RapidRate’s role in helping Australia move towards zero carbon homes

In the drive towards a zero-carbon future, Australian housing has an important role to play. Australia’s 11 million homes are responsible for 8.6% of Australia’s total energy consumption, 24% of Australia’s electricity use, and 10% of Australia’s total carbon emissions.

Understanding the energy efficiency of Australian housing is a first step in improving the performance of Australian homes. Data is the key.

Since 2016 energy efficiency data collected under the Nationwide House Energy Rating Scheme (NatHERS) has been stored by CSIRO. This covers about 1.3 m mainly newer dwellings. For the remaining 9.7 million Australian dwellings there is little or no data available about their energy efficiency.

CSIRO has developed a tool, RapidRateTM, for quickly rating the energy efficiency of dwellings. It was developed using machine learning techniques and requires a relatively small amount of input data. Property data analytics organisations and real estate companies hold general data on most dwellings across Australia. Combining RapidRateTM with this data provides the capacity to fill the energy efficiency data gap.

This paper describes RapidRateTM and how CSIRO is working with property data providers to better understand the energy efficiency of Australian housing.