This guide is a planning resource for small to medium-sized companies involved in the buildings sector value chain. This includes building materials suppliers, trades and contractors, transport companies and architects, engineers and other design firms.

This Guide to Implementing Low Carbon Retrofits for Social Housing is intended as a simple to use reference for social housing asset managers and others involved in social housing upgrades. The guide presents a concise summary of effective energy efficiency options for social housing properties, including:

Energy audits have been conducted for many years, and there is a well-established cohort of service providers trained to perform them in accordance with standards developed by ASHRAE and others. These standards define the process and quality of work that should be achieved for energy performance audits. However, a corresponding level of industry maturity, and an understanding of what should be included, does not yet exist for auditing water performance.

Why refurbish commercial buildings?

This guide acts as a practical reference for the design of high-performance, low-carbon commercial buildings. The target audience is everyone involved in the creation of new commercial buildings, from architects, consultants and designers, to developers and owners.

A new house is an opportunity; not only to ensure affordability and the best possible liveability for future occupants, but to create high-performance dwellings that actively ‘give back’ by generating more power than they use, collecting and recycling water and reducing the built environment’s carbon footprint.  This document offers practical advice to developers and owner builders on how to achieve these objectives through the conception and realisation of a new home.  In Australia the residential housing sector alone contributes around 9% of the country’s total