A zero emissions house?

CSIRO, together with developers, have opened an 8-star home they claim will produce zero net emissions in Doreen, near Melbourne. Perhaps the rating could have been even higher had the designers provided some shading over those windows??

Featuring largely off-the-shelf materials, the home also has a state-of-the-art computerised management system.

No doubt having a six kilowatt photovoltaic power generation system on the roof would help off-set the day-to-day operational emissions - that's four times the 'standard' rooftop 1.5KW system size.

CSIRO will monitor a family living in the home for a year.

They say that 13% of Australian emissions come from household energy consumption, so building better homes is a most worthy pursuit.