Practical Greenhouse Gas Reduction Strategies for the Existing Building Stock

This paper aims to illustrate building Greenhouse Gas (GHG) and energy trends, and to provide practical strategies to lower GHG emissions, energy use and operating costs, across building types and Australian Climate Zones It provides international best practice examples of building refurbishments, and of government policies and important stakeholder behaviour, and evaluates one recent project for strategies that proved successful and those that could be improved The method used was to review international strategies that lower building GHG emissions in countries with more advanced building regulations than Australia, and to discover affordable and effective strategies from associations that publicise case studies This paper shows that the operational phase of buildings is a significant contributor to global GHG emissions, that Passive building refurbishments are current worlds best practice strategies for most climates and building types, and that human behaviour is a significant contributor to GHG emissions It has also identified particular strategies for building stakeholders to minimise GHG emissions