Decarbonising the Community Housing Sector in NSW
Client:
Community Housing Industry Association NSW
Capabilities:
Towards net zero
We partnered with the Community Housing Industry Association of NSW (CHIA NSW) to support community housing organisations in their transition to net zero emissions. This project is a significant step towards a sustainable future, ensuring that community housing providers can effectively decarbonise their properties and portfolios.
The brief
The primary goal was to provide technical guidance and advice to 94 community housing provider members in NSW on how to cost-effectively decarbonise their properties. Throughout this advisory work, we aimed to outline the scale, cost and benefits of the sector's net zero challenge and the support required from the government to enable decarbonisation of community housing dwellings across NSW.
Our approach
We undertook a comprehensive analysis of over 46,000 community housing properties across three key dwelling types (house, apartment, townhouse) and 17 climate zones, resulting in the identification of 1,836 different archetypes.
We assessed nine key archetypes in detail and developed three decarbonisation intervention bundles:
- Basic
- Modest
- Climate-Ready
The decarbonisation intervention bundles provided insights into potential costs, carbon emissions savings, and benefits of bill savings for tenants per property archetype. Portfolio-level carbon emission reduction potential was calculated based on the level of interventions, highlighting the economic activation potential, social value, public health savings and contribution towards the NSW Government's net zero targets.
Our analysis and recommendations were packaged into two key reports:
- Decarbonising Community Housing: Guidance for Community Housing Organisations
- Decarbonising Social Housing: Delivering on NSW's Climate Ambition
"We hope that this project will support the wider community and social benefits of decarbonisation and retrofits, assist in accelerating the net zero transition of the sector.”
Impact
Our recommendations were provided to government to accelerate and enable the decarbonisation and net zero targets of the community housing sector in NSW. This project not only supports the energy transition but also ensures that vulnerable and lower-income households receive the improved health, well-being, liveability and financial benefits that decarbonisation can achieve.
We have been working alongside CHIA NSW to disseminate the key findings of these reports and to continue building awareness and highlighting the importance of decarbonisation across the community sector.
