A ‘Passive’ Approach to Net Zero for New Zealand Social Housing – Preliminary Findings
- University of West of England
- Massey University
Published in Proceedings of the International Conference on Smart and Sustainable Built Environment (SASBE 2024), edited by Ali GhaffarianHoseini, Amirhosein GhaffarianHoseini, Farzad Rahimian and Mahesh Babu Purushothaman. Springer Nature, Lecture Notes in Civil Engineering, volume 591, 2025, pages 87 to 94. DOI 10.1007/978-981-96-4051-5_9.
Abstract
New Zealand's first emissions reduction plan sets out goals to achieve Net Zero for all GHG and a 24–47% reduction in biogenic methane by 2050. Buildings contribute to 10–15% of overall domestic emissions in New Zealand (NZ). Reducing operational emissions and embodied carbon of buildings is crucial to achieving the sector's Net Zero goals. Social housing poses a particular challenge among all housing stocks during the process of decarbonisation. Low carbon building standards, especially Passivhaus (PH), have been gaining popularity in continental Europe and the UK. Larger scale social housing scheme designed to achieve PH or Near Passivhaus (NPH) standard has proven to be especially beneficial in reducing carbon emissions. However, NZ buildings designed and constructed based on the PH standard are perceived to be more expensive, making them less likely to be adopted. This paper reviews New Zealand social housing and PH development literature to summarise barriers, challenges and opportunities, and reports successful case studies from the UK to provide lessons learned that can inform New Zealand PH social housing development. The outcomes of this paper provide preliminary recommendations for stakeholders in New Zealand when considering adopting the PH methodology for social housing development whilst calling for more research into the Post Occupancy Evaluation (POE) of PH or NPH housing in New Zealand to understand the applicability of PH standard and to maximise the benefit of the PH methodology.
Keywords
Session
Presented in Recorded Presentations, Session IV, Saturday 9 November 2024, 16:15 to 18:15, room WG 201, Auckland University of Technology. Session chair Dr Dat Doan.
How to Cite
Zhao, J., & Rasheed, E. (2025). A ‘Passive’ Approach to Net Zero for New Zealand Social Housing – Preliminary Findings. In A. GhaffarianHoseini, A. GhaffarianHoseini, F. Rahimian, & M. B. Purushothaman (Eds.), Proceedings of the International Conference on Smart and Sustainable Built Environment (SASBE 2024) (Lecture Notes in Civil Engineering, Vol. 591, pp. 87–94). Springer Nature Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-96-4051-5_9
About the Conference
Presented at SASBE 2024, the International Conference on Smart and Sustainable Built Environment, held in Auckland from 7 to 9 November 2024 and chaired by Professors Ali and Amirhosein GhaffarianHoseini, founders of GDI Academy. The version of record is published by Springer Nature; this page is the conference archive record kept by GDI Academy.