<
https://reneweconomy.com.au/what-will-it-take-to-halve-renter-energy-bills-we-have-the-answer-we-just-need-to-make-it-happen/>
"More than a third of Australians have rooftop solar, and 30 per cent of
Australians rent their homes – yet there is very little overlap between those
groups.
The same is true for other energy performance features – renters are almost
twice as likely to lack insulation in their homes, for example.
Australians who own their own home now have access to a wide range of home
energy upgrades that are highly effective at cutting energy bills, but renters
are at risk of being left behind.
At the root of the problem is the “split incentive” dilemma: Landlords are
responsible for upgrading rental properties, but they lack the financial
motivation, as energy bills are paid by the tenants.
Prior attempts to address this problem by providing incentives to landlords
have seen underwhelming results. A federal government program in the 2000s
offered a $1,000 rebate for landlords to install insulation, aiming to reach
700,000 properties. Less than 1% of that target was achieved.
Arguably, this isn’t a surprise. Incentive-only approaches cannot address the
core issue: that most landlords are unlikely to undertake property upgrades
when they have nothing to gain financially.
The rise of rooftop solar and batteries has shone a spotlight on the growing
gap between households with consumer energy technologies, and those without.
The Australian Energy Market Commission, for example, recently proposed a major
shake-up of network tariffs to address one part of this problem. But that
proposal carries its own pitfalls, and doesn’t address the more fundamental
reality: homes with energy efficiency features, rooftop solar and batteries
will almost always have lower energy bills than those without.
The only way to resolve this inequality is to enable renters to access these
household energy upgrades. Minimum energy efficiency standards for rental
properties are one of the few policy tools that can bypass the split incentive
problem to do so.
The ACT introduced ceiling insulation requirements for rental properties in
2023, and Victoria will soon go further, introducing requirements for
insulation, draught-proofing, and the phase out of certain gas appliances."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
