The Bank Australia Clean Energy Home Loan
GREAT LOAN. SORRY, WE CAN’T HELP YOU OUT.
Unfortunately, the Light House science team cannot help you meet the requirements of this excellent loan. This is despite Jenny and the team being experienced NatHERS assessors, with over a decade of experience designing, optimising, building and physically assessing (thermal imaging, air leakage testing and data logging) hundreds of sustainable homes suited to the challenging climate of the Canberra region.
We know that our clients seek out our services specifically because of our skills and experience and we are extremely frustrated that the certification and optimisation services we provide have been deemed inadequate by Bank Australia. Jenny has been involved in discussion with Bank Australia for a few months now highlighting how ACT clients would be disadvantaged by the inflexible requirements of the loan.
Jenny has the highest level ACT building energy efficiency assessor licence, a legal requirement in the ACT to issue EER certifcates (using NatHERS software) for existing and new homes : ACT Building Assessor Class A – Energy Efficiency Lic. 2011198. She also has a BSc, MSc, GradCert EnvHealth and wealth of experience in this field working with industry, government and presenting at conferences and universities.
MEETING THE REQUIREMENTS OF THE LOAN
There are a variety of ways to meet the requirements of the loan:
NatHERS rating of 7 stars or higher evidenced by a Nationwide House Energy Rating Scheme Certificate completed by a NatHERS Accredited Assessor
There are now three NatHERS accrediting organisations:
the Australian Building Sustainability Association ABSA (a NSW-based organisations that mainly accredits assessors of the NSW-specific BASIX program),
Design Matters (previously the building design association of Victoria) and
the House Energy Raters Association (HERA) based in Queensland.
Of the 39 A-class licensed building energy efficiency assessors in the ACT, none are accredited with Design Matters or HERA and nine are accredited with ABSA.
A year or two after the ACT government introduced strict licencing requirements for building energy efficiency assessors, Jenny chose to let her national accreditation with ABSA lapse. She was busy with Canberra-focused work and did not see the need to maintain both a licence and an accreditation when the ACT laws require an ACT specific EER certificate based on modelling by NatHERS software.
NOTE: the ACT certificate and the NatHERS certificate are based on exactly the same NatHERS modelling - only the format of certificates differs.
Residential Efficiency Scorecard rating of 7 stars or higher (excluding the impact of installed/installing rooftop solar)
This is a Victoria-only program that is currently not operating due to COVD-19.
This is an extremely stringent, non-government, European-developed accreditation system that is gaining some popularity in Australia. At Light House we believe the NatHERS house energy rating tool (developed by CSIRO in Australia for Australian conditions) is better suited to our climate and needs. Also, we do not believe that Passivhaus is a cost-effective way to achieve sustainable housing in the Australian climate, even in cooler climate of Canberra. Read more about that here.
Green Star - Design & As Built score of 8 points or higher on the credit ‘15 Greenhouse Gas Emissions’
Another newer alternative approach that was born out of a program initially developed for commercial buildings. Jenny began training as a Green Star assessor over a decade ago but quickly came to the decision that its more tick box approach did not gel with her beliefs that science can be used to optimise, test and improve buildings.
IN SUMMARY
It is not our fault that you cannot use the legally compliant documentation we provide for your projects in the ACT to meet the requirements of the Bank Australia loan. We are as frustrated as you and we encourage you take up the debate directly with Bank Australia.
Jenny is particularly saddened given her passion for sustainability which aligns so well with Bank Australia - for example she has had over 1000 visitors through her own sustainability award winning home in its first 3 years, during open day events for Sustainable House Day (run by Renew and sponsored by Bank Australia), Solar House Day (run by the Institute of Architects) and the DESIGN Canberra Festival.
To make things even more frustrating, Canberra is one of the toughest climate zones in Australia to design for. NatHERS rating is climate specific - designing a 10 star house that requires virtually no heating and cooling is easy if it never gets particularly cold! It is extremely easy to design 7+ star homes for the milder climates of Australia. Our 8 star designs in Canberra routinely achieve 9 to 9.5 stars in Sydney, Adelaide and Perth and sometimes 10 stars in Brisbane. People who achieve 7+ star house ratings in Canberra, Melbourne and Hobart and other cooler climate zones are the ones most worthy of this loan’s benefits.
Jenny would have loved to discuss this issue at the 2020 Australian Residential Energy Rating Conference (the conference for NatHERS assessors) in Sydney next month which she had been asked to present at following her well received presentation at the national Building Physics Forum last year (alas it has been pandemic-postponed). Jenny is a passionate advocate for NatHERS software having used it for over a decade in hundreds of projects. You can listen to her rant about that and other thing here. :-)
We wish you all the best with your sustainability projects. Our best tip is to contact one of the nine ACT-based ABSA accredited assessors - you can find them via the ABSA website.