Why NABERS matters to Asia-Pacific indoor air quality suppliers

NABERS is an accreditation scheme that is worth watching because it helps shape what Australian property owners, occupiers and advisers regard as credible building performance evidence. 

NABERS is the National Australian Built Environment Rating System, administered nationally by the NSW Government on behalf of Australian federal, state and territory governments. 

It measures operational performance rather than design intent, and its Indoor Environment rating covers indoor air quality alongside lighting, thermal comfort and acoustics. 

At present, the Indoor Environment tool is available for offices, with separate rating pathways for base building, tenancy and whole building assessments.

Find your next indoor air quality monitoring solution in our international directory.

What is NABERS?

Australia’s Commercial Building Disclosure programme already requires large office spaces to disclose energy-efficiency information when offered for sale or lease, and that programme is built around NABERS Energy. 

The Australian Government released an expansion roadmap in October 2025, while NABERS itself said the roadmap would broaden mandatory disclosure of energy performance across more commercial building types over time. 

Indoor Environment ratings are not the mandatory disclosure tool in the way NABERS Energy is, but NABERS as a whole has become part of how Australian buyers and landlords think about building performance, comparability and evidence. 

That creates a market signal for suppliers whose hardware and software support air-quality monitoring, data logging and reporting.

For indoor air quality in particular, NABERS is not simply asking whether a building has sensors somewhere in the ceiling void. The current NABERS Indoor Environment for Offices Rules, version 3.0, require assessments by a NABERS Accredited Assessor and set out detailed protocols for sampling, timing, documentation and equipment capability. 

The indoor-air section covers ventilation effectiveness using carbon dioxide, plus particulate matter as PM10, formaldehyde, total volatile organic compounds and carbon monoxide. 

The tool also combines instrumental evidence with an occupant satisfaction survey, so it is not purely a hardware exercise.

In the component weighting tables, occupant survey results carry significant weight, while CO2, PM10, formaldehyde, TVOCs and CO all contribute to the indoor-air-quality outcome depending on whether the rating is base building, tenancy or whole building.

Portable & field testing

Proposed NASA EDGE mission could strengthen remote monitoring in Asia

NABERS' preferred instruments

The technical detail is where the piece becomes commercially useful. NABERS requires carbon dioxide to be measured with a multipoint logging instrument recording real-time CO2 levels with a minimum range of at least 20 ppm to 3,000 ppm, resolution of at most 1 ppm and accuracy within ±50 ppm. 

PM10 must be measured using a real-time particulate counter based on 90° light scattering with a range of at least 0.001 mg/m3 to 20 mg/m3, resolution of at most 0.001 mg/m3 and accuracy within ±8% across 0.001 mg/m3 to 0.150 mg/m3. 

Carbon monoxide must be measured with a multipoint logging instrument covering at least 0 ppm to 30 ppm, with resolution of at most 0.1 ppm and accuracy within ±3% over 0 ppm to 10 ppm.

Formaldehyde and TVOCs are especially important for suppliers focused on fit-out-related air quality, because NABERS treats them mainly as tenancy and whole-building issues associated with office materials and activities. 

Formaldehyde can be measured either with real-time equipment or by laboratory analytical methods. The rules specify real-time instrumentation such as PID or electrochemical devices with a range of at least 20 ppb to 2,000 ppb and resolution of at most 1 ppb, while the lab option uses DNPH-coated silica gel cartridges, low-noise sampling pumps, and analysis by a NATA-accredited laboratory using HPLC with ultraviolet detection. 

TVOCs can likewise be measured by real-time PID instruments or laboratory methods, with the real-time option requiring at least 10 ppb to 2,000 ppb range and at most 1 ppb resolution, and the laboratory option using sorbent tubes analysed by a NATA-accredited laboratory.

Portable & field testing

Proposed NASA EDGE mission could strengthen remote monitoring in Asia

Measurement frequency

Just as important as the instruments are the measurement windows and placement rules. NABERS requires spot measurements to follow defined sampling frequencies and locations. 

CO2 is taken in morning and afternoon sessions, with base-building readings taken near supply diffusers and whole-building or tenancy readings taken in occupied space plus plant-room outdoor air intakes. 

PM10 for tenancy and whole-building ratings must be measured in occupied space at a height of 0.6 m to 1.1 m and not during the lunch window between 12:30 pm and 1:30 pm. 

Formaldehyde and TVOC measurements are collected in the morning, with the TVOC rule explicitly noting that morning measurement is intended to capture pollutants that have built up overnight. 

Carbon monoxide is measured near outdoor air intakes to assess the cleanliness of intake air rather than indoor occupant exposure alone.

For suppliers, the implication is straightforward. A product aimed at Australia’s office market may increasingly need to support not just real-time sensing, but defensible survey practice, calibration evidence, exportable datasets and assessor-friendly workflows. 

NABERS also links to wider market frameworks: its Indoor Environment ratings can be used as inputs for WELL certification, recertification and annual monitoring through a published crosswalk. 

So a supplier that can support NABERS-style evidence capture may also be better positioned in projects where health, wellbeing and ESG narratives overlap.

The broader market reason this matters is that Australia is not a fringe destination for Asian suppliers. Australia’s trade is deeply tied to Asia, with DFAT reporting that ASEAN accounted for A$195.7 billion in two-way trade with Australia in 2024–25, and multiple Southeast Asian economies ranking among Australia’s top trading partners. 

In a standards-conscious market like that, a rating framework such as NABERS can influence procurement even where it is not directly mandatory for indoor air. Buyers may start by asking whether a building can earn or improve a rating, but that quickly turns into more practical questions: can the monitoring system produce the right parameters, at the right precision, in the right format, with the right evidence trail?

So the real value of NABERS for indoor air quality vendors is not that it creates a single nationwide IAQ compliance threshold. It is that it codifies what serious, rating-grade indoor-environment evidence looks like in a major Asia-Pacific market. 

For Asian suppliers selling sensors, sampling systems, platforms or integrated building analytics into Australia, that makes NABERS less a branding exercise than a specification signal.