Michael Green

Writer and producer

Best footprint forward

In Architecture and building, Environment, The Age on

A carbon neutral home isn’t science fiction. It’s coming to Melbourne, and it will be on sale from next year.

Here’s the plan for a new house in our outer suburbs: an open plan living area, with four bedrooms and two bathrooms, plus a theatre, an outdoor patio and a double garage. It’ll have a contemporary look, with a wood-panelled exterior and a flat roof.

Sounds unremarkable, right?

Actually, that’s the sketch of Australia’s first commercially designed carbon neutral house. With a combination of smart planning, passive solar design and whiz bang machinery it will generate at least as much energy as it uses.

The plan for the Zero Emission House was launched in late September at the World Sustainable Building Conference, held in Melbourne. The ground-breaking eco home is a joint venture between CSIRO, Delfin Lend Lease and Henley Property Group, with more partners yet to come.

The project’s foundations were laid over a year ago, when CSIRO began a study into low emissions housing around the world. Dr Greg Foliente, Principal Research Scientist in CSIRO’s Sustainable Ecosystems team, visited overseas prototypes, including some in the UK, where all new housing is planned to be carbon neutral by 2016.

His team also analysed efficient designs across Australia’s different weather zones, from tropical Far North Queensland to four-seasons Melbourne. “We looked at what we can do with the best knowledge we have, if we just change the way we build and put in appliances,” Dr Foliente says. “We found out that we can reduce the footprint by between 60 and 80 per cent. Right now.”

Next, the task is to bring the blueprint to the suburbs. Dr Foliente’s study tour taught him that most eco display homes look odd and don’t appeal to the mass market. Determined not to build a house “like a space ship”, CSIRO chose to involve a commercial developer and builder to tell them what buyers want.

At first, with those “weird looking” concept houses in mind, Peter Hayes, Managing Director of Henley Property Group, felt nervous about the project. “I thought it would be terrifying for a volume builder to try to do.”

Happily, it hasn’t turned out that way. “This is actually a regular house. It’s contemporary because we are doing a very contemporary range,” Mr Hayes says. “When you drive down the street you won’t know the difference.”

The design process wasn’t overly difficult. “Technically, we don’t see it as a very hard thing to do,” says Mr Hayes. The trick was to pay close attention the home’s orientation and use CSIRO’s expertise to fine-tune the details [see box].

Construction will begin early in 2009 and be finished before the end of the year. Then, to test the house’s performance in practice, a family of willing renters will move in. CSIRO will monitor their energy usage patterns over a full 12 months.

The home will be open for display before the tenants move in and Henley plans to sell the design immediately. “We’ll be offering the home to the public with or without the [solar] cells, as a regular Henley home,” Mr Hayes says. “We hope to extend our product range to include more of them.”

The only catch for the enthusiastic buyer is, unsurprisingly, a higher price tag than that of a standard new home. Similarly sized Henley homes sell for between $150 000 and $200 000, and while the costs haven’t yet been finalised, Mr Hayes expects that the extra expense will be “in the tens of thousands of dollars”. His estimate doesn’t count the solar panels, which could add the same again.

Delfin Lend Lease acknowledges that higher costs are a concern for some people. “Our research indicates that the marketplace wants a more sustainable housing option,” says Bryce Moore, Chief Operating Officer. “But their preparedness to pay for it is another matter.”

He says that while the Zero Emission House project will mean some extra dollars, it’s a design that will become much more affordable over time. The home, to be built on Delfin’s Laurimar site, fits perfectly with the company’s goals for its new developments. “For the next generation of Delfin communities, we have an aspiration to achieve zero carbon [emissions]. This house is one aspect of that,” Mr Moore says.

Also, the big upside for buyers will be dramatically lower running costs and better long-term value, as Mr Hayes makes clear. “Energy is going to get more expensive. The resale value of these of these homes is obviously going to be greater than the resale value of a home that’s got five stars or no stars on it.”

