RESEARCH PULSE: Planning and housing guru Ralph Horne has been busy – mostly in his big role as associate deputy vice chancellor at RMIT. But also on a five-year research project with the Australian Research Council into how low-carbon retrofits might integrate into 161 households, without the mention of the words “low-carbon homes”.
“We just asked them about their homes, how they keep their homes, what their aspirations are, where they are in their housing career – we wanted to understand where the narrative of low carbon retrofit fits into ordinary homemaking,” Horne told us in a recent interview.
- Read more about his research in this contributed article
The reason “low carbon” was removed from the conversation, he said, was to remove the “research bias that plagues this type of work”, which would have people self selecting, and “you end up talking to the same 20 per cent of people who want to do the right thing and are happy to talk about it.”
Instead, the research team selected a demographic of households that may not necessarily identify as “green”, with 40 per cent in lower socioeconomic households, to examine potential inequalities in retrofits.
“We want to work out what people actually do and why they think the way they do,” Horne said.
Also in the works is research on waste, particularly in how apartments manage waste. Horne said that in his opinion, state governments, particularly Victoria, but to a lesser extent, NSW, are “building loads of apartments but not servicing them properly”.
Dumping recycling in landfill
For example, in Melbourne, a post-millennium apartment block is more likely to be serviced by a private waste management company. While it’s hard to obtain data from these private collections, it’s clear that there are no solid incentives to make sure the waste from these apartments does not go to landfill.
“In most cases, the vast majority of it goes to landfill, even if people are trying to recycle; the recycling goes to landfill. In fact, we’ve got photographs of two shoots coming into one bin.
“It’s not to say [private waste contractors] are breaking the law, but there’s just a lack of focus on accountability for what’s supposed to be happening, and they are not the only ones letting us down.
“It’s a bit of a smelly mess, this space. We’ve got the implementation of more and more bins; so, we have glass bins, FOGO (food organics and garden organics) bins and in those respects.”
However, apartments have been “let off the hook” usually because they lack the space or “it’s too complicated”. Rules around waste favour detached housing, and policies are “neglecting apartments.”
The inequities in European coal field can apply in Australia
Meanwhile, Horne is also continuing his work in Europe with Horizon Europe, a research and innovation fund by the European Commission, including looking at “positive energy buildings” – that produce more energy than they consume.
Another project involves researching inequalities in the Green Deal, which involve the EU “ploughing structural funds into coal field areas” to compensate staff for their loss of livelihood.
These learnings could easily apply to Australia, in areas with closing coal fields such as La Trobe Valley in Victoria and the Hunter Valley in NSW, where “they haven’t really addressed underlying inequalities in society”.
For example, in a very male dominated industry, large amounts of the payout have gone to men. “It’s done with the best intentions, but it’s actually generated a lot of opposition to the green transition because of the way it’s been done.”
The lack of information on retrofits in the consumer space
Ultimately, the finding of the low carbon housing research was that “there is no language for the standards of retrofit,” Horne said.
In Europe, houses are given a “fridge label” in the form of an energy performance certificate (EPC), where the energy efficiency of a property is rated from A (most efficient) to G (least efficient).
“There is a basic understanding and a basic language around ‘is my house rated C or D? Why is that? What are the key things missing from it?’ and none of that language exists in Australia.
“Households are undercapitalised. There is very little information on the independent veracity about what retrofits will do to your home.”
Horne, along with his co-researchers, found that space “was a bit like the housing construction industry”. “It’s all based on subcontractors and trusting relationships.”
“People either make stuff up or look at what’s on mass media, which is always commercially driven and therefore biased, or they take advice from friends and family, tradies they know and trust, or tradies that are brother-in-law.
“There’s a high degree of trust, but my concern is whether that trust is well-founded.”
Mandatory disclosure
Horne said because there was no mandatory disclosure for the NatHERS energy rating for housing, there was no way of independently understanding what a property’s condition is, what it should be and what it could be.
And this meant “small stories” could quickly gather pace, including questions about whether heat pumps would work in Gippsland. This causes consumers to also swarm to “a melange of Facebook group type discussions”.