This study compares and contrasts Australian and global best practices in policy and regulation for the energy and carbon performance of the built environment. It examines the drivers and opportunities for, and barriers to, the adoption of best practices in Australia.

The buildings sector is responsible for approximately 23% of Australia’s carbon emissions. The Australian Sustainable Built Environment Council (ASBEC), the peak body for sustainability in the built environment, has identified that improving the minimum standards for energy efficiency of new buildings can assist in delivering carbon emissions reductions.

This project, commissioned by the Co-operative Research Centre for Low Carbon Living (CRCLCL), aims to advance an important aspect of the National Energy Productivity Plan: specifically, Item 12, ‘improving energy productivity in government’.

This Report provides a companion document to the Code Calculator, a spreadsheet tool developed by Strategy. Policy. Research. that enables users to estimate energy and greenhouse gas savings associated with possible changes to energy performance requirements in the National Construction Code of Australia.

This report is the Interim Technical Report for the Building Code Energy Performance Trajectory Project. It accompanies the Interim Synthesis Report for the Building Code Energy Performance Trajectory Project, entitled The Bottom Line – the household impacts of delaying improved energy requirements in the Building Code and which was published on the 8th of February 2018, providing more detail on the assumptions behind and the preliminary results from the underlying modelling work.
The report provides the following key items:

In Australia, capital cities are increasingly stepping forward to offer leadership on greenhouse gas abatement to a degree not evident at the national level, nor in many states and territories. This paper analyses the carbon targets, strategies, outcomes, policies and measures that are being used by each of Australia’s capital cities.