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When we spoke to energy assessor Lucinda Flynn, she helped us with a bunch of simple ways to make homes more energy efficient.
But why should your place be energy efficient? What are the benefits?
Here’s seven reasons why energy efficiency at home is important.
You'll save money on your energy bills
When you have an energy efficient home front of mind, there’s a bunch of different things to consider around the house. Think lighting, switching from gas to electric, draught proofing, the design of your home and how you use different rooms, different materials and types of insulation. Each of these energy efficient actions adds up – to less energy and less money spent on electricity bills. The difference between a 6 star energy efficient home (the current Government standard for most new homes) and a 10 star home (the dream!) could be thousands of dollars saved in bills each year.
Your house will be comfortable year round
When they’re properly designed, energy efficient homes can make the most of sunlight and insulation to keep a home at the right temperature all year round. That means using insulation like natural or glass wool or, even, straw-bale or hemp, to build and insulate your home.
Resilience during power outages
Another advantage is that if you're not reliant on artificial heating and cooling, you won’t be as reliant on power supply, either. That means if there are power outages caused by heat waves, storms, or a wild winter, keeping cool or warm inside your home won’t be an issue.
You won't need to get up off the couch to turn your heater on
A major benefit of having an energy efficient home is that they're easy. You don’t need to get up to turn any heaters on, you don’t need to find the remote for the air conditioner. If you’ve got a “smart” home, with heaters and things controlled through an app, you won’t even need to pick up your phone.
You’ll save money on your mortgage
Heard of the Clean Energy Home Loan? It’s a product we offer at Bank Australia that rewards customers who want to make green upgrades or build energy efficient homes. At the moment, we offer a 0.2% discount for up to five years for qualifying homes. Our hope is that the Clean Energy Home Loan is a catalyst for green mortgages to become mainstream in Australia and another way we show how Clean Money can change our future.
You’ll lower your carbon footprint
Buildings in Australia account for around a quarter (25%) of the country’s total carbon emissions. And our homes? They make up around half of that. If your home is energy efficient, you’re less likely to use electricity and gas to heat and cool your home. When less electricity and gas is used, less fossil fuels are burned and less greenhouse gases are emitted into our atmosphere.
You’ll slow down climate change
We need to cut our emissions significantly or we’ll experience the full impacts of climate change. That means more bushfires, more flooding. The energy efficiency changes you make in your own home might seem small, but the sum of these changes when we all take action are important and can add up to making a big difference.
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