Housing provider energy savings tool
An energy assessment and action plan for community housing providers, charities and social enterprises that house people.
Start with the building you already have
Most housing providers know their homes are expensive to run. What they usually do not have is an ordered list of which fix, in which home, saves the most for the least — which is exactly what a lender wants to see before funding the work.
The assessment behind this tool produces that list. It is written for organisations that hold housing on a social purpose, not for a developer, and it is designed to be read by a board.
The assessment
A property at a time, the assessment builds a picture of where the energy in a home actually goes. It uses the Australian rating frameworks your funders already recognise, so the result is comparable with the rest of your portfolio and with the sector.
How the assessment works
- Answer a short set of questions about the property: its age, construction, heating and cooling, hot water, insulation and any solar already installed.
- The assessment returns an estimated energy rating for the home, benchmarked the way Australian housing is measured — NatHERS for the building fabric, and NABERS where you hold apartment buildings.
- You get an estimate of what the home costs to run and of the emissions behind that, so the board can see the size of the problem before it sees the price of the answer.
- An action plan follows, ordered by what each measure is likely to save against what it is likely to cost.
The action plan
The plan sets out the measures worth doing, roughly what each is likely to cost, and what it is likely to save over time. It is deliberately ordered rather than exhaustive: the point is to know what to do first when the budget only stretches to one thing.
What providers use it for
Lower running costs
Energy is one of the few costs in a housing budget that a capital project can permanently reduce.
Warmer, healthier homes
Insulation, draught sealing and efficient heating change how a home feels to live in, not just what it costs.
A credible emissions plan
Funders and regulators increasingly ask what your retrofit plan is. This is a defensible answer.
An ordered programme
A ranked list of works across a portfolio, so the first year of a retrofit programme is the useful one.
Green Loans from Charity Bank Australia
We finance work that reduces the energy a building uses and the emissions behind it: rooftop solar on a community centre, retrofit across a housing portfolio, or a replacement of the heating and hot water that is quietly costing a charity the most.
Learn more about Green LoansFunding the work
A Green Loan from Charity Bank Australia funds energy efficiency work on buildings held for a social purpose — including the homes a community housing provider owns.