To many people, this question seems like a no-brainer: either you would build such a house because of the market advantage it provides, or alternatively, you wouldn’t build it because the extra costs reduce your competitiveness in the market.
 
Actually, I don’t think it’s either of these ‘no-brainer’ answers. Instead, I think the no-brainer response is simpler: to ensure you are still building houses in 5 years.
 

Ross is currently working with the brick industry to help prepare them for doing business in the new carbon-constrained economy. He focuses on issues relating to energy efficiency in the built environment and life cycle assessment, and has a strong interest how the homes and communities beyond the 2020 will operate.
 
Ross has a BA and Masters of Project Management. From 2005-2008 he worked with the NSW Business Chamber as their Sustainability Policy Adviser educating small and medium businesses of the implications of climate policy.
 

For those of you who want the short version of this blog, the answer is false. For those of you who want to know more, read more here!
 
To assume that reducing embodied energy will make society sustainable implies that production is the root of all our sustainability evils.  While production is part of the problem, this assumption ignores the fact that goods are only produced to be consumed.  If we weren’t consuming them, they wouldn’t be bought: no business in its right mind would produce something it couldn’t sell!
 

Think Brick Australia joined forces with our international clay industry colleagues - Tiles and Brick Europe, The Brick Industry Development Authority (UK) and Clay Brick Association (SA) – with a dominating stand at the World Sustainable Building Practises event (SB08) in Melbourne.
 
A mosaic wall made of clay brick supplied by Euroa Clay Products (Melbourne) demonstrated the proposition that ‘Clay is green and comes in all colours” proving that clay brick is both a sustainable and aesthetically versatile solution for contemporary buildings.
 

The World Sustainable Building Conference (or SB08 in the common vernacular) has seen regulators, researchers, architects, builders and developers come together to discuss and promote new ideas in how to make buildings more sustainable.
 
Across 4 days there have been over 200 presentations by individual experts examining various issues to energy efficiency, building material life cycle, design, regulation and the impact the built environment has on the global landscape.