A community’s carbon footprint is ultimately determined by the choices made by individual people, resident groups, industrialists and businesses. This program focused on understanding and influencing consumer behaviour and decision-making in order to reduce the carbon intensity of modern lifestyles.
The use of both qualitative and quantitative research ensured a full understanding of why communities behave the way they do and how they can transition them to low carbon ways of living. Policy scenario analysis quantified the effectiveness of alternative options, providing an evidence base for policy development by government partners.
New low carbon living strategies that mobilise cultural and social capitals to empower communities to make low carbon choices were demonstrated.
CRC research findings were fully road tested in “living laboratories” to ensure that results were robust, tangible and appealing to a broad range of communities. The results were used to develop community education and training resources, including those for mass media dissemination.
Programs Quicktabs
To support legislative carbon reduction initiatives and policies, the CRCLCL is working with all levels of government to explore the social, environmental and financial benefits of low carbon policy actions. Ensuring a high triple bottom line return for Australia will be a key factor for the government to implement policy change.
Detailed models of future energy use in the built environment will help test how take-up of alternative energy services might be affected by factors such as different policy scenarios and varying economic incentives. A particular concern will be to investigate how policy scenarios can be changed to make low carbon living more affordable, especially for low-income households.
We aspire to generate a wave of change towards low carbon living practices among the community, supported by local government planning approvals and incentives. To stimulate both dialogue and demand, CRCLCL research teams are developing collaborative engagement and consultation processes among the community, developers and local government.
We are working with local councils and community groups across Australia to examine attitudes to and preferences around alternative technology and lifestyle options. The establishment of new perspectives on the deeper psychological and cultural barriers to low carbon living in Australia will help form new low carbon living adoption strategies to drive broader community transformation.
Creating buzz around low carbon living will help generate demand and drive adoption. We’re establishing a number of living laboratories around Australia to help demonstrate the benefits of sustainable living and generate positive narratives for low carbon lifestyles.
These living laboratories are ‘learn by doing’ environments involving local councils, developers, residents and businesses that integrate, test and evaluate low carbon living solutions in-situ. Asking the question “what does a sustainable lifestyle look like?”, we are testing options and ideas for a range of localities featuring alternative climatic conditions, infrastructure provision, dwelling types, household types and socio-demographic profiles.
Low carbon living is important now, but it is vital for the future. It’s essential the CRCLCL leaves a legacy that will help drive the widespread adoption of sustainable living practices over the coming years. This is dependent on inspiring the next generation of researchers, built environment specialists and communities through education and training.
We have a strong commitment to creating and delivering a suite of education, training and professional development programs targeted at a range of community, trade and professional groups. In addition to the 80+ PhD and Masters students that will be directly involved with the CRC, we aspire to embed a low carbon research agenda in Australian universities by establishing five nodes of excellence.
Project leader:
Professor Peter Newman
This project follows case studies to encourage the mainstreaming of low cost, low carbon housing in Perth.
Project leader:
Dr Stephen Berry, UniSA
Better understanding is needed of why people feel the need to own a car and how they can be encouraged to transition from an exclusive ownership model to ones of temporary and/or multiple ownership and/or shared usership. This project investigates this issue with the goal of identifying pathways to lower carbon mobility.
Project leader:
Professor Terry Burke
This project will assess the trends in household energy and draw insights into energy usage patterns.
Project leader:
James McGregor
This project will develop software tools relating to commercial building energy efficient retrofits and government interventions.
Project leader:
Prof. Bill Randolph
This project will research opportunites for a hub to store and process data from CRCLCL projects.
Project leader:
Prof. Janette Hartz-Karp
This project defines and gives examples of deliberate democractic low carbon living initiatives.
Project leader:
Dr. Stephen White
This study defines Living Laboratories, their benefits and what they need to be successful.
Project leader:
Tomi Winfree
This study identifies key areas for improving stakeholders' understanding of low carbon built environment issues.
Project leader:
Assoc. Prof. Mark Disendorf
This project will study what conditions help or hinder the expansion of community-scale renewable energy.