With his plan about to come to fruition, CSIRO’s Dr Foliente hopes the design will catch on all over the country. “We hope to target the mass housing market immediately, not five or ten years from now.”

CSIRO’s goal is to significantly reduce domestic carbon footprints. “That’s our contribution to the global warming challenge,” he says. “Every household can potentially have a contribution. Hopefully it’s the start of a social transformation across Australia.”

Living clean, green and cheap

Although plans are not yet set in stone, the 25-square Zero Emission House will be at least an 8-star rating under the current system. It will use about 70 per cent less power than a 5-star equivalent.

It will run entirely on renewable electricity – no gas – generated from solar panels and possibly, mini wind turbines. The home will be connected to the grid but also have some battery storage. Over the year, it will produce at least as much energy as it uses.

Henley and CSIRO have designed the home especially for the block chosen on Delfin Lend Lease’s Laurimar site in Doreen, 30 kilometres north of Melbourne.

With precise local modelling, CSIRO has perfected the amount of insulation for the floor, ceiling and walls. They’ve balanced the insulation against the ‘thermal mass’ of the building materials (like the concrete slab, which helps even out day and night temperature changes) to make the home as comfortable as possible.

The designers have also attended to passive solar principles, like positioning living areas to soak up the northern sun, while calculating eaves to let in winter rays and shade the summer heat.

The house will be stocked with the most efficient off-the-shelf fittings and appliances available. Reverse-cycle air-conditioning will do the heating and cooling. A smart electricity meter and feedback system will tell the residents exactly how much energy they’re guzzling and where it’s going. The report cards can even be sent to the tenants’ mobile phones.

Out of the lab

The Zero Emission House isn’t the only eco building project under way at CSIRO. The nation’s top research scientists are working on a street of innovations that will change our real estate. Here’s a sample:

Solar cooling

The Residential Desiccant Cooling (RedeCOOL) project is a solar powered air-conditioner especially for the home. It’s in development at CSIRO’s Newcastle climate test facility, where the scientists can mimic different weather conditions to test their product.

RedeCOOL is a particularly nifty idea because we use our air conditioners when the sun is most ferocious, but it could be a few years before it’s publicly available.

Temperature control

RedeCOOL’s cousin, OptiCOOL, automatically controls the heating, cooling and ventilation systems in commercial buildings. These systems normally gobble about 60 per cent of a building’s energy.

OptiCOOL uses smart software to sense and respond to different temperatures and occupancy throughout a building. By starting and shutting down according to need, it chops energy use without compromising comfort. It’s already running in a number of commercial buildings.

Lightweight concrete

CSIRO’s Dr Swee Mak and his team were inspired by the structure of bone, which has a strong casing around a porous interior. Their product, HySSIL, weighs half as much as normal concrete, but is just as strong. And what’s more, their panels offer five times the thermal insulation of the standard grey stuff.

With far less embodied energy than brick, the efficient production process could help to demolish greenhouse gas emissions. It’s moving to the commercial stage, and the first HySSIL home is already under construction.

Develop smart

How do planners, developers, architects and builders find out the facts on sustainability? CSIRO’s researchers have launched a website, to help make sure our design and construction professionals are in the eco-know.

It’s got dozens of fact sheets, from wastewater planning to walkable neighbourhoods, as well as case studies of some the best developments in Australia and abroad.

Thinking outside the bin

In Environment, The Age on

First published in The Age

Recycling means much more than sorting papers from plastic. For National Recycling Week Michael Green looks at new eco-friendly ways.

FASHION

Founder Kate Pears held her first swap in 2004, and has made it a regular occurrence since early last year. Now there are separate trading parties for women, men, and mums and bubs. There are also accessory and designer-label exchanges for the super stylish.

Pears says her events are both environmentally and socially beneficial. “It makes strangers jump into conversation as they share the histories of the garments. I like the fact that it’s not radical. It’s just about sharing more.” And of course, swappers gladly sidestep “the post-consumption regret of maxing their credit card”.

