Current Housing Provision
2.5 Alternative Mechanisms
Areas for Climate Action, which are designated areas for the purposes of supporting climate action through energy or water conservation and greenhouse gas emissions reductions, to ensure that planning decisions lead to more sustainable housing outcomes. Building examples include improved siting of building to capture solar energy, the provision of deep overhangs for shade, and the inclusion of rainwater collection systems or geothermal systems.
What can be seen from these examples is that the planning system in many jurisdictions can play a critical role in the provision of sustainable housing (new and existing), and where building codes fall short, plan- ning requirements can push for improved outcomes. The planning sys- tem is especially important for addressing sustainability beyond the individual dwelling level, which is typically not considered within build- ing codes, or by individual dwelling owners. Given the challenge in tran- sitioning to a low carbon future, improvements will need to come at different scales, which will be discussed further in Chap. 3.
recognize that, although housing can be complex, there are common approaches for improving outcomes.
These campaigns have had varying success: some programmes have demonstrated lasting change. Evidence from Melbourne (Australia) found that, during periods of draught, different education campaigns played a critical role in reducing water consumption. The voluntary
‘Target 155 L’ campaign, which was introduced in Melbourne in 2008, used a range of advertising and education to encourage residents to reduce their daily water consumption to under 155 litres per person (40% lower than average consumption of only a few years previous). Analysis found that the campaign was quite successful with consumption not only drop- ping to the desired level but also remaining at that level for several years following the campaign’s formal end [90]. More than ten years after the campaign started, the average water consumption in Melbourne remains around 160 litres per person [91]. One of the ongoing challenges for education campaigns, as with any changes to practices or lifestyle, is that it can take a long time for people to develop new energy or water efficient practices and, unless the education campaign is sustained or repeated, the benefits can decrease over time.
There has also been a rise in open house style events for sustainable housing, which have both acted as a way educate consumers and demon- strate what is possible [92]. Or, as Martiskainen and Kivimaa [93, p. 28]
put it, such events create a ‘space for initial visioning by sharing experi- ence from completed projects’. Seeing real life examples helps translate ideas and knowledge [94], so these open house experiences are important for both learning what has worked and identifying what has not, as well as learning how to improve the overall process.
In conjunction with raising awareness through education campaigns, product labelling programmes, such as Energy Star, have provided con- sumers with improved information to aid purchasing decisions. The Energy Star programme was developed in the USA in 1992 to address increased energy from appliances, particularly in dwellings, and it is widely regarded as one of the more successful government energy effi- ciency programmes [95]. Systematic improvements to the programme have seen minimum energy efficiency standards of appliances increase over recent years. Since its inception, the Energy Star programme has
helped save more than 5 trillion kWh of electricity and reduced green- house gas emissions by 4 billion metric tons [95]. The programme has also seen significant financial savings with more than US$42 billion in 2020 and more than US$500 billion in avoided energy costs since the start of the programme. In addition to Energy Star for product labelling, there has been an Energy Star certification for homes which has seen more than 2.3 million homes certified to its performance level since 1995, resulting in housing that is at least 10% more energy efficient com- pared to building code requirements [96]. In 2020 alone, this programme (Energy Star) saved 3 billion kWh of electricity, avoided US$390 million in energy costs, and achieved 4 million metric tons of greenhouse gas reductions [96]. Similar benefits have been seen elsewhere; for example, energy efficient appliances are saving New Zealanders more than NZ$30 million a year, with estimated economic savings of NZ$1.5 bil- lion since 2002 [97].
A further approach that has been used with varying success is the use of rebates or tax incentives for energy efficient technologies or building practices. For example, from 2007–2012, the UK offered significant stamp duty (land tax) reductions to encourage consumers to purchase new housing that exceeded minimum performance regulations in a bid to reward early adopters of the higher energy performance standards [98, 99]. This may have helped reduce costs to deliver zero carbon homes in the UK by around 8% across the first four years of the Code for Sustainable Homes programme [100].
In Australia, rebates (including upfront and as a credit for excess energy) have seen the rapid uptake of residential solar photovoltaics (PV) to the point where more than one third of homes now have a solar sys- tem—a change that happened in less than a decade. However, there have been challenges with the various financial support programmes, and when the rebates or other financial supports have been too high, the pro- grammes have often seen an over-subscription of uptake which has led to issues around the quality of some systems being installed. The frequent changes to the amounts received for excess energy and the feed-in-tariff has fluctuated over the years and, depending on it if is higher or lower than the cost for consumers to purchase standard energy, it starts to change the way the systems should be used to maximize financial
outcomes. For example, if the feed-in-tariff is high, then it benefits house- holds who are out of the home during the day and can sell as much energy as possible; whereas, if the feed-in-tariff is low, it is better for that household to consume as much of the energy they are generating as they can.
Rebates, and other innovative finance options, have been identified as particularly important for the retrofit of existing dwellings. To date, much of the retrofit undertaken across the world has, outside a few key govern- ment programmes, largely been driven and funded by individual house- holds. Typically, banks and other significant investors have been reluctant to drive this funding. Some examples of where this is occurring include the Property Assisted Clean Energy finance programmes in the USA and low cost loans delivered by the German KfW state bank [101]. Brown et al. [101] discuss how meeting future climate challenges will require significant alternate funding and easier access to funding for retrofits.