Mara Ripani, Ralf & Ahlia Pfleiderer

Becoming Climate Positive in September 2006, Ralf Pfleiderer and Mara Ripani offset carbon emissions with accredited emission reduction projects, with additional investment in the Strzelecki Ranges replanting site.

Mara Ripani, Ralf and Ahlia Pfleiderer

Where do you live? Northern Suburbs, Melbourne

How many in your household: Two adults, one child

Describe your home and energy systems
Intimate, three-bedroom 1950s home, brick cavity, double-fronted with living areas facing north. Wooden floorboards with no insulation underneath. Six rooms in total. One gas space heater in the living area. Electric panel heater in baby room. Passive cooling using bamboo external blinds and heavy curtains. Two ceiling fans in the house, one in the living area and one in the pink bedroom. Electric cooking on an old stove until new gas stove can be purchased, gas-boosted solar hot water, 10,000L rainwater tank, grey water for fruit trees and a 40 square metre vegetable garden. Indigenous and native flora decorates the back garden.

What have you done to reduce your greenhouse emissions?
Structural/whitegoods: Draft sealed all external doors and exhaust fans; increased passive solar heating to living area by installing double-glazed French doors that face north. We have planted and continue to plant as many fruit trees, vegetables and natives as we can fit on our block to create a cooler external microclimate. We have built a shading structure to the west and north of the house. We chose a small 240L fridge with freezer, insulated it with blankets and ducted cool air from under the house to ventilate the fridge coils. We have chosen a small water- and energy-efficient washing machine and use cold water only for washing. We compost all food scraps and keep chickens as pets, which provide us with eggs for cakes and pasta, and manure for our compost. We have made quilted curtains for most of our windows. Origin's Green Earth provides us with 100% Green Power, and our fuel-efficient car averages 5.5L to 100 km. Compact fluorescent lights are used throughout the house. We purchase foods with little or no packaging, with 98% of our diet being fresh vegetables, pulses and grains. We purchase organic vegetables and eat small quantities of meat, on average one meal a fortnight.
Behavioural: We switch off phantom power and lights in rooms that are not been used, and have five-minute showers or less. We share one car between two adults with no plans of ever buying a second. One adult rides to work three times a week and uses the bike to do shopping on most occasions, and we also use public transport.

Where have you saved the most energy?
We were using on average 5-6 kWh of electricity per day throughout the year after we implemented the simple actions listed above. We are now disappointingly using up to 8 kWh electricity per day in winter due to the purchase of an electric space heater for our daughter's room, which is south-facing and suffers from rising damp in the winter months. So for the moment we have increased our energy use in winter by about 2 kWh per day. The instantaneous gas-boosted solar hot water system has provided us with the biggest energy savings because we get six months of hot water without boosting.

What are your future plans to save energy?
We have big plans and they include:

• Increasing passive heating in our daughter's room so that we can do away with using the heater in winter or dramatically reduce its use by installing a large double-glazed skylight to catch northern sun, and by insulating the floorboards and the roof space of the whole house
• Replacing all of our aluminium-framed windows with double-glazed, wooden-framed windows
• Building a greenhouse on the north face of the house to increase passive heating and to create an airlock for the front door
• Insulating the south-facing laundry and bathroom with reverse brick veneer weatherboards, and installing a new clerestory roof line to increase passive heating and natural light to these two rooms (currently the laundry allows heaps of cold air into the kitchen whenever we use the door between these two spaces)
• Finish making quilted curtains for the remaining rooms and build pelmets on all the windows
• We aim to use no more than 5 kWh of electricity per day, which is the optimum to aim for if you want to install your own photovoltaic system

Why have you become Climate Positive?
Climate change scares us, and knowing that we are creating our own demise is demoralising. We know that we have a great capacity to live in a truly intelligent, compassionate and socially just way. We fend off scary climate change facts with the hope that these facts will inspire the global community to create more enriching and deeply meaningful lives. Becoming Climate Positive is one of the many ways that we can work towards this vision. It is also far cheaper than the financial burden imposed by climate change itself!

How do you think we, our leaders and the broader community should tackle Climate Change?

We: Get informed and inspired about sustainability! Creating a sustainable home is an exciting, rewarding and enriching experience. If you have children, then creating a sustainable home is also about designing a truly dynamic and engaging space for them, one that offers them a variety of experiences and a slice of the family's responsibilities, and helps them shape identity and resilience.

Our leaders:

• Increase investment in research and development for renewables, and for passive and bioclimatic architectural design.
• Legislate for 6-7 star ratings for all buildings.
• Introduce a carbon tax and set CO2 emission quotas for all buildings.
• Restructure our cities to be informed by bioregional frameworks and reclaim areas of urban land for organic farming using permaculture and agroforestry principles.
• Further pedestrianise cities and continue to develop a diverse and extensive network of safe commuting routes for cyclists.
• Support farmers to shift into sustainable farming practices and away from working for large multinationals.
• Many schools are introducing curricula which help students reconnect with nature. This is fantastic! Schools are taking part in kitchen garden projects to learn about sowing, harvesting and cooking, and children are taking part in river health and revegetation projects. I hope to see the school curricula become less and less abstract and for children to develop a healthy understanding between vocational study and education that helps us connect, contribute to and protect our ecological and social foundations.