Sustainability doesn’t have to be boring, Pears says. “In the case of our events, it should involve lots of glamorous clothes, a good giggle and a cocktail.” But exchanges do have a serious benefit. Planet Ark says swapping one cotton dress rather than buying it new saves about 22,000 litres of water. By diverting goods from landfill, it also reduces greenhouse gas emissions.

For recycling week, the organisation has released a guide to running your own swap party. This is how it works: each item is traded for one token, and the token can then be used to purchase new treasures. Swaps can be run with anyone from friends to sporting clubs, and for products as diverse as clothes and gardening tools.

ARTISAN

In markets and boutiques across the city, crafty types are resuscitating our cast-offs, administering a healthy dose of style, and selling them back.

Sophie Splatt sews wallets from old dress patterns and picture books, as well as purses, bags and badges from vintage fabrics. The 28-year-old, who sells her quirky wares under the name Mistress of the Upper Fifth, is motivated both by green and aesthetic concerns.

She aims to reduce her environmental impact by using pre-loved goods wherever possible. Happily, she also prefers the style and quality of second-hand textiles to new ones. “I started collecting fabrics years ago and my collection just grew and grew. I decided to start my own business to cut it, but it’s just gotten bigger.”

She says more and more people are shaping new products from others’ castaways. “There’s a culture of reusing things here and it’s something I haven’t seen so much in other cities. Whenever I go to markets I’m astounded by what people make and the ideas they come up with.”

Another of those ideas is Rebound Books. Northcote couple Natalie and Ben Mason create new notebooks and photo albums by re-binding old hardback covers with fresh recycled or denim paper.

The spare-room workshop of their Northcote house is stocked with binders, guillotines and old books. The couple source their hardbacks from op shops and library discards.

“Every time we go into an op shop, we go straight to the bookshelves. I no longer go to the shoes,” Natalie says, laughing.

Even the new paper has an old story. Their supplier in the US makes its stock by boiling down denim scraps bound for landfill. “There are no trees in it at all. It’s fully-recycled cotton paper,” Natalie says.

FOOD

FareShare rescues food destined for landfill and transforms it into nutritious meals for the needy. “It’s all absolutely perfect food that would have been thrown away because people can’t on-sell it,” production co-ordinator Julien Jane says, while her volunteers roll out pastry offcuts donated by Boscastle Pies.

Formerly called One Umbrella, the organisation makes more than 2000 meals every day in its Abbotsford kitchen, from sausage rolls and quiches to pasta dishes. It also delivers thousands of donated meals, such as pre-wrapped baguettes. “We haven’t spent anything on food in three years, it’s all been donated,” Jane says. More than 80 businesses donate food, none of it past its use-by date.

Jane strives to produce dishes high in protein and fibre and is proud of her kitchen’s efficiency. “Some restaurants have a wastage of up to 40%. We have a wastage of around 1%.”

That’s a number Paul Martin would admire. Years ago, the former chef, 31, began making fuel from fish-and-chip oil. Now he’s a biodiesel consultant and recently published a book on the subject, Grown Fuel.

Martin has also been a sometime ‘freegan’, eating only discarded food. “I’ve been in houses where we lived solely from supermarket rubbish bins, and I’ve never lived in a house that had so much food. We even had a party once where we had a massive bucket of prawns.”

For him, trespass is more of a concern than salmonella. “I know how to tell if food is off and I’ve never ever gotten sick from eating anything out of the bin.” He says the classic example is a tray of bottles turfed because one has broken. “Sometimes you just can’t work out why they’ve thrown it out. I wish the supermarkets would give the food away to charity or customers. It’s a big waste.”

We have great potential to reclaim resources, Martin says, “in all areas, from building to food. There are all sorts of things out there for free.”

