A Federal Government report has suggesting setting up a system of ‘building passports’ to improve poor energy performance in the built environment.

The passports would compile and present property-related data and documentation to help plan and bolster energy performance.

The government-commissioned National Energy Efficiency Building Project (NEEBP) says there are “a very large number of concerns” around existing efficiency benchmarks, and called for investigation of areas of deficiency that damage energy performance.

The report claims many of these issues come down to building documentation, which it says is difficult to access and is restricted in its availability to consumers.

The NEEBP papers call for the creation of an electronic building passport, which would put building documentation in digital form, to serve as a record of the prior health and condition of a given property.

The authorities say passports would include all the information from the design and construction phase of a given building into a single source.

For energy-conscious consumers, the passports would create an efficient system for collating information in a convenient form, so that they easy judge the sustainability and energy performance of a given property.

Supporters say users could simply access a website to compare the quality of a wall or window insulation, or almost any other aspect, of a property.

Dr Wendy Miller, a senior research fellow from the Queensland University of Technology and major proponent of the passport system says that about 90 per cent of the relevant information is already available, and would only need to be collated properly.

Dr Miller is working on a trial passport system with the Townsville Council in Queensland, and hopes that the combination of building information and advanced spatial and digital mapping will allow an in-depth analysis of city-wide energy performance.