions are now well established, a substantial gap remains between government emissions targets and current industry practice. The introduction of climate related financial disclosures, alongside a growing focus on Scope 3 emissions and supply chain impacts, is now challenging the industry to move decisively beyond business as usual approaches.

Escalating climate hazards are placing increasing pressure on infrastructure systems across the country. Climate resilience can no longer be treated as an adjunct to sustainability; it must be proactively planned, costed and embedded across the full lifecycle of infrastructure assets to avoid compounding future risks.

Carbon Crunch Melbourne provided a platform to share progress, lessons learned and challenges across the infrastructure project lifecycle in Victoria and the broader Australian market. Discussions highlighted that while individual initiatives are delivering results, they are not enough on their own. Lasting, systemic change depends on consistent prioritisation across planning, delivery and operation. Decarbonising the infrastructure sector constitutes both a risk response (policy, standards, tariffs, investor disclosure) and an opportunity (cost savings, productivity, innovation, jobs).

L to R: Dr Allison Stewart (Mott MacDonald), Joel Segal (South East Water), Lissa van Camp (Suburban Rail Loop Authority), Jonathan Spear (Infrastructure Victoria), Cameron Ginn (Fulton Hogan)

Planning phase: setting the foundations for low carbon and resilient outcomes

The planning phase offers the greatest design flexibility, making it the most critical point for influencing long-term decarbonisation and resilience outcomes. At this phase, greater flexibility allows for avoidance and demand reduction options to be considered as well as material substitution or quality offsets, based on project contexts.

Discussions at Carbon Crunch Melbourne included why decarbonising is important to the Victorian infrastructure industry:

• Climate change threatens Victoria’s future, including its infrastructure
• Up to 70% of Australia’s annual emissions are attributed to infrastructure
• New infrastructure projects consume enormous amounts of energy and materials in construction
• Pressure on the construction and materials industry to decarbonise is increasing
• Reducing carbon emissions from infrastructure can lead to cost savings and improve productivity
• Using recycled materials and digital engineering tools can contribute to significant carbon and cost savings and benefit the economy.

As attention increasingly turns towards Scope 3 emissions, carbon can no longer justifiably be overlooked due to cost, quality and time pressures. Decisions made in this phase of projects are pivotal in determining the carbon intensity, adaptability and long term performance of infrastructure assets, as well as capitalising on associated cost-saving opportunities. Informed decision making is critical to avoid locking in vulnerabilities and poor sustainability outcomes into designs, which can be costly and difficult to rectify in later stages of design.

Carbon Crunch Melbourne 2025 guest speakers and organising team

Decarbonisation planning has similarly demonstrated the benefit of long term commitment and coordinated action. Discussions identified three overarching principles to guide decarbonisation:

• Prioritising no or low build
• Aligning approaches
• Committing to timelines

Proactive resilience planning remains a key challenge. While the long-term economic case for resilience investment is well established, most expenditure continues to occur reactively following major events such as flooding and bushfires. A shift to proactive action requires more consistent approaches to defining, measuring and valuing resilience outcomes, supported by shared metrics and accessible climate data.

Effective climate risk assessment and resilience planning across infrastructure sectors rely on access to comprehensive, consistent and transparent frameworks and data. While parts of the private sector are proactively investing in data collection and knowledge sharing, broader resilience outcomes require coordinated support from government and industry bodies to expand data availability and accessibility. Government and industry body adoption of recognised carbon management approaches will provide clarity and confidence to the industry, critical for achieving decarbonisation ambitions.

Delivery phase: translating intent into outcomes

The delivery phase is where strategic ambition must be converted into measurable outcomes, with clear governance, contractual alignment and shared accountability across project sponsors, delivery authorities and contractors. Pilot projects and early innovators are increasingly demonstrating what is achievable when expectations and ownership are clearly defined, supported by fit-for-purpose procurement.

Sustainability challenges across major infrastructure construction projects in Victoria need to consider emissions from:

• Materials - around 40%
• Electricity - around 35%
• Construction plant and equipment (fuel) - around 25%

When considering emissions in Victoria, government infrastructure projects are actively and successfully delivering decarbonisation initiatives across infrastructure projects. Examples of successful decarbonisation initiatives across projects include:

• Low-carbon materials, such as reducing portland cement in precast concrete by at least 50%, use of cementless grout and trials of geopolymer concrete
• Clean energy and electrification, including 100% renewable electricity for fixed construction plant equipment, solar-powered site facilities and transitions to electric and renewable equipment.

