Going green is easy if you know the market

(Article from the Financial Review 7th October 2004)

Struggling to buy a house? Heard all the great stuff about no heating bills, no cooling bills, even no water bills?

According to lawyer turned sustainable development consultant Michael Mobbs, you can now have it all with a ready-made, off-the-shelf product that is not just environmentally sound but costs only $65,000 for a two-bedroom house and $100,000 for four bedrooms, with some extras for assembly and a waste system.

According to Mobbs, the type of module he's talking about, and which he is offering through his new company, Sustainable Affordable Living Australia, could also help solve Australia's housing affordability problems.

Seven years ago Mobbs gained notoriety when he turned a house in inner-city Chippendale, in Sydney, into a sustainable home with its own sewerage, water and electricity systems.

He shows about 3000 people through his home each year, and has developed a consultancy in sustainable development.

In the process, he has become one of Australia's best-known de facto designers and consultants in the field.

Mobbs helped Consolidated Properties' Don O'Rorke offer a sustainable alternative to buyers at the company's huge Casuarina Beach estate near Byron Bay.

And he worked on possibly Australia's first block of sustainable apartments, at Agnes Waters in Queensland, where water, electricity and waste have all had the green treatment. But working in the area for so long has convinced him there is an enormous amount of confusion, even among sustainable practitioners. Are concrete slabs acceptable for heat retention? Mobbs says no. What is the best waste system? Mobbs says his is. Where do you source all the supplies needed? Too endless to mention, says Mobbs. In the end, Mobbs could see an opportunity to cut through the confusion by offering an off-the-shelf product that makes building a "green" house as easy as possible. That's important, because the design and price tag are pitched to the average home buyer. It aims for a high-volume low-margin turnover.

With some architectural help, Mobbs focused on a classically Australian look, with timber construction, large verandas and high-pitched roofs for heat control. If the theory works and sales take off, Mobbs will prove one of his long-held mantras - that people are paying through the nose for houses that don't work environmentally. Connecting an entire city to the sewerage system, for instance, creates more greenhouse gases than any other enterprise, Mobbs claims. Creating housing that treats its own waste on-site saves an average $10,000 on headwork costs for a subdivision, says Mobbs.

But whether infrastructure authorities will share that view is another story. Mobbs will watch with interest."Often the problem is not the design or the product but whether they allow an alternative to compete," he says. In Sydney, it is one of the "best-kept secrets" that householders can, by law, opt out of the sewerage and water connections and not continue to be charged a fixed fee for the services. Mobbs says the savings could be up to $300 a year.