Alan Pears, who led many of the energy efficiency movements in Australia is not impressed at Australia’s very slow progress towards better housing. In fact, even the new National Construction Code of Australia’s 7 star NatHERS standard that states are refusing to implement in a timely manner would be illegal in many parts of Europe and parts of the US, he says.
To me, the underlying problem with building energy policy is that policy makers have tried to drive change using regulation without enough emphasis on complementary measures.
They have failed to mobilise community support, which is fundamental to change. Erika Bartak and her colleagues at the University of Melbourne showed some time back how builders were manipulating the 6 star regs, claiming that 6 stars meant their houses were fantastically efficient (see Spruiking the stars: some home builders are misleading consumers about energy ratings ). Even now 7 stars would be illegal in many EU countries and some parts of the US.
On the other hand, I gather that there are some practical challenges in meeting 7 stars on sites with poor solar access for instance.
This reflects issues with the rating scheme itself, as well as lack of innovation. I dream of the “good old days” when CSIRO Building Research at Highett [in Melbourne] did strong practical work and Melbourne University Architecture was a global leader in building modelling
Even the Gas & Fuel Corporation was doing serious work understanding how gas heating interacted with real buildings – and selling insulation by letting people pay for it on their gas bills.
With appliance efficiency we used an effective energy labelling scheme with multi-million dollar promotion, training of appliance sales staff and tech innovation to drive community support.
The laggards couldn’t deny that there were others offering much better products, and consumers were asking why government allowed poor performing products to be sold. When most new home buyers have no idea what stars mean, what hope do we have?
Also, the present NatHERS [home energy rating system] approach doesn’t focus enough on peak summer and winter demand, and comfort/health in extreme weather. The software is capable of doing this: it’s the communication that is failing. And we are still using weather data from pre-2015 to design buildings with 75 year lives in a changing climate and increasing vulnerability of energy supply infrastructure.
The 2022 NCC still used a 7 per cent discount rate and very low carbon price in its benefit-cost ratio analysis, so it didn’t reflect economic reality. So much for rational policy making. I discussed this in a recent article in The Fifth Estate We need a new design for our electricity market Spinifex
Then there is the issue of enforcement. It seems we can’t even build homes that don’t leak, crack or catch fire. These create costs and deep trauma for the unfortunate people who buy them. Mind you, the book by David Oswald and Trivess Moore (Constructing a Consumer-Focused Industry, Routledge 2022), and the recent disaster in Turkey have shown this is a global problem.
It’s true, as the Housing Industry Association claims, that the extra energy savings of shifting from 6 to 7 stars are a lot smaller than if you improve a 2 star to 3 stars – I think I was the one who highlighted that a while ago.
But that is an argument for a stronger focus on upgrading poor performing homes, not an excuse for delaying new home improvement in a context of terrifying climate change and multiple benefits from health, amenity, lower peak demand (saving on energy supply infrastructure costs) for example.
It is unfortunate that energy performance measures have been introduced into the NCC at the same time as the very important “liveable housing measures”, which introduce significant costs and provide a double excuse for laggards to complain.
Given the large and increasing percentage of ageing Australians with disabilities, and the increasing recognition of the importance of allowing people to age in place and save governments a lot of money, the delays are even more appalling.
It is interesting that “conservative” Queensland has been a leading advocate for universal access – maybe pushed by their large numbers of retirees. Maybe the HIA and Master Builders Australia should consult some retired builders and tradies on the importance of this measure.
I have been fighting these battles since I was running Melbourne’s Energy Information Centre in the early 1980s. To still face the insanity of this makes me very sad.