Australian Passive Solar Home

Most groups promoting energy efficient housing are just industry funded lobbyists.

Unfortunately, after decades of hearing misinformation from fossil fuel lobby groups, I think we’ve achieved parity – energy efficient housing groups are now equally misleading in the information they push.

Why do they post misleading information? Well, it’s very simple – a great many of them are funded by companies selling products and services that the group promotes.

The difference to fossil fuel lobby groups is that the energy efficient housing groups always have a ‘holier than thou’ smugness that they are on the right side of history. Even when they’re telling outright lies.

Since beginning the research for my book on energy efficient housing, and building one such house, I have been stunned by the magnitude of bias in nearly every group that is pushing so-called green, low-energy, circular and sustainable housing.

That is, until I joined the dots – oh yes, that’s who you’re sponsored by.

Lobby groups that insist you must make your house airtight – and it’s just coincidence that they’re sponsored by companies selling products that will achieve just that.

Lobby groups that push very high performance windows – and oh yes, window companies happen to sponsor that group.

Lobby groups that promote expensive architectural companies… and, you guessed it, those companies pay money to help get that idea promoted.

Lobby groups that invent their own accreditation standards, their own ratings, have their own competitions – all to financially benefit their sponsors.

Lobby groups that get representatives from their sponsoring companies to run ostensibly unbiased seminars on how houses should be built. (No, I am not joking.)

If there’s a low cost, simple way of doing something – or an expensive way that uses a sponsor’s product, you’ll never hear of the low cost approach.

But it’s more insidious than this. These groups treat the subject as completely decided science: there is only one approach that will work, and it’s the one that – oh! surprise! surprise! – this lobby group happens to promote. On the behest of its sponsors, of course.

Now you might be thinking: well, you’re writing a book – and that’s promoting a particular approach to energy efficient housing, isn’t it? But there’s one huge difference: I don’t get money from window manufacturers, or people who do airtightness testing, or those selling high performance wraps, or architects, or manufacturers of reverse cycle air conditioners. (Or even from makers of water tanks, or solar reflectors, or data logging systems!) Instead, I get money from people who will buy a book, and it is only to them that I have any loyalty.

Any group pushing green, low-energy, circular and sustainable housing (etc), that is sponsored by industry, has a completely unreconcilable conflict of interest. Their advice should therefore always be treated with great scepticism – no matter how they present it.