At the recent Timber Communities Australia national conference, prominent federal Labor politician Martin Ferguson called for a rethink of the national energy efficiency standards for residential buildings in Australia. He told conference delegates:
“Whilst we would all support practical measures that increase energy efficiency, it seems to me that the new building standards are underpinned by too many questionable assumptions and too little scientific evidence.
So does the Productivity Commission which reported its concerns about the analytical basis for the standards last October.
The key issue is the focus on reducing household energy running costs and the thermal performance of the building shell.
And, at least at the time the Productivity Commission was undertaking its investigations the Australian Greenhouse Office’s (AGO) home design manual noted that true low energy building design will consider embodied energy and take a broader life-cycle approach to energy assessment – merely looking at the energy used to operate the building is not really acceptable.
Because timber framed construction is lightweight in nature, it does not fit the thermal performance philosophy.
The analytical basis used also means that concrete slab-on-ground comes up trumps for efficiency over suspended timber flooring.Consequently, $70 million worth of sales a year have been lost in the Victorian timber flooring market since the Victorian rating system was introduced.
This is despite the fact that a 1999 study undertaken for the AGO found it would take 62 years to get a net greenhouse benefit from a concrete floor over a timber floor.
And recent research indicates a concrete slab produces a net increase in CO2 emissions of 15 tonnes per house compared to a timber floor.
The problem is the standards ignore the fact that cement is highly energy intensive to produce while timber is a renewable resource, grown using direct sunlight and processed using relatively little energy in sawmills.
And sometimes, the energy in sawmills is produced using biomass from wood waste itself.The Productivity Commission has recommended the Australian Building Codes Board commission an independent evaluation of energy efficiency standards to determine how effective they have been in reducing actual – not simulated – energy consumption and whether the financial benefits to individual producers and consumers have outweighed the associated costs.
And the sooner the government ensures this is done, the better because in the meantime the timber industry is suffering and it may well be doing so for no good reason.
I am pleased to see that the industry has successfully lobbied the Victorian government for an amnesty on wooden floors in new homes until April 2007 to allow time to address this issue.
But it is clear that the greens are now much more sophisticated in their attack on the forest industries, directly targeting industry markets to achieve their ends.
The Wilderness Society responded to the Victorian amnesty saying it was a “cynical attempt by the industry to maintain market share” rather than improve energy ratings or environmental sustainability.”
My house is cold in winter, it is wooden, with old wooden floors. But its my choice and I can’t understand why environmental groups don’t support the Australian timber industry so other home owners can appreciate the beauty of wood… wooden floors, wooden furniture, wooden window frames. And as Martin Ferguson said at the conference:
“Australia has 164 million hectares of native forests – 4% of the world’s forests – and 1.7 million hectares of plantations.
About 10% of our native forests are managed for wood production with less than 1% being harvested in any one year. That small proportion of forests harvested annually is regenerated so that a perpetual supply of native hardwood and softwood is maintained in this country.
Australia’s rigorous forestry standard, the AFS, has global mutual recognition under the Programme for the Endorsement of Forest Certification, the largest international sustainability recognition framework for forestry in the world.
But the greens are running a duplicitous campaign around the globe to undermine the status of the standard.”
Jennifer Marohasy BSc PhD has worked in industry and government. She is currently researching a novel technique for long-range weather forecasting funded by the B. Macfie Family Foundation.