For the past 8 years environmentalist Brendan Condon has been working to build Australia’s first zero carbon housing project at Cape Paterson near Wonthaggi. This Ecovillage will build 200 highly sustainable houses.
Recently the project hit an eleventh hour hurdle with an independent planning panel. Please write a letter of support for this project.
For the past 8 years environmentalist Brendan Condon has been working to build Australia’s first zero carbon housing project at Cape Paterson near Wonthaggi. Detailed information about the project is available at here.
Each year in Victoria around 40,000 houses are being built to minimal energy efficiency standards, running on brown coal and soon to be supplied by desalinated water. The housing industry has failed to respond to the looming challenge of climate change, and continues to lock house buyers into energy intensive, poorly designed housing that makes our communities vulnerable to future energy and water shocks.
The Cape Paterson Ecovillage will build 200 highly sustainable houses run on solar energy and the whole project will be operationally zero carbon, as well as demonstrating best practice in rainwater collection, water conservation and stormwater capture and reuse. The project will also undertake large scale ecological restoration. It will be Australia’s first climate safe housing project of scale. Currently there are no zero carbon housing projects in Australia, although there are many being built and planned in Europe, the UK, the United States and Canada.
Recently the project hit an eleventh hour hurdle with an independent planning panel making the curious finding that it is preferable to build over 1400 conventional houses across the road from the Ecovillage project than it is to build 200 operationally zero carbon houses at the Ecovillage site.
If you support the development of a good reference project for the housing industry, visit the website for more information on how you can support the project or to submit a letter of support.