Lesson Plan

Teaching Sequence

Work through this resource material in the following sequence:

10 minutes

Tune In: What is a net zero home, and why do we need them?

15 minutes

Find Out: What are the features of a Net Zero Home?

30 minutes

Take Action: Exploring innovations and features of net zero homes

3 minutes

Reflection

Tune In: What is a net zero home, and why do we need them?

Step 1

Watch the following video with your students, which shows a brief example of a net zero home that uses solar energy and a battery to power it.

A net zero home powered by the sun. House by Hütt - Sonnen Australia (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HdzqTjKhxrc)

Use the Creative Question Starts Visible Thinking Routine to get your students thinking about the concepts they have seen. Ask students to brainstorm at least 6 questions they have from watching the video, starting with:

Why…?
What if…?
What is the purpose of…?
How would it be different if….?
What if we knew….?
What would change if…?

Ask students to share their most interesting questions with the class and discuss them to continue to draw out their curiosity about this topic. They might have questions about what net zero means, what a home battery is and what it does.

Step 2

Explain to students that net zero means that a process or system emits as many greenhouse gases as it removes. To put this into simple terms, you could explain it in terms of a simple maths sum 2 - 2 = 0. This means that these systems don’t add to the concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.

Ask students to write a definition of what they think a net zero home is, considering the information they have seen and heard.

Note: The previous lesson in this unit looked at the energy efficiency of buildings. Whilst this is a big component of achieving a net zero home, it is not the only factor. These factors will be explored in this lesson.

Suggested Response: A net zero home is designed and constructed to have a net-zero energy consumption, meaning that it generates as much energy as it consumes over the course of a year. These homes are highly energy-efficient and often employ renewable energy sources to achieve this balance. The primary goal of a net-zero home is to minimise its environmental impact and reduce reliance on fossil fuels. In the video students watched, the house used solar energy and a battery to achieve this. This house produces MORE energy than it consumes, making it better than net zero!

Step 3

Show students the image of Australia's energy commitments on the attached visual explainer. Students should know that for Australia to reach net zero by 2050, we must make major reductions in our energy consumption. Since buildings and their construction account for approximately 25-30% of all our emissions, this is a great sector to focus on!

The Million Jobs Plan from Beyond Zero Emissions estimates that this is an area that can have a massive impact on Australia's ability to meet their emissions targets, and to do this, there will be many jobs in different areas to allow for this to happen!

If your students are interested in this area or are thinking about how they can contribute in the future, you can let them know that engineers, designers and construction workers will all be in great demand to reach these targets.

Find Out: What are the features of a Net Zero Home?

Step 1

Pose the following question to students - Is it only new homes that can be designed and built as net zero homes? Why?

The answer is no! Houses can be retrofitted to achieve these standards. A house retrofit is the process of updating, upgrading or modifying a building to improve its performance, efficiency or functionality. Lots of the elements that increase the capacity of a building to reach net zero can be replaced or added to existing structures!

Step 2

The attached visual explainer shows students the steps to creating a net-zero energy home. The previous lessons in this unit have covered energy-efficient appliances, building design, and thermal efficiency. They should be able to observe that a lot of the content they learn about through studying energy is very useful in a real-world context, and in fact, these skills will be much needed both in their everyday lives and careers in the future.

After reading this information on the visual explainer, make a list with your students of concepts they haven’t heard of before or want to know more about. If you have completed the previous lessons in this unit, the sections on thermal efficiency and efficient appliances will be already known to your students. If you haven’t completed these lessons, we would recommend that your students have an understanding of these concepts.

Encourage students to focus on:

Getting off gas

Electric alternatives to gas appliances
Space heating
Electric hot water pumps
Induction/electric stoves

Electricity supply and management

Rooftop solar
Batteries

Discuss with your students the following question:

If we are concerned about electricity usage we should attempt to ‘electrify’ as many aspects of a house as possible?

Suggested response: Gas-powered heating and appliances such as ovens and stoves use a non-renewable energy source that produces greenhouse gas emissions. By switching to appliances that use electricity, we can either make sure these appliances are as efficient as possible, or we can use renewable energy sources such as solar energy to power these devices so that we reduce our carbon footprint.

Also, show your students the graph showing the percentage of energy that critical aspects of a home use.

Ask your students the question, what are the two major things we should focus on when trying to make a home Net zero?

Producing energy through renewable resources in our homes and not relying on electricity created through fossil fuels
Minimising the amount of energy we use in our homes

Take Action: Exploring innovations and features of net zero homes

Step 1

Direct your students to the Your Home website from the Australian Government. This page has a number of case studies of best practice sustainable design in houses which are divided into climate zones and suburbs.

Hot humid- hot dry (3)
Warm - mild temperate (13)
Cool temperate - alpine (3)

Ask students to explore a case study or more than one if they have enough time to get a feel for how these homes use all or some of the sustainable design principles, especially focusing on Heating and Cooling, Hot water systems, Renewable Energies, Batteries and Electrification as these will be explored further in the next step.

Step 2

Divide students into groups of 3-4. Their task is to investigate further the aspects of a net zero home mentioned in this lesson to make a recommendation to either their school or family that they should include this feature in their homes/buildings. Each category below has multiple aspects that individual students within groups could focus on.

Heating and Cooling
Hot water systems
Residential renewable Energies
Batteries
Electrification

Encourage students to choose an element from the list above and research it thoroughly, or you could allocate topics. We would suggest batteries and renewable energies for students requiring extension.

In order to make their recommendation, students should focus their research on answering the following questions

What is the feature/element?
How does it work?
How does it contribute to making a home net zero?
What options are there to use this feature to create a net zero home?
What benefits does it have?
What limitations does it have?
Can this feature be only included in a new build, or can it be retrofitted?
What innovations are occurring in this space?
Is this technology used in Australia? If not, when will it be?

Some useful resources include:

Your Home website - This resource provides a lot of information about each of the topics above and is a good place to start
Residential Renewable Energy - energy.gov
The Million Jobs Plan (Chapter 2 - Better Buildings)
Josh’s House - Saving Energy

Step 3

Invite students to share their presentations with the class, ensuring they give a thorough overview of the topic, how it can contribute to a house being net zero, as well as innovations in the space.

Encourage discussion around each group's presentations - can students see links between concepts? Do students think these features are viable to include in-house designs from now on? What challenges exist, and how do we overcome them? Who will be responsible for implementing these changes?

If you have students who are interested in this area, you might like to direct them to the Year 13 website. Year 13 is an organisation that specialises in career education for young people. They aim to improve the well-being of young Australians by improving the school-to-work transition through education and information! They have great resources about the construction industry if you think you might have any budding builders, architects or designers!

Reflection:

Ask students to reflect on this lesson using the What Can Be Visible Thinking Routine

Review How did house designs get to be the way it is now? Who/what might have caused or influenced these changes?
Predict How might this change in the future?
Imagine and Create Change always comes with challenges. If you could turn the challenges of these predicted changes into opportunities, what do you imagine could be? What could be created?

Investigating Net Zero Homes for a Net Zero Future

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UN Sustainable Development Goals

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