The "Lockdown" Census

So the results of the 2021 “lockdown” census have been released. Here is some interesting housing related data;

Since the last census, almost 1m new private dwellings were added, with more than 11m counted across the country. Of those, 70% were separate homes, 16% were apartments and 13% were townhouses, while the proportion of apartments continues to increase.

1m new homes in 5 years. 83%, 830,000 are houses or townhouses, for the purposes of a back of the napkin discussion.

If all the homes and townhouses had been 7 Stars instead of 6 we would have saved 3.6million tonnes of co2 over the last 5 years (about the same annual co2 output of Iceland or Namibia as an entire nation).

In a dream scenario, where existing home retrofits were prioritised, if all Australian housing had been 7 Stars instead of the average existing 2 Stars we would have saved 33million tonnes of co2 over the last 5 years (the co2 output of New Zealand or Azerbaijan)!!! 😮

Cost-wise if someone in Melbourne were to upgrade their existing home from the average 2 stars (if you're lucky!) to 7 Stars they would save about $25,000 on heating and cooling over the next 5 years 🤯💸

Alternatively, if we had kept our subpar housing stock but transitioned our energy sector completely over to renewables we would save 30.3 million tonnes of carbon per year (Cuba).

For the data crunchers amongst us see the table below for factors assumed:

At Altereco our goal is to try and bring all existing homes up to the 7 Star minimum standard. In situations where we have good solar access or neighbouring party walls we've found that we are even able to hit 8 Stars for an alteration and addition. Given that households are the largest source of energy usage in Australia and most of this consumption is avoidable, we believe that high performance building is one of the most effective ways to combat the climate crisis.