Our Approach & Wish:
for everyone to live in a well designed low or zero energy home.

Building an energy efficient home will assist to buffer you from high energy prices, and may even enable you to live completely independent of the grid (with a suitable stand alone power system).  With an energy efficient home, your requirement to source additional energy to heat and cool the home will reduce.  This will imply lower operational costs for you and an important additional benefit - lower your CO2 footprint on the planet.  Of the energy emissions that the Australian residential sector is responsible for, nearly half of these emissions are produced from heating & cooling of our homes. Most Australian households rely heavily on electricity for air conditioning, lighting and running other domestic appliances. This electricity is often generated from carbon intensive, high emission energy sources such as coal-fired power stations. 

The residential housing market in Australia continues to grow. CSIRO scientists have estimated that if all the new housing built in Australia between 2011 and 2020 were zero emission houses, 63 million tons of GHG emissions would be saved. This would be equivalent to taking all of Australia’s private cars off the road for 2 years and 237 days, or closing all Australia’s power stations for up to 100 days. 

It has been shown that a highly energy efficient, eight-star rated house, complete with energy efficient appliances and fittings, and smart building design (increased energy efficiency) can reduce household energy use by more than 70 per cent, compared to an average five-star rated house in Melbourne.  The EPBD (Energy Performance of Buildings Directive – European authority) have stated this number to be 85-90% when comparing their energy efficient housing models (passive house) compared with current European housing stock.

It is true that building an energy efficient home costs more than building a brick-veneer single glazed ‘box’. However you will be surprised that the additional costs are not what you think. Generally, depending on construction quality, an energy efficient approach may cost you between 0-15% more. When you take a closer look at what this implies, and assess the full cost difference that the building will ‘cost the owner’ in its lifetime, it becomes blatantly clear which approach to take. The ‘operational’ savings can amount to hundreds of thousands of dollars, making your initial additional investment insignificant! And this is not taking into account the benefits of a comfortable internal environment in your home, the social benefits of less funds spent on infrastructure, and the planetary benefits of less CO2 in the atmosphere.

If this makes sense to you (both from a financial and environmental aspect) and it resonates with you to live in an energy efficient home, then read the section on Low Energy Home Alternatives.  Note that this approach can be applied virtually in any climate zone in Australia!