The demand for low carbon living (LCL) is steadily growing across the world. Many industry sectors are looking for new opportunities to innovate, enhance productivity, reduce operational costs and contribute to sustainability. Householders are looking for solutions to reduce household bills, contribute to the community and live healthier lifestyles.

Home renovations demonstrate the interplay between economic transactions and cultural values that shape consumption practice and consumer markets. The academic disciplines of environmental and social sciences and spheres of environmental policy and practice have taken interest in renovations because of their implications for improved environmental outcomes. However, a considerable blind spot in this work has been an out-of-step, largely one-dimensional, or peripheral engagement with media.

This paper seeks to uncover a diversity of economic practices and engagement by home renovators, predominantly homeowners. In particular, the authors explore how different forms of media consumption and production intertwine to shape home renovation projects.

This is the first academic book to examine the long running hit series Grand Designs, which occupies a significant place in the popular imagination internationally.

This is the first report of a project examining ways of making energy efficient home renovations mainstream rather than a niche activity as is currently the case. Homes are a major contributor to carbon dioxide emissions in Australia; most emanating from the 98 per cent of established homes rather than the less than 2 per cent of new homes built each year.

Government policies and programs have had relatively limited success in fostering widespread adoption of energy efficient products and solutions in Australia’s residential sector.

This is a report of a project which aimed to design, develop and assess innovative media and communication strategies to drive mainstream adoption of low carbon products and practices as an integral part of renovation projects, enabling decarbonisation of the existing residential building stock. The focus on media and communications is a means of incorporating low carbon strategies in mainstream renovations rather than being a niche ‘green’ market.

This paper reports on an Agent-Based Model. The purpose of developing this model is to describe ‘the uptake of low carbon and energy efficient technologies and practices by households and under different interventions’. There is a particular focus on modelling non-financial incentives as well as the influence of social networks as well as the decision making by multiple types of agents in interaction, i.e. recommending agents and sales agents, not just households.

This report provides a summary of the research activities in the research project RP3028: A Virtual Market for Analysing the Uptake of Energy Efficiency Measures in Residential and Commercial Sectors.
To enable the development of policy programs to increase adoption of energy-efficient products, there is a need to develop a knowledge base from which it is possible to understand the likely success of policy interventions.

Presentation to the Australasian Housing Researchers' Conference in Melbourne on 15-17 February 2017 focussing on the outcomes of research into the different perspectives on home renovation.