- Posted on 17 Jun 2025
- 3-minute read
A new report sheds light on the experience of upgrading your home to boost energy efficiency, to understand the process and how it can be made easier for more Australians.
We all want to live in homes that keep us warm in winter and cool in summer, without breaking the bank. Moreover, improving the thermal efficiency of our ageing housing stock and weaning off gas is vital to meeting our emissions reduction targets.
Energy Upgrades for Australian Homes (EUAH) aims to enable energy upgrades for one million Australian homes by 2030. In May this exciting initiative – funded by Race for 2030 and led by ISF, Climate-KIC and Monash University – reached some important milestones.
This research provides a deeper understanding of household experiences and what they need to make the journey to home energy upgrades easy and accessible.
Researchers at UTS completed a study into Australian households’ experiences when working to upgrade their homes, including getting solar panels, batteries, insulation, draught-proofing and heat pumps. As Jaime Comber, a researcher on the EUAH project, explains:
"Through listening to households across Australia, we’ve found that different households need different types of support along the way, for example the journey of someone getting solar looks quite different to the journey of someone undergoing a major home renovation.
This research provides a deeper understanding of household experiences and what they need to make the journey to home energy upgrades easy and accessible."
Among other challenges, the study found that:
- households often face an overload of information and choices
- are not getting guidance at the right times
- have trouble finding tradespeople to undertake upgrades; and
- struggle to afford the upfront costs.
You can read more about this study in The Conversation.