Green Building Council launches new Homestar

Homestar has never been more successful. Almost 5,000 homes registered for Homestar last year, and the Green Building Council expect that record-breaking number to be overtaken this year.

Builders with experience of Homestar are increasingly at an advantage as key players in the sector, including Kāinga Ora, Fletcher Living, Universal Homes, Eke Panuku, BUPA, Metlifecare, Legacy Homes, and others are all backing the green home certification. And as banks like ANZ and ASB get onboard too, offering discounts on home loans for new builds meeting 6 Homestar or higher, more people are asking their builders about Homestar. This has made it a great time to launch the latest, most ambitious update ever, of Homestar. Thanks to extensive feedback from across the sector, the new version of Homestar gives increased importance to a number of key areas. These include making it easier to keep a home warm in winter and cooler in summer, well ventilated with fresh air, and dry, keep household bills lower through energy and water efficiency, building with healthy, sustainable materials, and reducing the amount of waste getting dumped in landfill. Each of these areas must now hit a particular level to achieve a Homestar rating. The Green Building Council, the not-for-profit organisation behind Homestar, hopes that this will give homeowners confidence that all Homestar homes rated under the improved scheme will be cosier, drier, healthier places than homes built to minimum Building Code levels. Andrew Eagles, chief executive of the Green Building Council, says: “Making New Zealand homes better will help us tackle climate change, and give families healthier, warmer, and drier homes. “Far too many Kiwi homes are cold, damp, and unhealthy, pump out far too much carbon pollution in their construction and in the energy they use, and far too often saddle Kiwi families with high household power bills. “That’s why we’ve launched the new update of Homestar – the most ambitious ever version. We’re hoping that Homestar will provide healthy, cosy homes for thousands and thousands of families, and play a much needed role in slashing climate change pollution.” The category names for Homestar have been changed too, to better reflect a renewed focus on outcomes. Out go category names like ‘density and resource efficiency’, ‘management’, and ‘site’, and in come ‘healthy and comfortable’, ‘efficient’, ‘liveable’, and ‘environmentally responsible’, alongside the innovation category. The Healthy and Comfortable category is about improving winter comfort by making homes cosy and better insulated, improving summer comfort by reducing overheating, improving ventilation and making the home dryer, as well as better natural light, decent acoustic performance so you hear less of your neighbours and they hear less of you, and reducing the quantity of unhealthy chemicals used in interior building materials and paints. The Efficient category includes energy efficiency, water efficiency, and encourages smaller homes with higher density to reduce the amount of land area.

A thriving, sustainable lifestyle is the outcome targeted in the Liveable category. The credits here are all about being able to walk to get everything you need, being able to grow your own veggies, feel safe, use sustainable modes of transport and to recycle and compost.

The Environmentally Responsible category promotes a home where you generate your own electricity, where you can manage stormwater onsite adding to natural ecological cycles without burdening already stressed council networks, where you can regenerate land with native planting, and where the house was built with responsibly sourced building materials with low embodied carbon.

The new Homestar has also been created to help our sector play a key role in slashing climate change-causing pollution, and the journey to a cleaner, healthier, less polluted nation. All Homestar homes, under the fifth version of the green home rating, will have to use energy efficient appliances. A 6 Homestar home will have to hit mandatory energy and operational carbon targets. As you move up the star ratings to 10 Homestar the emissions reductions and energy efficiency improvements increase. The updated Homestar will also include an embodied carbon calculator, developed in partnership with BRANZ, helping builders to work out the levels of carbon emitted in the manufacture of the building materials. And the new Homestar will align with the government’s Building for Climate Change programme. This will help builders using Homestar to develop the skills and knowledge needed for upcoming changes to the Building Code. All of the improvements and updates to version five of Homestar have come about thanks to the feedback, suggestions, and expert advice from Green Building Council members. The extensive consultation process – our most successful ever – was a true reminder that Homestar is owned collectively, by all of us who want homes in Aotearoa to be greener, healthier, happier places.

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New Zealand Green Building Council (NZGBC). The NZGBC is a not-for-profit team of people who are passionate advocates for better buildings, because we know that better buildings mean healthier, happier Kiwis. For more information visit www.nzgbc.org.nz