Outer-suburban houses not so green

[tayser]

http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/fr...530-1fcsr.html

SO YOU thought you had gone green, buying a seven-star house with a water tank in a new estate with a sprinkling of gum trees.

But it turns out your inner-city cousins might still have the edge. New houses on Melbourne's urban fringe are responsible for much greater levels of greenhouse gas emissions than city apartments or high-density suburban housing.

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The embodied energy — energy used to make the product — in the typical new house has risen more than 400 per cent since the 1950s, mainly driven by the size of the house and the declining number of occupants.

And the average house size has soared, with many new houses well over 200 square metres, more than double the average in the same period.

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The study looked at three types of new housing: high-rise apartments in Docklands; inner-suburban, medium-density housing, such as the K2 development in Windsor; and new, outer-suburban detached houses.

All were more efficient than houses built three years ago (when five-star homes were the standard), but energy use in seven-star homes was only 13 per cent less than in 2008. High-rise apartments were up to 70 per cent less.

see link for full article

Link to UniMelb press release: http://newsroom.melbourne.edu/news/n-533

[Innsertnamehere]

hmm, what a big surprise!