The Energy Efficiency Conversation in the Australian Volume Home Building sector: Current practices and opportunities for change

Housing with high operational energy efficiency has the potential to positively contribute towards the global environmental challenge of climate change. These types of homes contribute to climate change mitigation through reduced operational energy demand and associated greenhouse gas emissions. In addition, such homes can improve household resilience in a changing climate, by providing social and financial benefits such as improved comfort, health and wellbeing, and reduced cost of living. Although these potential benefits are well known, the adoption of higher standards of energy efficiency in new Australian housing is not widespread. This is in part a result of limited mandatory requirements (compared to the benchmarks of other developed economies), and limitations to demand creation by consumers – two contributing features of an on-going ‘blame game’ between consumer, government and industry stakeholders. This study focuses on the dominant providers of new housing in Australia, the volume home builders. These organisations occupy an influential position in the system of new housing supply, informing and directing the choices of inexperienced homebuyers, and providing work opportunities to a large construction supply chain. But recent studies reveal that sustainability measures such as energy efficiency are not well promoted or prioritised by the sector. This paper presents preliminary findings from the study, exploring the current energy efficiency ‘conversation’ within the Australian volume home building sector. A content analysis of selected organisational websites is used to establish an evidence base of the current conversation between volume home builders and their potential homebuyers. These results then inform the design of semi-structured interviews with a range of volume home building organisations and staff. Interviews explore relevant organisational practices, and identify opportunities for a more productive energy efficiency conversation, as a means of mainstreaming higher energy efficiency performance in new housing.