Europe’s Retrofitting Experience Points Way for Australia’s Future

The air comes in through the floors, window frames and under doors. In winter it’s freezing and in summer it’s stifling. Welcome to the average Aussie home. And while double-glazed windows and solar panels top the wish list for buyers, adding an average of $112,000 to a sale price according to Domain, those features are a rarity. Of Australia ’ s $10 trillion in housing stock, just 30 per cent have solar panels. While knocking down old homes and starting again may seem the likely solution as our housing faces up to a green future, there is another funding model paying off globally—retrofitting homes on a major scale. Under the Energiesprong that originated in the Netherlands, homes are retrofitted to satisfy energy-efficient standards. It has since spread to France, Italy, Germany, the UK and the US. Energiesprong project manager Justine Prain visited Australia last month as part of the Building 4.0 CRC roadshow to share her experience and spoke to The Urban Developer . “Most of the homes we live in today are the homes that will be there in 2050 so in order to meet climate challenges we need to do something,” Prain says. “The time scale that we’ve got to do it in is increasingly short. “The Netherlands team brought together landlords, construction companies, manufacturers and government to see how they could solve some of the key challenges. “They started in 2013 and went from pilots and single homes to doing whole streets and in fact whole communities.” ▲ These homes in Nottingham in the UK are aimed at achieving a 30-40kW savings annually, twice as good as the national target. How they did this was essentially recladding homes, allowing residents to remain in situ , including the use of cassette roofs with solar panels and facades with double-glazed windows, allowing them to be installed rapidly, Prain says. “An energy pod was created offsite with everything in terms of heat pumps, inverters, ventilation and all the monitoring equipment,” Prain says. “[The retrofitting] really added to the look of these properties ... but it could also be all serviced from outside.” Financing the projects was a hurdle, however. “There’s just not the money sitting around in governments, councils and housing providers to pay for retrofitting all of the housing stock,” Prian says. “We look at how the homes are performing before the work and then fully monitor them afterwards so that we knew that their energy performance matched their design. “It also enabled us to build a really robust business case and to put in place agreements called comfort plans with residents.” These comfort plans are essentially a long-term loan for the cost of the work, which is offset by the savings in energy consumption costs. “What became very obvious to us was that we were trying to buy something that just didn’t exist in the market and certainly didn’t exist at a price point that was commercially viable,” Prain says. “We partnered with project management consultancy Turner &amp; Townsend and we bit into the Mayor of London’s retrofit accelerator homes funding. “In terms of making the investment stack up, we relied on some specialised grant funds from different organisations around decarbonisation from governments.” ▲ Uk-based Energiesprong project manager Justine Prain during her presentation in Brisbane. This helped with the first and most expensive steps—completing the design, prototype and piloting—but with each step the cost of the product reduces dramatically until it scales up to commercial viability. But instead of inventing and entirely new businesses, Energiesprong worked with a network of existing companies to create a framework for the product. Reaching the self-financing stage meant that aspect of the operation could be placed back with the residents of the homes. “It means really working hard with the housing sector and saying, think about this as a long-term project over 30 years of your maintenance,” Prain says. “As well, think about what that unlocks over and above that, and being able to add on that charge fairly as a fair transition to residents. “The alternative is you leave them in a house that’s really poorly performing.” In the Australian market the potential for similar retrofitting is substantial. Domain chief of research and economics Nicola Powell said the appeal of green homes on the market were considerable with such energy-efficient homes spending 4 per cent less time in days on the market and attracting more than 16 per cent more views. “This performance is likely driven by two factors—an increasing number of environmentally conscious buyers, leading to greater demand for greener homes, and the lifestyle benefits associated with such properties,” Powell says. “Features such as cross-ventilation, north-facing orientation, heat-recovery ventilation and solar panels not only contribute to environmental sustainability but also offer practical advantages, potentially reducing maintenance costs for occupants. “Both lead to the increasing appeal of energy-efficient properties.” ▲ Energiesprong arrived in Italy in 2022. The Domain Sustainability in Property Report reveals an encouraging trend during the current cost-of-living crisis with a rise in motivation, adoption and rewards of investing in sustainable home features. Middle-income families are leading the charge, driving up the demand for green homes. Meanwhile, major tech company behind the retrofit of the European market are arriving in Australia. It seems it is only a matter of time and motiviation until the potential of the nation’s existing housing stock is unlocked—and everyone’s a winner. You are currently experiencing The Urban Developer Plus (TUD+), our premium membership for property professionals. Click here to learn more.

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