We will keep readers informed as to what, if anything, DCCEEW is doing in response to our generous offer to save the Department both money and time and their response to our formal submission just lodged with their Procurement division. Meanwhile, for the full story to date, read here; and readers can access a free sample file for themselves here.
On Tuesday 13 May, the ‘caretaker’ arrangements for the election formally ended with the swearing in of the new ministry (see below). Exemplary Energy will now pursue this matter on several fronts in a continuing effort to eliminate this waste of public funds and bring appropriate competitive procedures to this routine but exacting task.
18 August 2025
On 18 August, in response to a query from the Hon. Josh Wilson MP, Assistant Minister for Climate Change and Energy, DCCEEW has responded with the straight bureaucratic dead bat of advising me of the formal complaints channels of the Department of Finance Procurement Coordinator and the Commonwealth Ombudsman. We will, of course, use those channels if DCCEEW’s stance remains so self-absolving; but we remain hopeful that an enquiry from the Shadow Minister might elicit more integritous administration in a shorter time frame.
Accordingly, we have now notified Shadow Minister for Energy and Emissions Reduction, the Hon. Dan Tehan MP, of this gross waste and failure of internal process.
13 May 2025
We wrote again to the Deputy Secretary Procurement on 16 May setting out the deep flaws in the formal reply but have still received no response in the subsequent months. Accordingly, we have raised the wasteful and delaying decisions made by the NatHERS team with Assistant Minister for Climate Change and Energy, Josh Wilson, and to Minister Chris Bowen as a courtesy. As well as placing DCCEEW’s apparent mal-administration on the public record with several journalists with known interests in the field, we have advised Senator Barbara Pocock (Greens, SA) who regularly holds departmental secretaries to account for waste under their control. We have also advised Senator David Pocock (Independent, ACT, no relation) because of its negative parochial impact.
If the DCCEEW silence continues, we will also notify Shadow Minister for Energy and Emissions Reduction, Dan Tehan, early next week.
8 April 2025
Exemplary Energy lodged a formal complaint with the DCCEEW Deputy Secretary responsible for procurement setting out how its NatHERS team has apparently disregarded the public interest by adopting an invalid rationale and procedure:
Limited Tender Condition: 10.3.e. Additional deliveries by original supplier intended as replacement parts, extensions, or continuation for existing goods or services for compatibility.
Our submission challenged that claim on two grounds:
- NIWA (see under 23 March) does not qualify as the “original supplier” as required by the condition, but rather is merely the “immediate past supplier”. The original development of these files was conducted by CSIRO and the Bureau of Meteorology in the 1980s and there have been many updates since then.
- The cited condition pertaining to “replacement parts, extensions, or continuation for existing goods or services for compatibility” is inapplicable in this case. The file format in question has remained a published standard since its original development, requiring no special compatibility considerations.
We then pointed out our long-standing unconditional offer and the negative outcomes that naturally flowed from its apparent dismissal:
We had already completed the required work as of September last year and offered to supply the data to DCCEEW at no cost. We also made that unconditional offer public (citing the second article in ‘Exemplary Advances’ of September 2025) and promoted the purchase of these climate files through our sales portal for $100 + GST per location. Clearly this makes it possible for anyone to fulfil this subsequent contract of concern for under $7,000. Had your department taken up our offer of the free files, it would have:
- Saved considerable public expenditure; and
- Promptly replaced the outdated NatHERS climate files, which have been propagating misleading design guidance throughout the housing industry based on decade-old data (notably excluding Australia’s warmest decade on record).
Our submission closed with our recommendation and request that the contract be cancelled to avoid any further waste of public resources and confirmed to DCCEEW that:
Our unconditional offer to provide these files at no charge remains valid.
We will advise readers of the progress or the outcome of this submission in future editions of ‘Exemplary Advances’.
23 March 2025
We received a reply to our email of 4 March the key part of which comprised this advice:
“In accordance with the Commonwealth Procurement Rules, the department conducted a limited tender process for the purposes of updating the Representative Meteorological Year (RMY) climate files up to the end of 2023. The outcome for the climate file procurement has been published on Austender: https://www.tenders.gov.au/Cn/Show/d3a0e47f-c5c0-40cd-98db-7a18fcaae703.”
This led us to Contract Notice View – ‘CN4126887‘ which revealed that the ‘Limited Tender’ had been let to the New Zealand company National Institute of Water & Atmospheric Research Ltd (NIWA) for AUD $116,375.00 with the purported rationale being given as Limited Tender Condition: 10.3.e (see above under 8 April 2025).
4 March 2025
As the most senior officer included in this email thread, I presume that you take responsibility for Leonie’s silence for over three months now. I can understand that DCCEEW may not want to be candid with us; but we believe that blunt silence is counter-productive to progress with the reforming of the NatHERS climate files. We believe that reform is urgent for NatHERS processes and protocols to contain the damage that it is doing to the energy and comfort improvements in the residential sector; and to the good work that your division is generally undertaking.
We will, of course, include this advice (or DCCEEW’s ongoing silence) in the next edition of ‘Exemplary Advances’ planned for dissemination early next week.”
3 February 2025
We have not been graced with a reply in over two months now. Please advise us now what DCCEEW has done, or intends to do, to solve the problem of old NatHERS climate data skewing the guidance given designers through the energy rating process toward building approval of dwellings. Generally, designs are being tuned to cooler times which no-one expects to see again for a century or more. We will, of course, include this advice (or your ongoing silence) in the next edition of ‘Exemplary Advances’ planned for dissemination early next week.
