As the property industry begins to adapt to the new 7-star energy efficiency ratings, the likelihood of further raises in the future poses the question, does Frasers Property’s Passive House provide a template for the future?
In August the nation’s building ministers decided to up the energy efficiency of new residential homes to 7 stars. It comes into effect from May 1, 2023.
With the government introducing a target to reach net-zero by 2050, many have argued further lifts in energy-efficiency will be included in the future.
Through its pilot Passive House home at Life, Point Cook, Frasers Property Australia has been testing and understanding what elements constitute the most sustainable housing product, higher than the minimum 7-star rating.
The pilot project gained Passive House Plus accreditation — one of the world’s most innovative sustainable construction standards — in a first for a major Australian developer.
The Passive House design and construction standard originated in Germany and is now widely used across the world.
The Passive House is designed with optimising occupant health and the net-zero energy goal in mind, seeking to generate at least as much — and perhaps more — power from rooftop solar panels as is necessary to power the home.
The design emphasises energy-saving measures including window systems, insulation, ventilation and airtight sealing to which stabilise the internal temperature of the home throughout the year, whilst minimising heating and cooling expenditures.
Frasers Property is measuring the new design alongside its regular product offering at its Passive House pilot project to collect data on not only the costs and power required to run the home, but also indoor quality metrics related to the health and wellbeing of residents.
Is the market ready?
While these projects may be novel in the Australian context, Kate Nason, Sustainability Advisor at Frasers Property Australia and Chairperson at the Australian Passive House Association, believes all that is needed is a bit of push and pull to bring it into the mainstream.
Ms Nason said builders and developers are more than capable of delivering homes to the sustainability standards of a passive home. However, what is lacking is the knowledge and capacity to do it.
There are suppliers out there who have all the necessary products to build a Passive House, but it is about bringing the market along on the journey, Ms Nason said. The demand also needs to come from consumers to scale this initiative
“Building the first one will always be the most challenging – we need to try to get the price point down through building more capacity in the industry to deliver this type of building, and also build the demand from the customer side,” she said.
“What we have seen in other countries, and here, is that once you have delivered one with the whole team, then the learning curve does plateau, and the costs actually come down as well.
“What we’re going to see as well is more and more companies from Europe or North America invest in setting up branches here in Australia if there’s demand for it. But it’s like the chicken and the egg, we need to create the demand for them to come.”
Demand isn’t faltering on the consumer side, Ms Nason said, and projects like the Passive House will only lead to more customers asking, ‘why can’t I have that’?
“That will drive the industry to meet those demands, there will be more suppliers that come online, and the costs will come down in parallel,” she said.
Ms Nason said as Australia heads towards its net zero goals, the property sector will see the gap between the Passive House and the recently updated building codes gradually close.
“We still have quite a long way to go,” she said.
“We need to get the message to the industry and the market that the NCC is a minimum baseline before you build illegally. We should not be aiming to meet the NCC, we should be aiming to go above and beyond it every time.”
Content repurposed from realestate.com.au’s article ‘Building a Sustainable Future’.