In the Red Centre's Hidden Valley, traditional owner Benedict Stevens is proud to call his late grandmother's 1970s house his home.
But this home wasn't built with insulation, heating, and cooling in mind.
"The cold gets to about 0 degrees Celsius in winter, and during summer it goes up to about 45 degrees," Mr Stevens told The Drum.
Power cut off weekly
Mr Stevens lives in Ewyenper-Atwatye, also known as Hidden Valley, one of the Aboriginal town camps that dot the edges of Alice Springs.
The evaporative air conditioner helps but he has had to restrict the number of visitors to his home because of the rising cost of electricity.
"Some families like the heater on all night and that's how the power gets cut off," Mr Stevens said.
In these Aboriginal communities people prepay for power, but Mr Stevens says his disconnects almost every week.
Analysis of 3,300 homes across 28 remote communities found homes had a one-in-11 chance of disconnecting on hot days, and a one-in-six chance on cool days.
Electricity crucial for survival
Mr Stevens is also the Director of the Tangentyere Council, which supports and advocates on behalf of the town camp communities.
"Some of the residents here are renal patients and some of them need the power on for their oxygen and to keep their medications," he said.
"All your food needs to be chucked out the next couple of days and you have to start preparing it again."
The town camps are just one example of how energy efficiency is being considered across the Northern Territory's Aboriginal communities.
Tangentyere Council is connecting PV solar panels to prepayment systems on its community centres within the town camps to show how they could work to individually secure energy for residents.
Energy efficient housing is the way forward
The NT Government is funding 64 new houses in the town camps and is demolishing 30 of the older ones considered beyond 'economic repair'.
New houses in the NT only require a 5-star rating, while the rest of the country has a 6-star rating prescribed by the National Construction Code (NCC) — which is 24 per cent more energy efficient for heating and cooling.
An NT Government spokesperson says for remote communities and town camps "all homes have been designed to maximise local climatic conditions exceeding minimum energy efficiency requirements".
It said there was an average rating of 6.4 stars being achieved, with some remote community housing dwellings achieving a rating of more than 7 stars – but in Alice Springs town camps new homes average 5.3 stars.
The Tangentyere Social Policy Manager, Michael Klerck, says the new homes are a positive step, with a subsidiary of the organisation taking on some contracts.
But he says increased energy efficiency needs to be a major consideration of contractual arrangements across remote housing, especially as temperatures frequently reach 35 degrees or more over the year.
"In 2018 to 2019, for example, there were 59 days over 40 degrees and there was 129 days over 35 degrees," he said.
Residents unprepared for climate change
A 2021 Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute (AHURI) report shows that current Indigenous housing stock "is unable to provide consistently healthy and comfortable indoor environments".
The report also found that without major refurbishments any retrofitting gains would be short-lived.
Mr Klerck says he is a "little more optimistic" for the town camps, but funding is needed to address the retrofitting of existing houses.
"In practice that means verandas, insulating or cladding the blockwork walls, improved insulation in the ceiling, ideally PV solar panels on the roofs," Mr Klerck explained.
State, territory and federal building ministers will consider changes for energy efficiency to the National Construction Code (NCC) tomorrow.
Ahead of the meeting there have been calls from health, property, and climate groups to accept a greater standard of energy efficiency that they say could reduce the power bills by hundreds of dollars a year per household.
The Australian Institute of Architects supports the introduction of stronger and nationally consistent energy efficiency and accessibility standards for new homes in the 2022 edition of the NCC.
The Executive Director of the organisation's Northern Territory chapter, Raquel Nicholls-Skene, says they need to ensure all Territorians have access to healthy and comfortable homes.
"With the real threat of extreme temperatures and with the cost of living, it is more important now to act to adopt the highest energy efficient standards," she says.
"The minimum thermal performance standard should be aiming for 7 stars in all houses."
The NT Department of Infrastructure, Planning and Logistics said "any change to the NCC will be considered in the context of the Northern Territory and adequately examined before adoption".
