Innholdsfortegnelse for 167 / Apr-Jun 2024 i Renew Magazine

Helen Oakey has a decades-long career in sustainability, community engagement and climate advocacy—including successfully advocating for a gas-free ACT in 2022. Nathan Scolaro sits down with her to learn more about her ideas for Renew. What excites you about Renew and the work it does for Australian homes and communities? I’ve always respected Renew, particularly for its evidence-based research and technical advice, which brings a level of integrity and makes it a trusted organisation in this space. It’s really important for people to get independent, high-quality information about sustainability. In previous roles, I used Renew’s 2014 ‘Are We Still Cooking With Gas?’ report, and that report really built the capacity of other organisations around the country to advocate for getting off gas, because there was solid data about how you…

Located in the Barkly region, where temperatures reach mid40s during summer and freezing in the dry season, Marlinja is one of many remote First Nations communities in Australia experiencing extreme energy insecurity—exacerbated by overcrowded, poorly designed houses and now human-induced warming. For project developer Original Power, the community microgrid is a five-year process of creative problem solving and a testament to community-led design and delivery, with the resulting 100kW solar array and 136kWh battery set for commissioning in May 2024. How was it achieved? Despite its small size, Marlinja community has never shied away from a challenge. Before embarking on designing and building a microgrid, the region’s Mudburra and Jingili Traditional Owners spent years resisting pressure from a gas fracking industry with its sights set on regional expansion. The community…

A home built today is likely to stand for decades to come. But Australia is facing a growing risk that new homes will not be fit for purpose in a changing climate. The Nationwide House Energy Rating Scheme (NatHERS) uses historical climate data from 1990-2015 to calculate ratings. Unfortunately, this data is already out of date: the years 2015-2023 are the nine hottest ever recorded globally. The most critical thing we can do to minimise the impacts of climate change is rapid decarbonisation and mitigation of emissions. But planning for adaptation and resilience also matters. Good home design that is suitable for climate conditions can do both: not only does it reduce energy use and household costs through better efficiency, it is also vital in protecting households and energy systems…

In September of 2023, my partner and I travelled to the Northern Territory to observe the central desert areas after just a few months of receiving good rainfall. Our most distant and desirable destination was the Newhaven Wildlife Sanctuary, some 300km up the Tanami Track. The most interesting feature of this Australian Wildlife Conservancy-owned property is its predator-exclusion fenced area, which enables nearly 10,000 hectares of fox and cat-proof natural desert landscapes to thrive with a variety of rare and highly threatened marsupial species, such as bilbys, malas and boodies—all surviving in abundance without their fox and cat predation. It was indeed an informative and inspiring experience to have seen. On our approach to the AWC, we stopped at the Tilmouth Roadhouse for a shady breakfast. Just as we were…

Flow controllers are little guys that pack a big punch. The sole purpose of these diminutive devices, found in taps and showers, is to save water. The maximum flow rate of water through taps and showers has been regulated in Australia for many years. Some users want to go back to the old days of waterfall showers that release, and waste, a lot of water. Today’s taps and showers have been engineered to perform well with the flow controller as fundamental to the design. There have been stories of DIYers removing flow controllers when installing a tap or shower, believing this will change their showering experience. It will change their experience, but not how they imagine. " Using less water means heating less water, which means you save on your…

Renew member, Buzz Rainbow Wolf reached out to me after watching our November 2023 Beyond BAL webinar series on bushfire resilient homes. He wanted to share his own remarkable build experience, completed just a month earlier. His personal story is uplifting, and one of resilience. Born just before the moon-landing, Buzz’s first name is inspired by Buzz Aldrin, and Rainbow Wolf was adopted after he studied with First Peoples in North America. He’s experienced many challenges, including a childhood that involved abuse. As a member of the LGBTQI+ community, he has faced discrimination in his teenage and adult years. At 17, Buzz was an apprentice linesworker, but prejudice against his sexuality was rife. He felt unsafe, and switched to a career in human services where he worked for 30 years.…

