The devastating fires throughout the Summer of 2019/2020 made it clear that Australian homes need to be ready for future climate disasters. As part of our Green Rebuild Toolkit project, this year we’re focusing on retrofitting exisiting homes to be more resilient in the face of bushfire. Over four online sessions throughout November we will provide the information that you need to get your home best prepared for fire season. You’ll learn how to make easy changes that you can implement quickly, as well as longer term design improvements to plan for. You’ll hear from fire experts, architects, builders, designers, and homeowners who have first hand experience. Each session will feature a panel discussion and a Q&A hosted by Renew CEO Fiona Gray, so bring along your questions.

Retrofitting for Resilience: Energy Setups

Throughout Black Summer, many homes were left without power for long periods of time — indeed, there were entire communities that lost power for days on end. In this session you’ll learn how to plan for a home energy setup that is reliable and safe in the event of a bushfire. You’ll also hear from Tricia Hiley, who was involved in the installation of a community battery in Mallacoota, increasing the energy independence of the entire town.

Featuring:

Justin Leonard

Justin has worked with CSIRO for 29 years on fire research, 26 of these focused specifically on bushfires. His passion is to help Australians remain living in their dream home, in their dream location, for the long term. Justin studies how bushfires interact with structures and how people perceive risk. Through his research, Justin aims for Australians to coexist safely with bushfires and to be able to build their homes in a way that is resilient to extreme events, while still enjoying the natural landscape of Australia.

Tricia Hiley

Dr Tricia Hiley is from Mallacoota in far-east Gippsland. Her focus is on ‘future-proofing’ her community. As Mallacoota Sustainable Energy Group’s coordinator, Tricia is assisting her community in becoming energy-resilient. She is a founding partner of the Wilderness Collective, formed post-bushfire to facilitate a self-determined sustainable future for the whole community through catalysts of enterprise, education, coworking and community collaboration. She recently led Mallacoota’s first community-owned solar installation at the local water treatment plant.

Alan Pears

Alan is a highly regarded analyst, consultant and commentator on sustainable energy and climate policy, who has worked in the sustainable energy and environment fields since the late 1970s across all sectors including government, the private sector and with community groups. Alan has written or peer reviewed many articles in specialist media such as The Conversation, Energy Policy, as well as other academic journals, chapters of books and major reports.

Alan is currently a Senior Industry Fellow at RMIT and a Fellow for the University of Melbourne's Climate and Energy College. He works closely with the Australian Alliance for Energy Productivity on heat pumps, value chain energy productivity and digitalisation and is a policy adviser to the Energy Efficiency Council. Alan writes a regular column in Renew magazine.

Fiona Gray (Moderator)

Dr Fiona Gray is the CEO of Renew. Fiona has more than 25 years’ experience as a registered practising architect, urban ecologies researcher and local government leader. Her previous roles include Executive Manager of City Design at the City of Ballarat and the Founder and Director of Civic Collective, an urban research and design consulting agency. She is also an Adjunct Associate Professor at the Centre for Regional and Rural Futures at Deakin University and an expert advisor to the Heritage Advisory Committee for National Trust of Australia (Victoria).

Tickets:

This is event is part of Renew's Retrofitting for Resilience series. You can buy tickets to the series here, or an Annual Pass to all extended Sustainable House Day events here.
This event is free for Full Members of Renew. Join up for access to all our events at https://renewportal.org.au
There are a limited number of free tickets to the event for those experiencing financial hardship.
This event is part of our Retrofitting for Resilience event series. You can purchase a series ticket here or an annual pass to all extended Sustainable House Day events here.
Renew depends on the generosity of our community to continue its valuable work. We would welcome your donation here: renew.org.au/donate or via the additional donation option when choosing your ticket.

This project received grant funding from the Australian Government.

This event is also supported by NatHERS, Design for Place, Your Home, Light House Architecture & Science, and Sonnen.