Improving the thermal performance in Australian homes is an urgent priority to ease cost of living pressures, improve wellbeing and reduce energy consumption and emissions, experts say.

An RMIT University-led report, commissioned by RACE for 2030, assessed current challenges related to home thermal efficiency improvements.

The report recommends several priorities to help Australia reach its goal of net zero by 2050, such as improving how we build new homes and how households prioritise and undertake thermal upgrading of their homes.

While the introduction of the new seven-star energy efficiency building standards is a necessary step to improve new homes, Rajagopalan said more needs to be done during the design and construction stage of building to ensure each home is thermally efficient.

A potential solution was creating a “One-stop shop” on how to embark on retrofitting your home and the benefits of a thermally efficient home from verified sources.

  • Treevan 🇦🇺@aussie.zoneOPEnglish
    3·
    1 year ago

    Which part of Aus? Sounds cold. What’s the house made out of?

    Did you see that article about how anything under 16 is bad for your health?

    • ryannathans@lemmy.fmhy.mlEnglish
      61·
      1 year ago

      I’m in a cold part of Sydney. The house is brick (single brick in many areas), the floor has no insulation and neither does half of the ceiling. Thermal camera shows brick walls at about 12C while it’s 20C outdoors. Typical indoor temperatures without heating are single digit most of the time, maybe peak at 12C for the day.

      Do you have a link to this article?

      Edit: why the downvotes?

      • Treevan 🇦🇺@aussie.zoneOPEnglish
        2·
        1 year ago

        I hate the downvotes too. I dont understand why we need them in small communities. I’ll go looking, Lemmy’s search isn’t great.

        I’ll edit it back in soon.

        https://aussie.zone/post/355545 - Guardian article. I talk about our place in there, which sounds similar to yours but in QLD. We get to near 0 in Winter. Warm days though.

    • Zagorath@aussie.zoneEnglish
      4·
      1 year ago

      Even under 18 is regarded as bad.

      Personally I’m in an old brick apartment in Brisbane and this time of year it’s regularly below that indoors. I can physically feel the air leaving through the gaps under the front door or under the sliding glass windows. The insulation is just terrible.