29 November 2024
We are keen to know that DCCEEW’s ‘final decision’ is with regard to this update. Our target dissemination date for our December “Exemplary Advances” is the end of next week, although it may slip to the following Monday because of our focus on the Asia Pacific Solar Research Conference in Sydney 3-5 December (APSRC). One of our presentations there “Enhancing Australia’s Weather and Climate Data for Energy System and Weather-proofing Simulations” could also be enhanced by news of DCCEEW’s intentions and/or actions. I attach that peer-reviewed extended abstract for your information. Perhaps you could convene the NatHERS TAC to consider this issue along with any others that have arisen since its last meeting.
In reaching your decision, you might also be paying attention to recent relevant research such as “Machine learning suggests climate and seasonal definitions should change under global warming” here. Because of its reference to the potential utility of Machine Learning, I have also attached for your team’s attention, another peer-reviewed presentation to the APSRC called “Disaggregating Daily Precipitation Data 1990 to 2022 into Half-Hourly Intervals Using LSTM Models” relating our use of Machine Learning to enhance precipitation data between 1990 and when each location first began to employ tipping-bucket rain gauge recording.
We confirm that our offer to gift the current files to DCCEEW for use in the updated NatHERS rating software remains current. And we look forward to your advice on what DCCEEW intends to do (or is doing) to keep the NatHERS software providing sound and currently relevant advice and design signals to the housing industry.
7 November 2024
We are keen to know what DCCEEW’s ‘final decision’ is with regard to this update. Our target dissemination date for our December “Exemplary Advances” is the end of next week, although it may slip to the following Monday because of our focus on the Asia Pacific Solar Research Conference in Sydney 3-5 December (APSRC). One of our presentations there “Enhancing Australia’s Weather and Climate Data for Energy System and Weather-proofing Simulations” could also be enhanced by news of DCCEEW’s intentions and/or actions. I attach that peer-reviewed extended abstract for your information. Perhaps you could convene the NatHERS TAC (Technical Advisory Committee) to consider this issue along with any others that have arisen since its last meeting.
In reaching your decision, you might also be paying attention to recent relevant research such as “Machine learning suggests climate and seasonal definitions should change under global warming” here. Because of its reference to the potential utility of Machine Learning, I have also attached for your team’s attention, another peer-reviewed presentation to the APSRC called “Disaggregating Daily Precipitation Data 1990 to 2022 into Half-Hourly Intervals Using LSTM Models” relating our use of Machine Learning to enhance precipitation data between 1990 and when each location first began to employ tipping-bucket rain gauge recording (now accessible here).
We confirm that our offer to gift the current files to DCCEEW for use in the updated NatHERS rating software remains current. And we look forward to your advice on what DCCEEW intends to do (or is doing) to keep the NatHERS software providing sound and currently relevant advice and design signals to the housing industry.
In 2024 August edition of Exemplary Advances, under the heading “60 New 34-Year Weather and Climate Data Sets now Available” where we were continuing our ongoing reporting of progress on our latest climate file production process, we also announced our offer to assist with the updating of NatHERS by providing our current climate files for their 69 climate zones (locations) and their 4 proposed additional sites as well. Here again is what we wrote.
“Given the seriously outdated climate files currently in use in NatHERS (and the corollary use of the same ‘climate’ in non-residential simulations) misleading designers and regulators alike, Exemplary Energy has recently offered to donate to the Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water (DCCEEW) a full set of current climate files for use in any future update of those effectively mandated-by-regulation data sets.”
In response to a query from a team member of the NatHERS Administrator indicating that an update was desired, our offer was made formally on 4 September under the heading “Provision of Current Climate Files for NatHERS – Gratis” setting out our peer-reviewed expertise, our transparency of process and track record and allowing the NatHERS Administrator to select the time line for the input weather data and recommending our initiative of using only the last 15 years to best be indicative of the climate now. Given the cost saving and program acceleration that we were offering, we were disappointed by an initial rejection of our proposal and the stated intention to begin again with the process they have used in the past.
It turns out that this was last done in 2020 when New Zealand’s National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research Ltd (NIWA) using weather data to the end of 2019 but for some reason this work never found its way into the NatHERS software. Perhaps it was difficult to convince the Ministry of the Morrison Government that the climate was actually changing and that designing dwellings for past climate patterns would be skewing designs against the climates in which those buildings would actually operate, defeating the purpose for which the NatHERS scheme was developed.
Some negotiation has followed that initial rejection and at this stage, the latest we can report is the statement from DCCEEW’s Energy Performance and Security Division | Home Ratings and Disclosure Branch | NatHERS Tools and Technical Section on 4 September is:
“At this stage, the Department has not made a final decision to procure the necessary climate file updates but … any decision to do so will be undertaken strictly in accordance with the Commonwealth Procurement Rules established under the Public Governance, Performance and Accountability Act 2013.”
Accordingly, we have now notified Shadow Minister for Energy and Emissions Reduction, the Hon. Dan Tehan MP, of this gross waste and failure of internal process.
Mr. Tehan’s office has expressed interest in this matter and will be exploring it further, now that the Coalition’s downplayed attitude to emissions reductions has been settled. They remain committed to eliminating government waste.
The likely interest of the Australian National Audit Office (ANAO) and/or the National Anti-Corruption Commission (NACC) has also recently been raised with the Department and the Assistant Minister for Climate Change and Energy, Hon. Josh Wilson MP.
So far, DCCEEW has not advised us of any progress in updating the NatHERS climate files. We will update this situation in the next edition of “Exemplary Advances”.
