Sustainable housing has been a critical element of Trivess Moore’s entire life, having grown up in an off-grid mudbrick house that his parents built.
Championing sustainable housing now underpins his professional life as Associate Professor in the School of Property, Construction and Project Management at RMIT, Associate Director of the Sustainable Building Innovation Laboratory and Co-Chair of the Fuel Poverty Research Network. He has also co-authored the new book, A Transition to Sustainable Housing.
Trivess says one of the key ways to achieve more sustainable housing across Australia is to retrofit a significant percentage of the housing market.
“We are not going to be knocking down and rebuilding everything even though you can do a lot more with a new dwelling… we know that retrofit is going to be that critical role there to improve the quality and performance of our housing,” he says.
Australia has had a limited focus on retrofit to date, particularly from policy makers. He says people tend to see it as something separate to renovations, they’d prefer a new kitchen or an extra bathroom. This is exacerbated by the fact that retrofitting is largely hidden, such as insulation which is in the walls or ceiling. People can’t see it but they will feel it in terms of thermal comfort and reduced energy bills.
“We don’t have a very strong retrofit industry in Australia…we don’t have that holistic one stop shop or the number of players that we need in this space”.
He says we also need to get policy makers on board if we want to see more sustainable housing. He describes policy around these goals in Australia as “severely lacking” but is pleased the Victorian Government has come on board with new minimum requirements for private rental housing from 2025.
Trivess says anyone wanting to work in the building industry should be required to have a minimum level of understanding around sustainability and the built environment.
“And that needs to be not just around ‘here are the technologies and the materials’ but the importance of care with the finish; why is it important that you reduce the gaps and cracks around a dwelling, these types of basic things that we should be delivering”.
“And if consumers start asking for these things and the industry doesn’t know what they’re asking about or how to deliver that's a challenge as well.”
“I also think we need better checks and balances throughout the whole process. Who is checking, who is holding people to account? …I think it’s about education but it’s also about accountability throughout the process”.
If Trivess was designing and building a new home today he’d do something along the lines of the passive house.
“For me there is no reason that a new house can’t be zero energy as a minimum in terms of operational energy across the year…The carbon part is a little bit more challenging.”
He says there are some increasing examples of best practice as a circular house so that when it’s time for the house to be taken apart and everything can be upcycled.
Ultimately, Trivess says what we need is action.
“The evidence is clear we can and we should and we must be delivering much higher quality and sustainable housing.”
He uses the example of when bushfires ripped through and policy around housing standards changed pretty much overnight.
“The doom and gloom scenarios that get put forward don’t eventuate, the industry adapts”.
If you want to know more about achieving sustainable housing through retrofit and policy change listen to the whole episode of the podcast here.