L to R: Amy Gregg (Mott MacDonald), Kris Fumberger (Infrastructure Sustainability Council), Erin Coldham (Southerly Ten)

Decarbonisation during delivery is strongly influenced by procurement choices, material selection and construction methodologies. Contractors play a pivotal role in identifying and implementing practical solutions to reduce embodied carbon and operational emissions associated with construction activities. Across the construction industry, contractors are focusing carbon efforts on emissions reduction, circularity and supply chain. To support this, procurement frameworks must embed carbon requirements, carbon reporting and abatement requirements in tenders and contracts.

Embedding climate resilience, informed by key decisions made in the planning phase, during delivery is equally critical. Design robustness, adaptability and upgradeability, as well as infrastructure service continuation under future climate conditions should be actively considered and tested during this phase. Delivery teams are increasingly recognising the importance of designing beyond minimum compliance thresholds and accounting for failure modes, redundancies and recovery.

A consistent challenge across the delivery phase is the perceived lack of clear guidance and a fragmentation of carbon and resilience data. Without integrated approaches to valuing carbon and resilience as core parts of infrastructure delivery, teams face uncertainty in decision making and reporting, particularly across complex supply chains.

Operational phase: system wide resilience and long term decarbonisation

Once assets enter the operational phase, decarbonisation and resilience outcomes depend less on individual project decisions (as during the planning and delivery phases) and more on system wide performance and integration. Infrastructure assets do not operate in isolation; their resilience is shaped by interdependencies with energy systems, digital networks, water services and broader social and economic systems.

Operational resilience therefore requires a systems thinking approach, recognising interdependencies and planning for coordinated responses to disruption. Climate risks continue to evolve over the asset life, reinforcing the need for meaningful assessment in the planning and delivery phases, adaptive management during operations and continuous learning.

In Victoria, the water sector has come together to set sector-wide targets to cut emissions. Around 85% of emissions in the water sector come from sewage collection, treatment and recycling. A carbon management hierarchy has been established and a whole-of-life carbon roadmap has been developed.

Additionally, contractors are taking it upon themselves to drive emission reductions. Carbon Crunch heard of emissions reductions being realised by organisations delivering on their own reduction targets, including 30% Scope 1 & 2 2030 and Net Zero 2050 targets, collaborating for change to drive circularity, and analysing and acting on their supply chain and Scope 3 footprint.

Data once again emerged as a critical enabler. Ongoing monitoring of asset performance, carbon emissions and climate impacts provides the feedback loops required to refine operational practices and inform future investment decisions. Transparency and accessibility of this data supports collective learning and helps normalise resilience and decarbonisation as business as usual rather than exceptional initiatives.

The Australian Constructors Association recently published construction emissions reporting guidelines. The guidelines are practical tools aiming to improve transparency and reporting approaches, engaging supply chain, aligning a sectorial approach to expanding legislation and diving into reporting protocols from a supplier’s perspective.

Achieving consistency in governance, methodologies and expectations across jurisdictions remains a challenge. While progress is evident, a lack of mandated national alignment risks slowing innovation and creating ambiguity around responsibilities, particularly as sectors work collaboratively towards net zero outcomes.

Carbon Crunch in Melbourne, November 2025

Decarbonisation and resilience as integrated considerations

Decarbonisation and resilience are most effective when treated as integrated considerations at the core of infrastructure planning, delivery and operations, rather than isolated interventions. At Carbon Crunch Melbourne, several consistent themes emerged:

• Early planning decisions have the greatest influence on long term outcomes and are most effective when informed by robust data, industry learnings (local and international) and collaboration. Decarbonisation must be designed in, not bolted on.
• Delivery success depends on aligned incentives, clear expectations and the active role of contractors in implementing low carbon and resilient solutions. Procurement is the strongest lever to achieve decarbonisation ambitions.
• Operational performance needs to consider system wide resilience, interdependencies and the application of systems thinking across asset networks. Better data and transparent reporting reduce risk and support compliance with emerging expectations.
• Standardised approaches to carbon and resilience metrics, alongside improved data accessibility will accelerate industry wide progress.

By embedding these principles across the full project lifecycle, infrastructure can better respond to climate risk while contributing meaningfully to long term decarbonisation.