14 February 2019 The Fifth Estate’s Nick Lane: The case for passive homes as a national standard

15 February 2019 by Jason Quinn

The energy policies and building standards that govern our homes need to keep us comfortable and limit global warming. Passive house, a rigorous building standard for ultra-low energy buildings, ticks these boxes.”

“Did you know that more people die in their homes from heat stress than from any other natural disaster in Australia?”

“Accounting for 36 per cent of global final energy use and 39 per cent of energy related carbon dioxide emissions, the building and construction sector is a high impact sector that is ripe for climate mitigation. Rather than focusing on the source of energy without aiming to reduce its usage, passive house design aims to change the way we design buildings from the very beginning. Australia is expected to renew more than 50 per cent of its built environment by 2050, making now the ideal time to reassess our building standards and move away from outdated, inefficient and destructive building methods towards a sustainable, efficient and more comfortable way of living.”

Good to see this in the media in Australia. Moving their building code to Passive House has the opportunity to fix many interconnected problems with fuel poverty, resilience to heat waves, CO2 emissions, energy reduction, and occupant health only a few of them.

Content by The Fifth Estate.

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