FareShare, Grown Fuel, Mistress of the Upper Fifth, Rebound Books

Shacking up

In Architecture and building, Culture, The Age on

Out of the square, a new exhibition at the Mornington Peninsula Regional Gallery, drops in on local beach house architecture – past, present and future. Michael Green brushes off the sand and tours five of the best.

From its genesis as a humble shack to the cantilevered glass showcase of today, the beach house has long been an important part of Victoria’s architectural vernacular. Many fine examples are dotted around our coastal fringes but it is along the Mornington Peninsula – from the western foreshore to Port Phillip Bay – that our beach-house identity has been defined. By the 1950s, “nearly every architect of note who worked in Melbourne build a house there at some time,” wrote architect Robin Boyd in 1952 in Australia’s Home. “And in most cases they allowed themselves to experiment, to be freer and easier than was their custom in the city.” A new exhibition, opening Thursday at the Mornington Peninsula Regional Gallery, will track the journey from conception to creation of 35 of the most exciting projects, including the following.

Ranelagh (Ship House)

If a good beach house should evoke the sea, then Ranelagh is safely moored to success. The ‘Ship House’ boasts ground floor porthole-windows and an elegant steel spiral staircase leading to a sunroom and roped-off viewing decks.

Built in 1935 and still standing today, the Mt Eliza home is one of the oldest featured in the MPRG exhibition.

In May 1936, it graced the cover of The Australian Home Beautiful. The magazine praised its designer, “that very modern architect, Mr Roy Grounds”, and judged that the Ship House was “one of the most intriguing seaside houses Melbourne has ever seen”.

Grounds, best known for the National Gallery of Victoria on St Kilda Road, built the two-bedroom cottage for his family. It was an innovative structure for its time, built with pre-fabricated cement and steel panels. The ship shape and stark materials stood out against the open landscape, and the upper deck commanded a spectacular view of the bay.

As Home Beautiful declared, the Ship House, “is definitely a ship aground, but no wreck.”

Ryan House

Tucked behind a sand dune, this Somers hideaway was both eye-catching and unassuming. Designed by architect Peter Burns and built in 1963, the modest, elliptical Ryan House rested comfortably in a grove of tea-trees and banksias.

Unfortunately, like a number of buildings in the exhibition, the home has since been demolished. Doug Evans, former associate professor of architecture at RMIT, says the shack didn’t “attempt to swallow the view”. Instead, it was “an introverted little thing, a bit like a rowboat turned upside down.”

It had sloping cedar walls, with both bubble and vertical slit windows. Bedrooms curved along one wall. “In the centre”, Burns wrote in 1963, “a concrete volcano of a fireplace springs from a warm brick floor and is capped by a curving copper canopy and flue.”

“It’s certainly got that hippy look about it,” Evans admits. But it wasn’t a slapdash counterculture hut. Burns was interested in caves as an analogy for home. He wanted to create places of refuge and belonging away from the wars and economic upheavals of the twentieth century.

“It was all about enclosure,’ Evans says. “He hit on something that was interesting other architects around the world in the fifties and sixties – the insecurity of the modern condition.”

Sorrento House 1982

“Beach houses should be fun to be in,” says architect Col Bandy. And his early eighties getaway is just that. The Sorrento House is an informal, low maintenance escape from city life.

The three-bedroom wooden home has an unusual design. “It’s basically a pitched-roof house but it has pieces chopped out and bits added on that change it quite dramatically,” Bandy says. The weatherboards are set at opposing angles. “At that stage of my career I liked the idea of manipulating traditional forms.”

The home was built on a block thick with tea-tree and Bandy decided to keep as much as possible. He tried to create “a more natural object in a natural environment.”

Exhibition curator Rodney James describes a relaxed, playful holiday home. “It’s the classic weekender. It has flowing open spaces inside, so when extra people come you can find room for them. It’s about bringing people together rather than sending them to the outskirts of the house.”

