The Green Building Council of Australia (GBCA) welcomes the government’s HomeBuilder scheme but says it’s a missed opportunity to invest in new homes and renovations that deliver greater energy resilience and efficiency.

“Explicitly linking these grants to investments and new homes that reduce energy use would have supported businesses and jobs while also helping lower energy bills and deliver better health outcomes for home owners in the longer term,” GBCA chief executive Davina Rooney explains.

“As we turn to sector-focused strategies for recovery, support for more energy efficient and resilient buildings can bring many win-win opportunities. Around the world we have seen many examples of governments targeting the residential sector with energy efficiency incentives to bounce back from economic crises, to great effect.”

Davina says that states and territories should look at their own stimulus spending and consider multiplying the benefits to include additional incentives towards energy efficiency.

“Recently the GBCA released a homes strategy to help accelerate the transformation in the residential sector,” she says.

“Through this strategy, and a Green Star standard for homes, we will be working with industry and governments to demonstrate the appetite of Australian companies to take critical action in our residential sector, and deliver homes that are healthy, resilient and net zero energy.”