Project leader:
Prof. Christopher Ryan
This project will explore and articulate visions, scenarios and pathways for a low carbon and resilient Australian built environment.
Project leader:
Prof. Peter Newman and Dr Josh Byrne
This project will translate the accessibility of high performance, zero emissions homes into mainstream development and construction industry practice.
Project leader:
Dr Josh Byrne and Professor Peter Newman
Residential housing is a major contributor of greenhouse gas emissions, most during building operations.
Project leader:
Associate Professor John Merson
This project worked with Blue Mountains tourism businesses to identify opportunities to reduce their emissions.
Project leader:
John Merson
The Blue Mountains Low Carbon Living Program is being transferred to the Southern Highlands of NSW.
Project leader:
A/Professor John Merson
Develop an operational, technical and business framework for the LCL Australia Program, in order to simplify the transfer process in conjunction with Ecotourism Australia, and further garner support for the program by Qantas, NCOS and potentially other interested parties. Also to transfer the program to two additional new regions.
Project leader:
Dr. Robert Salter
This multi-site living laboratory will research the barriers to and drivers of engaged communities for low carbon living.
Project leader:
Yoshihisa Kashima
The project aims to understand cultural and social mechanisms for transformation to low carbon living.
Project leader:
Professor Peter Graham
This project will trialing the efficacy of team-based and game-based mobile learning.
Project leader:
Dr Nina Hall
This project examines the factors that motivate the purchase and lease of low carbon homes.
Project leader:
Professor Wasim Saman and Dr Kathryn Davidson
The Adelaide Living Laboratory Hub seeks to engage stakeholders and provide pathways for low carbon living.
Project leader:
Dr Kathryn Davidson and Catherine Kain
This project aims to develop an understanding of the valuation process and the effect of energy efficiency initiatives on overall value of a property; and he tools required by valuation professionals to enable energy efficiency to be incorporated into the valuation process.
Project leader:
Margaret Gollagher
This project will examine stengths and weaknesses of collaborative urban planning processes for carbon reduction across Australia.
Project leader:
Dr Vanessa Rauland
This project will examine components of a Low Carbon Schools Pilot Program being trialled in Perth.
Project leader:
Dr Vanessa Rauland
This project will track and evaluate how schools can reduce their carbon emmissions from energy.
Project leader:
Dr Vanessa Rauland
This project seeks to identify and recruit schools to a national Low Carbon Schools Program for launch in 2018.
Project leader:
Professor Kath Hulse and Dr Aneta Podkalicka
This project will develop and assess communication strategies to drive adoption of low carbon renovation projects.
Project leader:
Ivana Brown, NSW Office of Environment and Heritage
This project seeks to bring together a critical mass of knowledge developed within the CRC for Low Carbon Living (CRCLCL) to drive consumer demand for sustainable housing and stimulating existing industry behaviours to set the conditions for the adoption of sustainable solutions by the residential housing industry.
Project leader:
John Fien
This project will analyse current policies and incentives for low carbon living education in Australia.
Project leader:
Professor Bronwen Morgan, UNSW
This project explores community-owned renewable energy projects to understand their social, economic and environmental impacts.
Project leader:
Rick Duynhoven, TAFE
This project will provide knowledge and skills training to support action on low carbon living.
Project leader:
Dr Andrew Higgins
This project will model the uptake of low carbon technologies and practices under different market interventions.
Project leader:
Anthony Wright
This project proposes a national conversation on energy efficient housing across a range of social media platforms and television.
Project leader:
Anthony Wright
This project furthers RP3029 to prototype a social media platform designed to build mainstream support for low carbon housing.
Project leader:
Dr Chris Heywood
This project will identify benefits from information mechanisms like voluntary or more frequent disclosure.
Project leader:
Professor Peter Newman and Dr Josh Byrne
This living laboratory project will follow the development process at White Gum Valley with a view to mainstreaming low carbon outcomes.