St Andrews Beach House

Sean Godsell’s creation rises above the scrub and dunes in a standoff with the Southern Ocean. The striking 2005 retreat has caught a wave of prestigious awards, including the Australian Institute of Architects Robin Boyd Award in 2006.

The long, rectangular structure with a gaping mouth looks, strangely, like a beautiful shipping container. The building both protects from the elements and adapts to them. Its rusting steel skin shelters a three-bedroom home, with the living and sleeping areas separated by a weather-exposed deck.

Set on stilts, the St Andrews Beach House also reinterprets the older-style buildings of the area. In years gone by, there were many fibro-cement shacks on sticks along the peninsula back beach.

Despite it’s intimidating exterior, the interior is neither too formal nor too precious. “The purpose of going to the beach for the weekend is to relax,” Godsell says. “When you’ve just spent a day surfing, there’s nothing more boring than not going inside because you might destroy the flooring.”

Unlike beach houses further north, Victorian weekenders must be comfortable throughout very different seasons. Godsell says the winter wind at St Andrews Beach is furious and bitterly cold. “When a storm brews at sea it comes straight across that coast. [In the house] there’s a giant picture window and deck where you can sit and watch – it’s some of the best free theatre you’ll ever get.”

Platforms for pleasure

So far, peninsula architecture has been more progressive and experimental than its suburban cousin – that’s the inspiration for the MPRG exhibition. But what comes next? To find out, curator Rodney James commissioned the Platforms for Living project. Five firms each designed a speculative house for a different coastal region.

For their part, WSH Architects fashioned Platforms for Pleasure, an action-packed, tongue-in-cheek getaway for the bay beach at Sorrento. It’s a re-imagined shack for the 21st century, radically different from a city home.

“Beach houses are becoming like normal houses,” says WSH director Andrew Simpson, disapprovingly. Instead, his team pictures a seaside springboard for leisure and pleasure. The outdoor space is designed for activities as varied as rock climbing and astronomy, while the indoor living area is simple and compact. It could be only 50 square meters – five times smaller than the current average home.

Simpson says the concept is meant to be both entertaining and radical, but also reflect the firm’s approach to sustainability. “We’re trying to come up with designs that respond to contemporary lifestyles but do so over a much smaller floor area.”

They all want to change the world

In Community development, Environment, Social justice, The Age on

First published in The Age

Over the past 21 years, one Melbourne building has housed all manner of groups, all with one thing in common: the will to build a better place, as Michael Green reports.

ON FLINDERS Lane, next to the City Library, stands an office building like no other in Melbourne. Behind the front desk, a pink wall is cluttered with posters promoting an array of social causes. A patchwork of flyers waits on a table. The lift walls are coloured with calls to action.

Beneath its gargoyles and giant bay windows, Ross House’s tenants are a rainbow of community groups and causes. Whether the Stroke Association, the Darfur Australia Network, the Aboriginal Literacy Foundation or the Tree Project, the common thread is that all the groups housed here want a more just or environmentally friendly world.

Next week the Ross House Association will celebrate its 21st birthday. Not surprisingly the celebrations will include an indigenous welcome to country as well as music and comedy; the food is being provided by the Asylum Seeker Resource Centre. But after the festivities talk will turn to the association’s big plans for the future.

Ross House is currently owned by the ANZ Trustees but, all going well, the association will take over ownership of its home next year. “We’re getting the keys, basically, so it’s a great time for us,” says Rick Barry, the Ross House Association CEO, describing the move as a “coming of age”.

In its 21 years the five-storey 1890s building has been an incubator for hundreds of community groups, giving them space, facilities and the kick-start that comes with a city address. They come and go, growing bigger or smaller as their funding and needs change. The association charges below market rent, depending on the organisation’s size and capacity to pay. The smallest space leases at about $130 per month.

Committee member Sue Healy has been involved since community groups first moved in. She has the anecdotes befitting such length of service and tells them at pace. “At end-of-year parties in the old days, you started the champagne at breakfast and then you went on to lunch and tea.”

