Australia’s 11 million homes are responsible for over 10 per cent of its total emissions and more than 25 per cent of electricity consumption. With an additional 5.5 million homes expected to be built before 2050, reducing emissions from homes will be critical to achieving Australia’s climate target.
The vast majority of Australian homes were built before construction standards were introduced in the early 2000s. These homes are inefficient in terms of energy consumption and thermal comfort, meaning that a large number of householders live in energy poverty and are vulnerable to extreme temperatures in their own homes.
A large number of homes also remain connected to gas, a high-emissions fossil fuel that impacts indoor air quality.
Achieving a zero carbon, healthy future for Australians will therefore require transforming the country’s housing stock to ensure that new homes and existing homes become highly efficient and zero carbon.
This requires defining what a zero carbon home looks like in practice – essential for informing policy-makers, lenders, the construction industry and households in the transition to Australia’s zero carbon future.
Zero carbon buildings produce no net emissions over their entire lifecycle. To achieve this, all decisions made at each design phase reduce energy demand and carbon emissions.
There is no single solution: zero carbon homes are the product of many choices based on local climate conditions.
What we did
Our team undertook an extensive literature review of a range of academic and grey literature to examine existing definitions for zero carbon buildings. This information was collated and qualitatively examined to uncover key themes across the sources.
The Renovation Pathways expert advisory group (EAG) was invited to a workshop to share their insight and expertise on a zero carbon home definition. During the workshop, existing definitions were presented to the EAG for review, and we collated feedback from experts on key elements of the definition.
Information from the literature review and workshop was then consolidated to determine the key elements of a zero carbon building. The result is a detailed definition based on this collective information.