Fuel efficiency standards, but huge compromises Well, after much wishing and lobbying, Australia is finally getting fuel efficiency standards for light passenger and light commercial vehicles. Until now, we have been the only developed western country in the world without any form of fuel efficiency standards, resulting in internal combustion engine vehicle manufacturers dumping their worst performing, least efficient vehicles on the Australian market, resulting in excessive running costs for owners and increased pollution levels— vehicles sold here are, on average 40% more polluting than vehicles in the EU. The new standards will be applied generally rather than per vehicle— each manufacturer will have to meet the CO2 emissions cap averaged across their entire vehicle range, so they could still sell high emissions vehicles, but would need to offset those…

NATHAN SCOLARO: What seeded the idea for The Adaptation Game (TAG)? BEN PEDERICK: TAG is the merging of my PhD on climate tools for local councils, and a group of artists and change-makers designing games for change. I’m researching and prototyping a toolkit for local governments to scale climate science down into immersive experiences for people in their communities. Specifically, I proposed the idea for a game or a drill that would take climate science, put it in the world around you and be played by people in their own lives and communities— in connection with councils. This research led me to the troupe of remarkable minds and people at Amble Studios, who had been actively designing games systems with the same intention for years. The combination very quickly found…

Mapuru in East Arnhem Land is very remote. It’s not quite 1000km from Darwin, but the road there isn’t great. When our new batteries were delivered, the truck driver was going so slow in some places that he’d dip his headlights for a truck coming the other way and it would take half an hour until they passed. At best, it’s rough and slow. But access by road for the other half of the year is nearly impossible, so to do the shopping, locals have the option of a charter plane (expensive and rare) or take a long walk and then a tinny to the main town on the nearby island. The solar system, which supplies a community of 10 houses plus a clinic, was provided by the federal government’s…

Would you believe that a chatbot wrote the title of this article? In late 2022, OpenAI released an early model of ChatGPT—an artificial intelligence chatbot (which is a computer program designed to simulate conversation with human users) that is able to comprehend not only human language, but context, nuance and humour too. The bot is capable of producing detailed lesson plans, complex computer code, emotive poetry, and an answer to basically any question in the world—as long as the knowledge precedes 2021. In the first five days of release, ChatGPT attracted one million users, and it seemed as though overnight, everybody was talking about AI. With any new technological advancement comes a sense of apprehension and fear, and as generative AI programs like ChatGPT make their way to mainstream users,…

Sustainable House Day is an event from Renew that provides the opportunity to explore some of Australia’s most inspiring homes, and learn from the people who designed them, built them, and live in them. We’re thrilled to be back in-person for the first time since 2019. The event has evolved, with a framework of tour times and ticketing to ensure the safety of participants and homeowners. Along with visiting homes in-person, you will also be able to attend Community Partner events around the country, as well as join our famous online Extension Session series that brings together architects experts and homeowners with plenty of time for Q&A. Explore the full program at sustainablehouseday.com. On April 21st over 100 homes across the country will be opening their doors and sharing their…

There are many reasons to choose a solar hot water system or heat pump water heater over a conventional gas or resistive electric water heater. With the steady increase in energy prices in recent months, a solar or heat pump water heater can greatly reduce energy bills. Up to 30% of household energy is used just to heat water, so anything that can reduce this energy use will save you a lot of money. Another important benefit of such a system is that of greenhouse gas emission reduction. A solar water heater or heat pump can reduce the greenhouse emissions of an average family by as much as four tonnes of CO2 per year—the equivalent of taking an ICE car off the road! Solar water heaters and heat pumps are…

Like many feeling the pinch of the increased cost of living and the desire to create a buffer as the climate and economy becomes more unstable, I thought I’d try to upskill as an accredited Residential Efficiency Scorecard assessor, check out what’s involved and what the broader industry looks like. Although experienced in household energy and sustainable design, I’ve found the residential energy assessment field quite confusing. Here, I explore and relay the process for anyone looking into this field as a potential profession or side-hustle. It also seemed timely given the growing interest in energy efficiency and calls to strengthen the National Energy Performance Strategy by rating our housing stock and its poor thermal performance. What is the Scorecard program? While the energy assessment field, its various providers, businesses…