“There’s been conflict too,” she says, like the initial almighty row between the trustees and the tenants, who wanted to manage the building themselves.

The seeds of Ross House were sown in the 1970s when many small self-advocacy groups began to spring up around Melbourne. At a meeting in 1980, a collection of the groups told the Victorian Council of Social Service they needed help to find cheap, secure office space.

A heritage-listed, 1898 building that was originally a warehouse for wholesale importers Sargood, Butler, Nichol & Ewan Ltd was found, and bought with money donated by the R. E. Ross Trust, the state government and others.

Ross House finally opened in 1987 with the goal of supporting self-advocacy groups and thereby helping disadvantaged people take control over their lives. The association has always encouraged groups run by members of the community they serve, and taking control of the building through self-management was an extension of that principle.

Illustrious former tenants include the Wilderness Society and Channel 31, which, according to Healy, began from “a single desk in a cupboard”. One of her most fond memories is of a Slavic women’s group: “They used to come in for a lunch, all athletic ladies. Large, they were.” Among the current tenants, she marvels at the Handknitters Guild on level three. “They’re hand knitters for social justice! They make things and then they donate the money.”

The Blind Citizens of Australia have recently moved in, also on level three, and they are already enjoying the benefits of reduced costs and a greater profile, says executive officer Robyn McKenzie.

“Our members are either totally blind or have a severe vision impairment. Being in the CBD, we’ve been able to increase our volunteer corps because people can actually get to us with ease,” McKenzie says. Another big plus has been the extra networking with other disability organisations in the building.

That collaborative atmosphere has also rubbed off on Matt Bell from Reconciliation Victoria, on level four. “It’s inspiring to come into a building where you’ve got so many great organisations,” he says. “There’s a huge amount of social change and advocacy done from here to strengthen our community. There’s a sense that this is where it’s all happening.”

Youth literary-arts group Express Media has been a tenant on level two since 2006. Tom Rigby, editor of its Voiceworks magazine, says it is a stimulating place to work. “The water-cooler conversations are a lot deeper. They’re more relevant and interesting than you would get in most offices because when people come into the building, they’re switched on. There’s a great spirit around here.”

Taking over ownership of a multimillion-dollar heritage-listed building is a big responsibility, and the committee of management knows it will have to fund-raise extensively to pay for the upkeep of facilities. Barry says they have developed a 20-year maintenance plan to ensure they are ready. The association is also planning an energy audit and retrofit to make the building cleaner and greener. They hope to make it one of the most sustainable office blocks in the city.

Healy has coined her own adjective to describe the ethos of the building — “Ross Housey” — and it peppers her conversation. For example: “The trouble was, they really didn’t run their group in a Ross Housey way.” There was nothing for it. That group had to go.

But exactly what is Ross Housey? “Well, it’s about people having the right to be involved and consulted. To treat everybody with respect, and to respect their opinions if they’re different from yours,” she says, then grins, whispering, “except, of course, if they’re very far right”.

When good neighbours become green

In Community development, Environment, The Age on

First published in The Age

In a new take on reducing emissions, it seems carbon trading, like charity, begins at home.

Neesh Wray and Shaun Murray have just one low-energy light switched on in their Yarraville weatherboard home. It’s illuminating the cosy living room, where a small band of locals are drinking tea and talking about catastrophic climate change.

A meeting of the Westside Carbon Rationing Action Group has just begun. “We see it as an emergency,” says Murray, discussing new evidence of melting Arctic sea ice. But that’s enough talk of gloom and doom for the 32-year-old music teacher. “That’s the climate rave done,” he says. “Now, moving on, we’re here to do something about it.”

In Canberra, the Federal Government is absorbing Professor Ross Garnaut’s final advice on an emissions trading scheme for big business polluters. In Melbourne, neighbours are taking carbon cutting into their own hands and homes.

