Net zero homes short course: unsw, agse
Case study: Training and development to achieve a net zero home design
Rob Catchlove, Wave Consulting’s Director, delivered an inaugural eight week online and face-to-face workshop course on the subject of Net Zero homes for the Australian Graduate School of Engineering (AGSE) at UNSW.
Net zero short course
Gadigal lands, Sydney
Key facts
16 participants from across Australia
37% of emissions relate to buildings globally, so a net zero home design is crucial
The problem
Countries, local governments, companies and organisations are focusing more and more on net zero. The community is also looking for practical solutions to living in a net zero home. And with this insight, UNSW and the Australian Graduate School of Engineering identified that there was a lack of professional development and training opportunities to help people understand the principles, design solutions, and modelling associated with achieving a net zero home.
“I wanted to thank you for the net zero homes course which I enjoyed and learned an enormous amount from. Wave clearly invested considerable time and thought into the content, and had to be flexible to adapt the course given the participants, and the diversity of our differing levels of knowledge and experience.”
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The Net Zero Homes Course has been designed to really bring together a whole lot of principles and take a very practical approach to how we go about designing net zero homes. What we know is that 37% of global emissions relate to buildings. So what we do in terms of the way we build in our new homes is really critical to achieve net zero. In Australia, we have 200,000 new homes built every year and thousands more renovations.
There's a huge opportunity with each of these homes that can't be revisited for some 50 plus more years. So this is a great opportunity to bring together all sorts of different elements that contribute to creating net zero homes. What we'll do in this course is really bring together in a very practical sense some of the key ideas around How do we define what net zero is?
What are the different rating schemes? What are the different design principles? What's the modeling software that's required to be used? How are we going to monitor these sort of homes, and what's the materials and the construction element of all this as well. But what we'll be doing is taking a very practical approach to this, what we want is for you to bring your project to this course.
And really redesign essentially what you're working on in collaboration with everyone else around the table. So this course is designed for anyone in the engineering, architecture, town planning, the developers, the designers sustainability experts, and even the homeowners as well. This is a seven week course and it includes a mix of online learning and face to face again with a very sort of practical focus of bringing your project into the course and hopefully coming out of that course with a new net zero home. So I really look forward to seeing you there.
The solution
Wave Consulting created and facilitated a specially designed course covering:
the definition of net zero
net zero design principles
rating schemes (and how these type of objectives compare to green star ratings, BASIX, BESS and WELL ratings)
effective construction and maintenance.
The outcome
The first intake of the net zero home short course was a great success. It is now being run on a regular basis with the AGSE.
With new regulations and policies requiring a minimum 7 star energy rating, no gas connections, and improved renewable energy and water solutions in the home, the importance of sustainable housing is set to soar. As a result, this course will become ever more important.
Feedback from participant’s about their experience was also positive. One of the participants noted, "All of the course content was invaluable but the design project was key to bringing it all together. The opportunity for discussion and to hear from the diversity of knowledge and experience in the group was also really valuable.”
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