The 2024 Buildings Energy Performance Summit wrap
With 50% of Australia’s electricity use in our built environment, decarbonising while creating resilient, healthy, affordable spaces is a huge task.
And from the day’s very first panel in front of a packed conference room at Rydges Melbourne, the challenge was front and centre. As IEEFA CEO Amandine Denis-Ryan explained, Australian households continue to install one million new gas appliances and 800,000 inefficient electric ones every year. At the same time, our buildings are expected to decarbonise faster than all other sectors of the economy.
But while the complexity of the task was made clear, so too was the fact that many of you already have your sleeves rolled up, getting on with the job.
Across the day, we heard members and experts describe the enormous potential of flexible demand, but as the Victorian Government’s Katie Brown said, “you can't move demand around a leaky building.”
In other words, load shifting will be key to our renewable electric future, but only with the fundamentals of energy efficiency given the same priority.
With the Summit timed alongside an IEA EBC meeting in Melbourne, attendees benefited from a range of international experience.
IEA EBC Chair Meli Stylianou described his organisation as 300 research teams from 26 countries all dedicated to retrofits, net zero new buildings and embodied carbon.
IEA representatives were sprinkled across the day, meaning conversations about climate resilience drew on stories of Canberrans during bushfire season, those in low income housing during Latrobe Valley heatwaves, and the Austrian capital of Vienna, which now finds itself having to cool its buildings for the first time in history.
The continued lack of attention given to the demand side was faced head on, including by those working within government.
“On the supply side, there's a lot of coordination. We have a 20-year plan – the ISP – which is updated every two years. There's also governance – VicGrid, EnergyCo – dedicated agencies solving problems as fast as possible. And we have targets,” explained Carlos Flores.
But on the demand side, as Solar Victoria’s Stan Krpan pointed out, “we're not linking industry policy, business models and markets for retrofits at scale.”
“Buildings are complex systems and they need to be recognised as that. An industry needs to be developed around them,” Stan continued. "It's still too hard to retrofit your home, let alone a commercial building."
Of course, skills and training were a huge part of the conversation.
The ETU’s Katie Hepworth explained that we can't afford to lose the people we already have in trades, but with many of them not having retrained for decades, there’s an urgent need to bring them up to speed with new technology, and many tradespeople continue to advise against electrification.
“Who do you trust? The person who turns up at your door,” said EEC’s Luke Menzel. “People will take their advice at face value.”
“We’ve also got to have the trade-to-trade discussion,” added Katie. “Electricians are trusted by other electricians.”
"Most people doing residential upgrades are small businesses, and they're not paid to undertake training,” added Amandine Denis-Ryan. “We've got to incentivise them. All government rebates and funding should be connected to upskilling and training.”
It’s not just an issue for trades, as Flow Power’s Emmett Williams pointed out. “Having a person in a business who’s motivated and energy literate makes a huge difference, and it’s also a huge challenge. Procurement and sustainability teams might be on board with these changes, but is the person who makes the decision?”
Jenny Edwards pointed out that a lot of retrofit work is unhelpfully mis-characterised as being more expensive than it actually is, explaining that thermal performance costs are often a tiny fraction of an overall renovation.
Climateworks’ Gill Armstrong clarified that while residential retrofit costs can be large, often, it’s “because Australian houses are massive. So start with retrofitting one room.”
Needless to say, cost is also the big consideration in commercial retrofits, but there, it often comes down to complexity – both real and also the percieved complexity.
“Companies with big sustainability teams can struggle to understand the rules of the electricity market – let alone, say, hotels with big inefficient loads that don't have advisors to help make sense of it all,” said Carlos Flores.
The day finished with a Sharktank-styled pitching session, which was won by Jenny Edwards’ call to empower women to retrofit their own homes and enter the industry.
“We have a tech-bro problem holding back the retrofitting of Australian homes, and stopping us from reaping the health benefits,” she explained.
“Women are most impacted by thermal efficiency, yet energy efficiency is thought of as a man's job, with men in the industry more interested in shiny tech than draft sealing.
“Yes, retrofits can massively reduce bills and emissions, but the improvements to health and comfort are enormous,” she said.
As with any gathering featuring a few dozen speakers, multiple themes and an audience of professionals each bringing their own deep expertise, summarising an event like the Buildings Energy Performance Summit is about curbing your enthusiasm for writing 10,000 words featuring every inspiring idea, and accepting you can’t capture it all.
Which is a roundabout way of saying that the value of events like the Summit really is being there. As vital as the stage discussions were, these events are as much about what happens when you stuff a space with interesting, deeply knowledgeable people, and make sure there’s enough time for folks to chat.
A huge thank you to the Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water, and the four EEC members who backed in this event, Alexander Watson, Daikin, City of Melbourne and Flow Power. We’ll see you at the next one.