Carbon rationing action groups, or CRAGs, were first formed in Britain. There, after one year, a survey of seven groups showed that members had reduced their footprints by almost a third.

Here’s how it works: friends or neighbours gather and calculate their carbon emissions – usually covering electricity and gas, as well as car use and flights. CRAG members then set individual reduction targets and meet monthly, sharing tips, stories and progress reports. Some groups even fix fines for exceeding cap, to be paid to an eco charity.

The Westside CRAG has not been so strict. It has met half a dozen times, chatting about how to cut gas and power use, and about the embodied energy in red meat and dairy products.

Murray and Wray have slashed their own carbon pollution and plan to keep improving their habits and their house. “A huge amount of our emissions are the actions of individuals in the way we consume,” Murray says. “I think in order not to be a hypocrite it’s important that your own life reflects the change that you want to see in society.”

Tonight, Steve, a Footscray postman and new member of the group, has brought along a stack of bills. He hands them to Murray, who keys the numbers into an online emissions calculator. As he taps away, conversation simmers over the best brands of green power, the high electricity use of kettles and the efficiency of laptops compared to desktop computers.

Wray explains how she and Murray have cut their electricity consumption to less than a 10th of the national average. A gizmo called a “power mate” helped them work out which appliances use the most power. Another CRAG member, Terry, has done the same in his home and was shocked at the guzzling by electrical goods set to standby. “Fourteen per cent of my power usage was standby power. I was amazed,” he says.

Westside isn’t the only group of its kind in Melbourne. Across town, the Manningham Council has its own CRAG. Once a month, about 50 residents occupy the council chambers and learn how to make their homes more efficient. Conservation officer Bill Pemberton organises meetings on issues from insulation and double-glazing to green power and carbon offsetting. The council has already facilitated a bulk discount purchase of solar power systems for CRAG members and is doing the same for solar hot water.

The attendees’ carbon footprints vary, from well above average to very low. Pemberton says he has seen people “switch on” to the issues, and is sure their next results will be lower. “One of the major benefits of CRAGs is sharing of knowledge,” he says, and the sharing spreads beyond the group. “There are people who have gone to their church and now they are setting up audits of their church facilities.”

In central Victoria, the Mount Alexander Sustainability Group – boasting about 700 eco-minded residents – is also about to start a CRAG. Committee member Felicity Faris believes CRAGs are the perfect approach for local climate change action. “It’s really a good model for community participation because it’s supportive and it’s self-regulating, and people are working towards something within a group that makes them feel valued.”

She is planning cash penalties for CRAG members who do not meet their pledge. The money will go to retrofitting efficient technologies at low-income households in the shire. “We’re aiming for a 20% (emission) reduction for each person or household,” she says. “We hope there won’t be any defaults so, hopefully, at the end we’ll be scratching around for some money for the retrofitting anyway.”

Back in Yarraville, Steve’s calculation is almost in. He sounds a little nervous. “How good am I? Or should that be how bad am I?” he asks. Taking green power into account, which cuts electricity off his scorecard, he registers 4.6 tonnes of carbon emissions in the past year. That’s about half the Australian average under this model of calculation, which excludes food and other purchases of goods and services.

Still, Steve is sure he can do better. The group offer suggestions, from adding extra insulation and sealing draughts, to buying a thermometer so he knows how hot his living room is. “I’ve been overusing my gas heater,” Steve says. “I’ll have to cut back on that.”

A key to the CRAG model is the calculation stage, which is often the first time people understand the link between their habits and their emissions. It can be otherwise hard to connect a decision to leave extra lights switched on with the electricity bill that comes months later.

Yet for the CRAG members the benefit of their new knowledge goes not only to the atmosphere, but also to the back pocket. Wray and Murray now spend more on their electricity connection fee than on consumption.

“For a lot of people it’s possible to make massive reductions in emissions,” Murray says. “If our household can reduce our emissions by 95% in two years, then why can’t government do something about it?”