Electric buses for Tasmania While Tasmania remains Australia’s most renewable energy-powered state, it has been slow to use that energy to replace its polluting public transport. With no passenger rail to speak of (the disused lines in the north-west of the state, which could have been used for a tourist railway, have recently been ripped up), public transport consists primarily of internal combustion engine buses. However, there has finally been some movement towards electrification of these vehicles, with the state government undertaking a trial of four fully electric buses in the city of Launceston. In January, Metro Tasmania announced that they will be using four new 41 seat Element 2 buses made by NSW company Custom Denning. The fully Australian made buses will operate for a two-year trial, backed by…

While Tasmania leads the country percentage-wise in renewables in their grid, with almost all electricity in the state being renewably generated, up until now, all solar in Tasmania has been small solar systems, primarily domestic rooftop solar. The planned Northern Midlands Solar Farm is set to change that. This “agrisolar” (a combination of solar generation and agriculture on the same land) solar installation will consist of a 288MW solar farm and battery energy storage to be built on two areas of farmland on the Connorville Station Cressy property, off Macquarie Road. The site is currently mostly used for grazing, and those activities will continue once the solar farm is operational, providing double duty for the land (check out the Up Front section this issue to read about the advantages of…

FEATURE “Ultimately, we need electricity, and it’s not our fault that large corporations have chosen to keep producing it in a way that harms the ecosystem.” Many of us are concerned about the environmental impacts of the energy we use in our homes. For some, it’s a reason to invest in rooftop solar, but often there are still concerns about the emissions of the energy that must be bought from the grid. Others, unable to install rooftop solar for one reason or another, still want to reduce their ‘carbon footprint’ by buying clean energy from the grid if possible. It’s worth noting that carbon emissions are an industrial problem, not an individual one. The oil industry came up with the concept of individual carbon footprints as a PR masterstroke to…

In the northwest Pacific Ocean, the densely populated island nation of Taiwan has a more direct system of waste management. Rather than wheeling a bin to the kerbside each week, the Taiwanese are required to bring their rubbish, recycling and food scraps out onto the street and throw it directly into the correct truck. In order to facilitate this process, Taiwan’s fleet of yellow trucks are fitted with loudspeakers. As they roll through the street, the trucks blast out Beethoven’s Für Elise, notifying the people in the area of the need to descend from their apartment and drop off their waste. The song has become synonymous with waste collection and can be heard at all times of the day and on all parts of the island. The initiative was devised…

The buildings I’ve been working on with communities in West Arnhem Land are called bala balas, a term which refers to a traditional bark shade structure. They have evolved to feature a canvas tarp shade, and what we’ve been working on more recently is a permanent version of those structures—in a new location, closer to the ocean/cyclone zone, which is a very unique setting. I lived in Maningrida briefly and was approached to build the first accommodation building in 2018. I’ve been coming back to West Arnhem land to work on them since —in both a building and a design capacity. The structures are mostly accommodation for rangers and teaching staff. We’re currently planning a classroom and early learning centre, which will be an adaptation of our current structures to…

When looking out a plane window, over practically any country, it’s hard not to be taken aback by the sheer scale of land which has been cleared over the past couple of centuries. In the past 10,000 years, about two billion hectares of the world’s forests have been cleared for cropping, livestock and fuel; with the vast majority of this occurring in the past 300 years1. Though deforestation is by no means a new problem, we have lost the same amount of forest in the past century than in all the previous 9000 years. The clearing of forests across all continents including ours has made way for farmland, towns and cities, and with these forests we have built houses, high rises and industries which churned out paper and other products…

The Greeny Flat: 10 years on Long-term Renew readers will remember this 57m2 beauty in Mittagong, NSW. Owner Andy Lemann shares the principles, results and pleasures of living in the low-cost, high-efficiency home he built 10 years ago. The Greeny Flat started out as an experiment to see if we could design and build a small, simple, low-maintenance, all-electric, energy-positive, elderly-friendly, water-efficient and affordable home on a property that my mother owns in Mittagong, NSW. It was an investment property for her, so the Greeny Flat had to be renter-friendly in the short-term and able to adapt to Mum’s needs, if necessary, as she ages. Ten years on The Greeny Flat has now been occupied for ten years and has proven fabulously successful. It cost us $131,000 to build and…