She and her husband Denis, both retired, have just moved into Currumbin Eco-Village, a cutting edge, environmentally sustainable community built on the Gold Coast in Queensland. Most houses in this village have solar panels for electricity and hot water, tanks and grey water systems, sustainable building materials like rammed earth walls, and ultimately optic fibre-or super-fast broadband to the front door.
And as part of the deal the Johnston's also got the EcoVision - a sort of highly- intelligent meter which gives them real-time information via a touch screen, about nearly every aspect of their home's performance.
Not only can they see how much greenhouse gas they are generating - 68 kilos per week on average or half of what a normal home would use in that time - but they can tell at a glance how much water and electricity they?ve used, what it costs, and even which appliance or room is an energy vandal.
"It's amazing how central to our lives it's become," Clare says, adding that they now look at it daily, talk about the figures with their neighbours and, most importantly, take action if they see trouble.
"We never knew anything about our energy or water use before we moved here - or what it cost of course. But as it's so easy to use and provides such valuable information, I couldn't imagine living without it."
The Johnston's story is set to be a lot more common in Australia as our homes become the front line for an increasingly greener and smarter way to live.
And while not everyone agrees that an intelligent or smart house is necessarily a greener one, there is no doubt that both trends are here to stay - and they have begun to juggle for prime position.
The push to make our homes environmentally responsible is probably the most obvious. National and state governments are setting more stringent energy and water standards for houses, appliance energy ratings are now compulsory, and rebates for everything from solar panels to water tanks and efficient light bulbs are common.
There are now literally hundreds of how-to guides on ways to green up your home published by government, industry and community groups. It's a message the mainstream media has picked up and pushed hard. And Australians appear to be listening. A 2007 Lowy Institute Poll found that people consider tackling climate change is now as important as higher educational standards, and above better health care, economic growth or fighting terrorism.
We may be happy to pay for it as well. A recent Newspoll found that more than two thirds of Australians would accept higher electricity bills if it helps to meet renewable energy targets.
But the picture may not be as rosy and green as this research suggests according to The Sustainable Home 2007 by Connection Research.
While around 50 percent of those in this study agreed they would pay more for water and energy if it helped the environment, most people felt they were already doing enough and would have to be persuaded of the cost benefits to do more.
Well, the fact is, most of us will soon be nudged into doing just that.
In a move expected to be copied around the country, the Victorian Government is now targeting greenhouse emissions at home, saying it wants the energy retailers to actively encourage households to help cut current levels.
But one of the most important technological intrusions into our homes energy performance may already be here with the roll out of 'smart meters' by government agencies and private companies around the country. It is already predicted around 2 million of these will be in homes in Victoria alone by 2012.
A world-wide trend, it's hoped the usage and cost data the meters provide will not only make consumers more informed about their energy footprint, but prepared to do something positive about it by 'shifting' their behaviour.
Tests of the meters seem to suggest they work. US research has shown the meters have encouraged people to cut consumption to deliver cost savings of between 12 and 35 percent in peak periods.
But if the green imperative is now putting pressure on how we manage, design and build our homes, can the same really be said of higher home IQ?
No matter what you call it - smart, digital, connected, networked, intelligent, electronic or house-of-the-future - the promise has often been stronger than the reality.
But that appears to be changing even if our version of the smart home will probably be less about Jetsons' style of automation aka robots, and more about practical features like flexible Internet access, home entertainment and security options.
One measure of the new interest in a more pragmatic approach to home smarts is the recent housing snapshot by the Housing Industry Association (HIA) and the Copper Development Centre. Their study found the uptake of Smart Wiring - the national standard for increased technology at home - had more than doubled in just three years and was now installed in a over a quarter of all new Australian homes.
By far the largest technology request from home owners installing Smart Wiring was for increased capacity and flexibility with telephone and Internet options, followed by an equally practical interest in television, security and multi-room audio.
As John Fennell from the Copper Development Centre - one of the groups behind Smart Wiring - says, "Most of us aren?t going to end up living in something like the Starship Enterprise."
"What we're now seeing is a shift in some of the technology we took for granted in offices and larger buildings onto our homes."
"This shouldn't be so surprising really. People want to make sure their homes can handle and distribute digital material easily so that they have reliable options for work, communication, control and entertainment," he adds.
