ValAi and the Energy Efficiency Data Gap: Why Australian Proptech Is Turning to Decarbonisation

Australia's proptech sector has spent much of the past decade improving the mechanics of buying, selling and managing property. A newer cohort is working on something harder to measure but arguably more consequential: the environmental performance of the housing stock itself, and whether that performance is reflected in what a home is worth.

ValAi, co-founded by chief executive Allys Todd and property valuer Tom Reed, sits squarely in this category. Interviewed by Kylie Davis on The Proptech Podcast, Todd outlined how the company uses machine learning and what she calls "novel data" to give banks, insurers, valuers and homeowners a shared view of a property's energy efficiency, carbon profile and climate risk.

A structural gap between value and performance

Todd cited figures showing 78 per cent of homes standing in Australia today were built before energy rating standards existed, meaning most of the country's residential assets carry no energy efficiency score at all. Davis noted that the large majority of existing stock rates only around two stars against an expected seven. Todd put the share of Australia's total carbon emissions attributable to homes and residential assets at 19 per cent, a figure new construction alone cannot address.

"When it comes to our transforming and decarbonising of Australia and our transition economy, it doesn't make sense for us to look to bulldoze and build new everywhere," Todd told the podcast. "That's simply not feasible. What we do need to be doing is looking at doing some uplift to those homes to ensure they're liveable into the future."

That framing, retrofit rather than replacement, is becoming a defining assumption of the category, and it creates a data problem proptech is well placed to solve.

Origins in the valuation profession

ValAi's origin story is unusual in beginning inside the valuation industry. Reed worked as a valuer providing market value and detailed assessments to banks and insurers, and identified a gap: the institutions seeking data insights had little visibility of sustainability and energy efficiency metrics, which in Australia are still not linked to the market value of residential homes. Tutoring at a university, he also observed that property and valuation graduates were entering the profession without considering sustainability, and that carbon footprinting of homes was not taught at that level.

Todd's background is in climate impact and earth sciences, with many years in sustainability policy. Her interest was in embedding energy efficiency metrics into the economic system, work requiring engagement not only with government but with the banks and insurers whose net zero commitments depend on the assets on their books.

How the product works

ValAi is primarily a business-to-business company. Banks and insurers are its customers, and its technology is delivered either as a white-label product inside an existing banking or insurance app, or as a platform used by in-home assessors, real estate agents and valuation professionals.

Underneath sits a free self-assessment tool marketed to consumers through a second brand, Home Efficiency Australia. The Digital Home Health Check takes three to five minutes: a user searches their property and adds detail about the inside of the home, which ValAi validates against data on climatic zone, location aspect and open aerial imagery of the property.

The output includes an energy efficiency score, current market value, a sustainability rating similar to the NatHERS rating, and a carbon footprint profile, benchmarked against other Australian households. A recommendation engine then ranks the upgrades most likely to lift those scores, with return-on-investment data and information on rebates and incentives.

"Look at the 25 things you could be doing, based on the data on your exact home, these are the best things that you should start with to start your decarbonisation journey," Todd said of the platform's role.

The interface was built with support from Amazon's Innovation Advisory Service, and ValAi won the Global Open Finance Challenge, which gave the team a sandbox of data sets from five global banks to test how novel data could incentivise action. Todd defines novel data as in-home information not available through open source data sets, the liveability and wellbeing detail that changes with the occupants, their habits and their lifestyle, even between identical houses on the same street.

ValAi is already working with a well-known Victorian insurer, whose in-home assessors deploy the product while on site.

Implications for the Australian market

The most instructive part of the conversation for the wider sector was Todd's argument about where behaviour change originates. Metrics produced for board reports and mandatory disclosures are necessary, but insufficient.

"It is one thing for us to be collecting this data for board reports," she said. "It is another thing to be able to be using this for environmental and behaviour change in order to trigger those actions we need to do."

That points to the top-down and bottom-up adoption model Davis identified as a genuine trend: proptechs targeting valuers, insurers and banks, then using their capital and customer relationships to drive consumer adoption, incentives as the carrot, rising costs for traditional energy use as the stick.

Todd drew a comparison with commercial real estate, where NABERS ratings and digital twins have long informed decisions and regulation has driven uptake. Residential has no equivalent. Valuation currently omits essential information, she argued, including what it costs to live in a home rather than simply to finance it, which will matter more as cost-of-living pressure intensifies. Where uplift has occurred, homes retaining character features while achieving good energy efficiency ratings attract 5 to 10 per cent more return on saleability. She also cited work with the World Energy Council and reinsurer Munich Re, noting forecasts that many homes may become stranded assets or uninsurable.

Equity is central to how she frames the opportunity: ValAi's mission, she said, is that no home is left behind, and the uplift cannot be limited to the minority who can afford a purpose-built eco home.

Notably, she welcomed competition. "If we didn't have any competitors, you would be questioning whether this is a real go-to-market option for a startup," she said, adding that no single solution suits all Australian properties.

What is next

ValAi has been operating for two and a half years. Investment capital allowed the team to grow from two people to five, supported by five to seven interns at any one time. Based in Adelaide and Sydney with staff in Melbourne and Brisbane, the company is a member of 1% for the Planet, is carbon neutral and was working through Climate Active certification at the time of recording, with gender equity a stated focus.

Its central target is one million Australian homes, a three to five-year journey. Lifting those properties from two or three stars to six or seven, Todd said, could deliver up to $825 million in energy bill savings for Australian consumers. Beyond that, international expansion is on the horizon, with the United States of particular interest given its policy settings and comparable housing stock. A subscription product for real estate agents, individually or as agency team plans, is already in market.

Todd's outlook, drawn partly from attending COP27 in Egypt, was cautiously optimistic: capital and serious intent exist, and the missing ingredient is household participation.

The takeaway for the sector

ValAi's story signals three developments worth watching. Energy efficiency data is moving from a compliance exercise toward a driver of valuation and consumer behaviour. Institutional distribution through banks and insurers is emerging as a credible route to adoption in a category where direct-to-consumer engagement is difficult. And the retrofit market, rather than new construction, is where the commercial and environmental opportunity in Australian housing is concentrated.

This article is based on an interview with Allys Todd of ValAi on The Proptech Podcast, hosted by Kylie Davis. Listen to the full episode in the player above. For Kylie’s own take on the conversation, read her deep dive on Proptech Gurus.