Australia is lacking a nationally consistent ratings framework for housing sustainability, according to the Australian Sustainable Built Environment Council (ASBEC).
While ASBEC supports the Nationwide House Energy Rating Scheme (NatHERS) for application in the National Construction Code, the council's president, Ken Maher, said substantial changes are required to achieve consistency.
As well as a lack of consistency across NatHERS assessors, Maher said there is a conflict of interest in the ratings industry.
"There is often an incentive for energy raters to provide results that a builder wants rather than represent the interests of the prospective home owners," he said.
A discussion paper prepared by ASBEC claims consumers do not understand NatHERS and it is mainly used as a binary pass/fail compliance tool.
"It looks at the building shell, the thermal shelter, but does not include other sustainability elements," Maher said.
"Housing is responsible for 13 per cent of Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions. Therefore, improving the sustainability of our housing stock is crucial to meeting Australia’s targets for emissions reduction.
“At the same time, with energy costs rising, greater energy efficiency in our homes will improve the cost and quality of living for all Australians.”
Instead of a single, coherent national framework for rating housing sustainability there is currently a plethora of ratings and measurement tools making it complex for industry professionals and incomprehensible to consumers.
“We need governments to work with us to implement a nationally harmonised sustainability ratings framework for houses," Maher said.
He said the framework should consist of three key elements: minimum regulatory performance standards in new buildings; benchmarks for market comparison of best practice sustainability performance; and communication messages explaining the value of sustainability features to renovators and homebuyers.
ASBEC believes the findings of the National Energy Efficient Buildings Project highlight that Australia is falling well short of its potential when it comes to the energy efficiency of residential homes.
“We know the Turnbull government is committed to improving Australia’s built environment. The very welcome creation of Australia’s first federal ministry for Cities and the Built Environment showed that," Maher said.
"Now it’s time to act on the building industry’s recommendations and deliver the right tools for measuring housing sustainability.”
ASBEC members include the Airconditioning & Mechanical Contractors' Association (AMCA), Energy Efficiency Council, Engineers Australia, Green Building Council of Australia (GBCA) and Standards Australia, just to name a few.
The council is developing a framework for rating residential performance against best practice across a range of measures including energy, waste, affordability and IEQ.
GBCA CEO, Romilly Madew, said a 40 per cent increase in year-on-year Green Star certifications last year proves that sustainability is here to stay. The GBCA certified 218 Green Star projects in 2015, compared with 156 in 2014.
“We have surpassed the magic 1,000 milestone, and now have 1,020 Green Star certified projects rated,” she said.
At the same time Madew said a new label will be introduced this year to recognise buildings that achieve ‘net zero’ impact in energy, carbon and water.
“This new label will also recognise buildings that go beyond net zero to make positive contributions to the environment, such as generating more renewable energy than is consumed,” Madew said.
“Alongside this label, we will introduce an advanced curriculum to educate professionals on how to deliver net zero buildings, promote net zero as an achievable goal in our events, and create resources that can be used internationally to drive the uptake of net zero building worldwide.”