And it's faster broadband that seems to be pushing it along. While Australians were a little slow to jump on the broadband bandwagon, there?s no doubt the country's now ready.
The 2006 Census found that 60 percent of Australian homes had Internet access of which nearly a half had broadband, a connection rate that had doubled in the previous twelve months.
We're also catching up with the rest of the world. Last year the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OE CD) found Australia was 17th in the world in terms of broadband penetration and had registered the second-highest growth rate.
And while our speeds have been generally slow and costs high in the past, that too is changing. The recent election was notable for the debate about broadband speeds - probably the first one ever fought about cyber space - with promises of anything from 12 to 50 Megabits per second (mbps) and even higher, once optic fibre becomes more accessible.
This is a big jump. Most people in Australia still have broadband of around 1 mbps, although private companies like iiNet are offering much higher speeds in cities. But it is still a shock to know the average speeds overseas are say 13 mbps in Britain or 6.8 in Canada.
And the impact of faster broadband, especially in our homes, could be huge. With homes handling much higher levels of digital content, opportunities for greater comfort and efficiency through automation, smart appliances, home networking and data communication, will only grow.
All of this could also be good for the environment according to a brand new report called Towards a High-Bandwith, Low Carbon Future by Climate Risk, an independent consulting firm.
Climate Risk found higher speed broadband will allow homes to become much more sophisticated in the way lighting, energy, power and water are used, in turn cutting down the emission of greenhouse gases.
Through better home networking and control, appliances can be adjusted or turned off to reflect changed conditions such as the outside temperature, room-usage patterns, inbuilt sensors. This can even be done remotely from a mobile phone or work PC.
If applied to businesses and homes, the report suggests Australia could save $6.6 billion a year and eliminate greenhouse emissions equal to two-thirds of all cars on the road.
One obvious way to decrease emissions is for more people to work at home and higher speed broadband would enable them to do that. ABS figures suggest around a million people in Australia now use some form of home-based office, a trend which is expected to grow as faster broadband becomes more available.
But possibly one of the strongest signs we've encountered yet which indicates we've entered a whole new phase has been signalled by Telstra, the country's biggest telecommunications company.
Telstra has introduced what it calls its Smart and Velocity Community initiative which provides the very latest communication services like optic fibre and digital television up front to new estates - an initiative that's expected to see over 250,000 new, Smart Wired homes built over the next ten years.
One of Telstra's first optic fibre developments - the Genesis Coomera estate in Queensland - is a glimpse into just how all these trends are coming together to deliver real climate and technological benefits in the home.
Heritage Pacific, the privately-owned company behind Genesis, certainly hopes so. The company has another eight developments underway in Queensland which will amount to around 700 homes - homes which are setting a pretty high standard for smart and green.
Just one aspect - the home office phenomenon - is already making people sit up and take notice. Around 85 percent of all current residents in Genesis homes have requested dedicated home office facilities. Experts say that one day, working from home will save 9200 kilometres in travel per year or 780 kilos of carbon emissions per year per person.
One person who has seen the benefits of a smarter community up close is George Smith who moved into a very smart, very green home in Genesis a year ago.
The house was not only built to be highly sustainable, but has been Smart Wired and networked to provide some serious intelligence as back up.
Clearly great basic design helped. Insulation, proper solar orientation, ceiling fans, insulation and banks of louvered windows have delivered incredible energy performance. George says the house temperature remains an even 18 degrees for most of the year.
But according to George, who uses a wheelchair as a result of illness in childhood, the technology features are also essential.
"The technology really is everywhere and is all designed to make the house greener and more comfortable to live in," George says.
"We have sensors to trigger the lights off and on, touch screens in all the rooms to control things like lights and fans, automated garden watering that is driven by soil and weather conditions, and even our stove uses magnetic induction for cooking."
"I guess if there is anything I would want it?s to be able to get more from the systems we have here," George adds.
Of course not everyone is convinced that technology alone can save the planet. According to Caitlin McGee from the Institute for Sustainable Futures in Sydney, technology can have an impact at home, but in the end, it will depend on how well it's used.
"I think we can do a lot of good things for the environment with technology at home, including smart meters, Internet-based communication and real time information on public transport," she says.
"But in the end, good basic house design like solar positioning and insulation, might just do more."
I don't know about you, but news that Telstra and the Feds...
Date: 17/12/2008 | Learn More
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