Project leader:
Dr Stephen Glackin, Swinburne University of Technology
Intensification of development that is required in established and occupied inner and middle suburban greyfield areas (retrofit) is the great challenge for our fast growing Australian cities. The scale of urban regeneration required over the next 30 years has the potential to reduce carbon emissions, improve housing affordability and reduce urban sprawl.
Project leader:
Magnus Moglia, CSIRO
This project aims to reduce urban water and wastewater impacts on energy usage.
Project leader:
Professor Bruce Judd
This project looks to identify barriers different low income households face in reducing their carbon consumption.
Project leader:
Cecille Weldon, Centre for Liveability Real Estate
This project aims to develop online ‘residential property marketing’ modules that can be incorporate into existing real estate, design and construction assessment, and scale public awareness through the CRC’s Lifestyle Narratives mass media dissemination projects.
Project leader:
Prof. Peter Newman, Curtin University of Technology
This project addresses battery storage integration and governance at a district scale.
Project leader:
Prof. Paul Cooper, University of Wollongong
This project will assist community and public housing providers with regards to low carbon retrofits and refurbishments.
Project leader:
Prof. Greg Morrison – Curtin University
The funded CRC LCL Living Labs are tasked with demonstrating the pathways that demonstrably reduce carbon emissions in Australia’s Built Environment.
Project leader:
Professor Peter Graham and Amanda Lawrence, Swinburne University of Technology
Knowledge Hub for the low carbon built environment
Project leader:
Professor Peter Graham
Phase 1 of this project was about investigating the issues faced by those wanting to use evidence in policy and practice decision making, in the built environment, and developing a solution to address those issues. The developed solution enables people to overcome the challenges of finding, using and providing evidence by connecting people to resources and connecting people to people.
Project leader:
Philip Harrington, Strategy.Policy.Research
A study comparing Australian and global best practices in policy and regulation for the built environment.
Project leader:
Jonathan Cartledge, GBCA
The aim of this project is to achieve greater impact for industry and academic thought leadership on best practice policy for emissions reduction in the built environment.
Project leader:
Suzanne Toumbourou
This project will assess the value of pursuing ambitious energy performance trajectories for new building work by modelling potential cost-effective trajectories for eight key building types. This will provide both a benchmark to assess the ambition of the next scheduled update of Australia’s National Construction Code (NCC) in 2019 and an evidence base to support the case for governments to adopt a forward trajectory for future changes, in line with international best practice. This will create a clear regulatory signal that helps drive market transformation towards cost-effective, high energy performance, low carbon buildings.
Project leader:
Magnus Moglia
A range of previous CRC projects (RP3028, RP3035, RP2021 and RP3002) have attempted to understand the diffusion of pro-environmental behaviours within a population, when subject to alternative government policy settings.
Project leader:
Phillip Harrington
This project builds on the results of CRC LCL project SP0009 (Policy and regulation for Low Carbon Outcomes in the Built Environment) to look at government procurement processes with regard to sustainable outcomes.
Project leader:
Phil Harrington SPR
This project proposal addresses a rapidly-growing anomaly in the way that greenhouse gas emissions associated with electricity consumption (Scope 2 emissions) are accounted for in Australia. The report has been prepared by Philip Harrington and Dr Hugh Saddler of SPR with input from Dr Iain Macgill, Associate Professor, UNSW, Maria Balabat, Senior Lecturer, UNSW, Graham Sinden, Director – Climate Change and Sustainability Services, Ernst & Young, Caitlyn Melia (Director) and Rachael Burgess (Director, Acting), National Inventory Team, Australian Government Department of the Environment and Energy.
Project leader:
Megan Motto
Commissioners of infrastructure projects in Australia are seeking innovative solutions to increasingly complex challenges including low carbon goals, population growth, urban and regional development, transport planning, and renewable energy. With the expected growth in Australia’s population of 60% by 2050, and a national target of reducing carbon emissions to 26-28% on 2005 levels by 2030 innovative solutions need to be found.
In conjunction with the CRC for Low Carbon Living, public sector clients, consultants, and contractors, Consult Australia explored the desired outcomes of infrastructure projects, the challenges, and the possible solutions.