Australian Zero Emission House

The Zero Emission House (ZEH) project involves CSIRO and a consortium of government and industry partners, including Sustainability Victoria, Delfin Lend Lease, Henley Property Group and Victorian Department of Human Services, in designing and building a carbon-neutral Australian home.

A major outcome of the project is the construction of a demonstration house, which will incorporate an energy management system. It will be built by the Henley Property Group in the Delfin Lend Lease Laurimar community. It will be occupied by tenants for a year and energy use and greenhouse gas emissions will be monitored over this time.

The ZEH's performance will be evaluated against other homes within the development to gauge the success of the project and help identify key areas for further improvement.

Victoria's Minister for the Environment, Climate Change and Innovation, The Hon Gavin Jennings, launched the project at the World Sustainable Building 2008 Conference (SB08) in Melbourne in September 2008.

Designed by Henley Property Group in consultation with CSIRO and Delfin Lend Lease the ZEH features innovative materials and leading-edge energy-saving technologies.

The demonstration house is due to be completed in late 2009.

The project is being undertaken as part of CSIRO Energy Transformed Flagship's Low Emission Distributed Energy research program, which focuses on developing low-emission technologies and solutions for a rapid response to climate change.

A practical goal is to design and demonstrate a Zero-Emission House (ZEH), which, for the purpose of this project, is defined as follows:

A ZEH is a detached residential building that does not produce or release any CO₂ or other greenhouse gases to the atmosphere as a direct or indirect result of the consumption and utilisation of energy in the house or on the site.

It is important to note that ZEH (or 'zero-carbon' house) projects in other countries may be defined slightly differently from the above.

In this project, energy consumption and utilisation includes:

• Heating or cooling of the building
• Hot water heating
• Operation of any appliances within the building or on the building site

First, it is important to recognise that achieving the overall goal of ZEH more broadly - especially as defined above - will take time and considerable effort from diverse stakeholder groups, acting alone (i.e. within its own sector) and in broad collaboration and partnership with each other. The IPCC Fourth Assessment Report (i.e. Synthesis Report by Bernstein et al. 2007) and Catto's (2008) review/perspective of what it will take for the UK government to meet its stated vision for all new homes to be carbon zero by 2016 clearly identified that the pathway there will involve:

• Policies, regulations, incentives, leadership (e.g. through procurement and other decisions) from government
• Technological solutions
• Financial solutions
• Industry initiatives and leadership
• Consumer/household transformation of values and lifestyle/actions.

Converging, collaborative and interacting initiatives and efforts have the potential to increase the rate of change. And where there is a rapidly developing positive feedback effect, a 'tipping point' condition can ensue (Gladwell 2000; Foliente et al. 2007). Accelerated change maximises the possibility of achieving - and in the case of a tipping point phenomenon, even surpassing - the GHG emissions reduction target.

Residential sector projected energy use by activity - assuming no action [copied from Figure 2.5 of CIE (2007)

Secondly, our review of literature and case studies of 'zero-energy', 'zero-carbon' and 'low-carbon' houses around the world show that none of the published cases have met the strict ZEH definition we have adopted above (Delsante et al. 2008). Thus, the pathway to a ZEH vision will involve a step-by-step approach in demonstrating what is practically possible (i.e. in what is actually built), allowing for the development of confidence, and practical capability as discussed by Farhar and Coburn (2008) in the US and planned in the UK [e.g. see the Code for Sustainable Homes (2007), which provides a guide on target carbon-performance levels and typical solutions that could meet a desired level of performance]. This should not contradict the desire to accelerate change as noted above but will hopefully facilitate it.

Finally, efficiency requires that we not only have the ability to diagnose a problem (after an event or as it occurs) but that we develop the capability for prognosis - that is, to run 'what-if' scenarios of options for strategies or solutions to meet an objective (when applied in a positive sense) or to avoid/minimise a problem (when applied in a negative sense). This will enable 'more ambitious policy-making than today, including careful design of policies…' as advocated in the IPCC Mitigation Report on buildings (Levine et al. 2007; emphasis ours).