There is “a pervasive culture of mediocre energy performance across the Australian building industry”, according to a damning review by pitt&sherry and Swinburne University that the government has sat on for months and only released just prior to Christmas. It’s what the industry has long turned a blind eye to, but now it’s finally written in black and white.
The National Energy Efficient Building Project engaged with more than 1000 stakeholder to look into the systemic weaknesses and widespread non-compliance regarding energy efficiency requirements of the National Construction Code.
The review, led by the South Australian government on behalf of all states and territory governments, found “a very large number of concerns” around the effectiveness of current energy performance requirements. Many of those interviewed believe that amidst “a culture of sign-offs” and a lack of oversight and enforcement, non-compliance is rife across the entire building supply chain. This means higher energy use, higher carbon emissions and bigger bills.
In the residential market – where many of the problems were reported – the six-star NatHERS energy efficiency requirement is routinely not being met.
Lower and mid-grade commercial buildings are not exempt and are also reportedly not meeting minimum standards. And the problems lie across multiple stakeholders, with consumers, industry, regulators and the government all playing a part in below minimum-standard product being produced.
“These concerns appear systemic in nature, in that they cover all aspects of the building supply chain and regulatory process and all building types,” the review said. “Further, there was a remarkable degree of consistency in the views expressed and issues raised in all states and territories, despite widely varying building markets and conditions.”
- Read industry responses as they come in here.
Consumers don’t care, apparently
Corner cutting in the industry has been fuelled by a total lack of oversight compounded by a widespread view that consumers just don’t care about energy performance.
“The risks of corner-cutting are likely being raised by a widespread view… that house buyers are largely uninterested in energy efficiency outcomes… Many industry professionals noted that this routinely translates into energy efficient designs or inclusions being ‘traded away’ during the design process, or not being specified in the first place,” the review said.
Instead of interest in lifecycle costs, homeowners were more interested in aesthetics, resale value and size, stakeholders reported.
Consumers were also seen as having limited understanding of thermal comfort, and therefore could not discern between good and bad advice, and had limited willingness to pay extra for these features.
In short, there’s no market pressure for energy efficient features. The review did note, however, that the market environment was affected by policy and regulatory practices, with consumers relying on market participants for energy efficiency advice and appearing to trust that the regulatory process would work to protect their economic interests.
But it seems they’re wrong.
We can get away with it
A key view uncovered was that there was a sense of “impunity” in the building sector around meeting energy efficiency minimums, as there was little risk perceived regarding being discovered cutting corners and, if discovered, little chance of any serious repercussions.
The reasons for the low risk included that energy performance measures like insulation and double glazing are difficult for non-professionals to discern and expected energy performance is not made clear, so most home owners are none the wiser.
No enforcement
There was also a widespread belief that the responsible state government regulators were not enforcing energy performance requirements. These regulators reported a shortage of funding to undertake key enforcement activities like audits, and also consistently reported energy efficiency and climate change (the objective being to reduce greenhouse gas emissions) as the lowest of priorities, behind more immediate concerns like health, structural integrity and bushfire safety.
“The review team formed the view that regulator, industry, consumer and government views appear to be reinforcing each other and contributing to an overall culture of low energy performance: no one party can be singled out as particularly or solely responsible for this situation.”
Issues with the code
As described by the Building Verification Forum in our previous article, one concern raised was a focus on “as designed” rather than “as built” performance. This encouraged the regulatory system to focus on documentation rather than actual buildings.
On top of this there were poorly justified variations from state to state, deemed to satisfy and modelled solutions leading to different, non-equivalent outcomes, gaps in the code related to energy performance (such as commissioning, maintenance and ventilation), and complexity and confusion regarding the code.
Substitutions abound, and there’s a lack of performance verification
Substitution of low efficiency products and systems was reported to be high, with high-efficiency glazing most commonly reported to be switched out. Generally cost savings were passed back to home owners though there were also reports where this had not happened.
There was also concerns regarding quality of products and systems, which lacked certification, performance testing and appropriate labelling as occurs with consumer products such as whitegoods.
“The lack of energy performance verification for building products (and indeed for whole buildings) compares poorly with the regime that has applied for decades to washing machines, refrigerators and the like,” the review said.
“In the case of many energy using appliances it is illegal to sell products that do not meet Australian minimum energy performance standards. In addition requirements are regularly enforced, with numerous successful prosecutions of those breaching standards. Buildings, by comparison, are many orders of magnitude more valuable, more energy intensive and longer lived, yet the buildings themselves, and the building components, have no mandatory energy performance verification.”
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