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To reduce homeowner costs, a community focussed large-scale home retrofit scheme would aim to enable labour and product buying power through larger contracts and increased quantities of material thus finding efficiencies of scale and bulk discounts in supplying and installing the retrofit items The ability to perform true cost benefit analysis will be enabled through case-study home retrofits of different housing types in different states/climates across Australia The bespoke nature of each retrofit and existing Australian homes means that a cost benefit analysis for different housing types will be a beneficial way to measure and monitor the benefit of the large-scale home retrofit scheme, as it progresses
Retrofit Aims and Priorities Through the IRG workshop discussion and interviews the aims and priorities of the largescale home retrofit scheme were explored. This was done through a Mentimeter survey, as well as through facilitated discussion via Miro.
4.5.1 Retrofit Aims The IRG highlighted the importance of considering and setting clear goals for the retrofit scheme as it would guide the selection of retrofit items and aid communication about the scheme. “A lot of this depends on the goals of the program as well, is it increasing the speed and scale of retrofits within a period of time or widespread take up?” Figure 3 shows that comfort and emissions reductions stood out among the respondents from the IRG as priority drivers for a large-scale home retrofit scheme. Cost savings or lower energy bills were also a consideration although not found to be as high a priority due to the greater impact and benefits created by prioritising the improvement of health and comfort for homeowners/occupants and the increased reduction of carbon emissions. It was noted that “National Construction Code (NCC) is driving home comfort as a priority driver over energy cost off set. Thermal comfort for achieving suitable ratings cannot be compromised by fitting Photo-Voltaics.”
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Pathways to Scale: Retrofitting One Million+ Homes
