Use of a wellbeing framework for establishing building sustainability performance requirements in building regulations

Abstract

Improving the sustainability of New Zealand’s housing stock is a significant challenge. Economic, indoor climate and energy use data indicates the affordability, healthiness and environmental impacts of new and existing houses in New Zealand are relatively poor compared with other OECD countries. Poor performance is largely due to the building energy and environmental performance requirements prescribed by regulations, which are low in New Zealand compared with other jurisdictions. Building performance requirements will need to be raised in order to improve the sustainability of housing. A wellbeing approach to determining public benefits from raising building performance requirements in regulations is outlined in this paper. This approach draws on the Living Standards Framework (LSF) developed by The New Zealand Treasury. This framework links 12 domains of wellbeing to each other and to 4 capital stocks, including housing, that underpin future wellbeing. The LSF is used to assess the impacts of raising building performance requirements on community wellbeing. Results indicate better knowledge of the relationships between the domains of wellbeing and the underpinning capital stocks is needed to improve the identification and analysis of preferred regulatory settings.