Research undertaken by the Cooperative Research Centre for Low Carbon Living (CRCLCL) has shown that current ‘top down’ education approaches aimed at changing consumer behaviours to adopt sustainable housing options (including concepts like net zero energy homes) have been largely ineffective.

This project builds on key findings of research conducted within the CRCLCL that communicating sustainability in a more mainstream way could significantly improve uptake of sustainable and energy efficient homes.

This project aims to validate the approach through a pilot lifestyle mass media program. The approach has two key objectives to explore the use of mainstream media to:

1. stimulate demand from consumers for net zero energy homes; and
2. create a “path to market” for net zero energy home designs/ products.

The project aimed to validate the viewer engagement, to support behaviour change, the use of an impact community and the potential for a commercially viable business model. To assess the approach against these criteria the project the pilot included:

1. A 30 minute pilot TV show published on YouTube (‘Renovate or Rebuild’)
2. A call to action website with featured products and resources. 
3. Recruitment of an impact community to promote the content.
4. Behavioural science research via focus groups and online analytics. 
5. Integrated promotion of the show across various social media channels.