4 April 2019 The Fifth Estate’s Willow Aliento: Airconditioning needs to innovate to stop climate change and keep us cool

4 April 2019 by Jason Quinn

Building codes that ensure dwellings are built to a high standard of performance are an obvious move when thinking about reducing loads.

“The cheapest time is when you first build, because you are dealing with incremental costs,” Campbell says.
For example, triple glazing adds only a fraction to the cost of a dwelling but can reduce the energy required for heating and cooling by 30 to 40 per cent.
But there is a “lot of dysfunction” in the market because “the builder doesn’t pay the energy bill”
Outcome-based and performance-based codes are important as a way of addressing this. Campbell suggests an outcome or performance-based rating for residential could be applied at the point of major events such as sale or refurbishment.

Split incentive is the fancy term for what occurs when the folks making the decision on how well to build a building are not going to own it or pay for the heating/cooling. This unfortunately is pretty much always the case in commercial real estate.

It is often seen even when folks are building or upgrading a home that they are living in themselves. The occupants figure they are going to move soon so they are concerned about over-investing in savings. If I tell them it will pay you money back in year 5 the first thing they say is … Will we be here in 5 years? Someone will be.

Content by The Fifth Estate.

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