Until I saw climate scientist Diane Urge-Vorsatz present at a passivhaus conference in China in 2019 I thought the Lock In Effect was what happened after drinking with the publican after hours in an English country pub. It is actually much more consequential than that.
As the world attempts, to address the climate crisis the building sector is grappling with retrofitting the existing stock to reduce emissions while increasing indoor comfort, health outcomes and resilience in a changing climate. The pressing question is, “how far do we go now?”
We have been finding the Lock In Effect a helpful framework to approach this. It involves asking the simple-seeming question, if I do x now, will I have to re-do it at any point in the next 20-30 years? If the answer is yes, then we have the Lock In Effect: we are locking in inadequate performance for decades while also disincentivising further change!
It is always in the detail:let’s take a renovation in Ballarat. If someone was to insulate a 90 millimetre mm timber framed home tomorrow that would improve performance?
While almost definitely better than nothing, the performance in that particular climate will still be far from optimal (or even healthy); 90mm of insulation just doesn’t cut it there!
However, if the cladding is replaced and the building wrapped in an appropriate weather resistant barrier, which is then taped up, the project is all but guaranteed that no one else is likely to revisit the wall insulation for a very long time.
So why care? Firstly, the occupants are likely to experience discomfort especially during colder months as the cooler wall surfaces will radiate that coolth inwards. If indoor humidity is high enough, we can add mould to the equation too.
No problem, we’ll use a heater. Of course! Then we get to financial discomfort.
But then we add solar PV, which is great at reducing power bills but does nothing to help during a blackout in an extreme weather event or even when the sun doesn’t shine.
It turns out appropriate performance (formerly known as high performance) homes are more about people than energy, as they deliver health and comfort.
At a societal level, we are ignoring the health costs associated with our buildings’ impact on human health. The wonderful RIS (regulatory impact statement) process may deliver different verdicts than they have in the past if they included the research into these factors.
The impact of these decisions is increased carbon emissions over decades until someone eventually retrofits to an appropriate standard or knocks the building down and starts again. Not great.
The second aspect is embodied carbon. In the example above, the difference in embodied carbon between the “easy’ renovation and the “appropriate” is fairly minimal. The cladding materials, membranes and tapes are the same, as is the labour to install them. What adds to carbon (and financial) cost is the relatively small increase in materials and labour to accommodate the additional insulation.
This same principal applies to all aspects of the building envelope. Double glazed windows contain twice as much glass as single but everything else remains the same; triple glazed contain one third more glass than double glazed, that is,. incrementally, not much.
The most consequential and frequent aspect of the Lock In Effect that we see is the “quick reno”.
For a variety of reasons, people have a desire to make their home look better or solve an immediate problem – this is understandable. However, in most cases this is cosmetic work, which inhibits access to the thermal envelope thereby potentially locking in the same poor performance of the home for decades to come.
We recognise that a multi-billion-ollar industry has been structured around cosmetic solutions, yet society needs to find a way to address the poor consequenes that can ensue.
We need a deep retrofit industry
We desperately need a deep retrofit industry as well as a “pretty kitchen” industry. The project home market has shown that we can drive down the costs out of everything with scale. Let’s make “appropriate performance” the new standard.
Our glacial movement towards quantifying embodied carbon is a critical part to this journey. While the tools are improving, they are a long way from being useful design tools especially at the single residential scale. Cracking this nut is part of creating the drivers we need.
There is a compelling argument that the current National Construction Code, even with its increasing standards this year (well, in some states), is facilitating the retrofit market for the 2030s.
Of course, our governments could circumnavigate another decade thatworsens the problem and mandate an appropriate level of performance for all renovation projects. Politically brave? Or what the people voted for? But why else get elected? Right now, we’re dawdling towards mediocrity.
Let’s see what the National Energy Performance Strategy actually delivers.
