AccuRate is a residential energy rating software for Australia developed by CSIRO. As building design becomes more energy aware, ‘AccuRate’ helps builders and architects understand and improve the heating and cooling energy efficiency of residential building designs, and reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Currently, building regulations in Australia focus on assessing how much ‘operational’ energy is used to heat and cool the building over its lifetime. However, to better understand whole building life cycle CO2 emissions, this project developed an AccuRate software module that takes into account both the embodied and operational CO2emissions of a house.
The term ‘Embodied CO2’ (ECO2) is defined here as the total Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emissions—i.e. CO2, CH4, N2O etc.—caused from resource extraction, transportation, manufacturing and fabrication of a product or system (cradle-to-factory gate). Emissions occurring during the construction phase, those caused by maintenance and repair during the use phase and those occurring at the end of the building’s life (i.e. demolition, transport to landfill etc.) were not considered.
Reference Number:
PNA161-0910
Video Report:
