New research from Curtin University highlights the important role that building energy codes can play in delivering national energy policy and climate policy outcomes for the building sector.

The potential contribution of building codes to climate change response policies for the built environment has been published in the Energy Efficiency Journal. The paper examines reform of Australia’s National Construction Code, demonstrating that building energy codes are a cost-effective greenhouse emission reduction instrument and also that market failures inhibit the effectiveness of conventional economic instruments in reducing building sector greenhouse emissions.

Researchers suggest that although building energy codes provide a potentially transformative intervention in the property market, their effectiveness is bedevilled by problems with enforcement and stakeholder behaviour in service. They recommend that targeted policy packages which bridge identified gaps between presumptive building performance objectives and outcomes actually observed in practice is necessary to address these impediments.

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