Advancements in sustainable housing practices in Australia

Abstract

Australian housing industry practices, especially in the single and low to medium density housing development sectors are predominantly driven by the volume builders. Here the term, volume builders, refers to a practice of high volume of cloning. Individually designed owner builder house are very limited in Australia. Within such an industry environmentally unsustainable practice could multiply significantly at much faster rate. Australian living standard is resource intensive and the life style is high on the consumption of water and energy. For example living space, energy consumption, water consumption and embodied energy usage per capita are, relatively, at a much higher level. It is therefore envisaged that the positive influence on the sustainable practices can be affected efficiently through policy innovations and regulatory measures. Since early 2000, the topic of sustainable housing has been a very active area of discussion. Therefore, over the last ten years, notable progress was made in this sphere. Attention was drawn by the media through public debates and significant improvements have been observed in policy improvements, R&D activities and in engineering curricula. This paper presents the positive outcomes of current practices, policy innovations, research and education.