Yep, you could accuse me of being like a dog with a bone. While I was tickled to see the comments on ABC’s Unleashed site over the weekend I was disappointed that people couldn’t see it as a way of killing two birds with one stone.
Here’s one argument:
- According to the National Greenhouse Accounts the residential sector directly generates 10 per cent of total national emissions and the indirect use of electricity within homes accounts for 8.6 per cent of total emissions. Within the home, water heaters and electrical appliances are the major GHG emitters. That seems kind of a lot to me (and importantly - within our control).
- New housing adds a mere 2 per cent to the total number of houses in Australia each year. (There are only roughly 100,000 new detached dwelling built each year in Australia.)
- There are already about 160,000 ground and upper floor renovations done each year. There’s also a lot of unrenovated housing stock.
- The government is mooting more stimulus measures - why not introduce one that pulls forward the timing of renovation demand but steers it to reward those investments that improve the energy efficiency of existing housing stock - instead of always being so focused on new homes?
Joe Blow, a commenter on the ABC site is one who seems interested in these types of ideas. He wrote:
“Many of these comments are focussed on the justice of the proposed measure. I doubt if that’s really relevant. I don’t look on the negative gearing measures as a question of fairness or not. Taxes and tax rebates are a tool of the government to achieve a particular outcome (eg invest in extra properties) - the main criterion for them is whether they actually achieve what they set out to do. So that’s how I would judge this proposed measure - would it actually achieve transformation of our existing housing stock (particular with regard to energy efficiency, which is what I am interested in personally)? Are there any unexpected “stings in the tail” or loopholes? That’s what I would be interested in comments about.”
Others are also talking about the re-use and adaptation of existing buildings, albeit in some different contexts. This morning architectural historian, writer and critic Aaron Betsky joined Alan Saunders (listen to the interview here) on ABC radio’s By Design. He spoke about the idea that maybe we don’t need to just make a new building, maybe we need to re-think existing ones.
“It’s not always about coming up with the newest bauble,” Betsky said. People need to think differently about the spaces we already have.
Of course, Australia already has some measures that are designed to steer some energy efficiency improvements. But I still like those Canadians - even if some commenters decried the HRTC as “another stupid idea, this time from Canada”. I like the way the Canadians Eco-energy Retrofit is one complete, aparently well thought-out package.
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