Building giant Fletcher Living says it has developed a home that produces seven times less carbon over its lifetime than a standard Kiwi house.
Its low-carbon home has achieved the highest possible climate-friendly rating for a residential house.
However, it is more expensive in the short term.
A regular three-bedroom home, with a lot of climate-friendly modification, is what saving the planet looks like.
"What does a home of the future need to look like that restricts global warming to 1.5C or less? That was the mission," Fletcher Living CEO Steve Evans told Newshub.
The walls and roof were constructed off-site, then assembled and made watertight in one day.
The driveway is eco-concrete, the power is solar, the water is recycled, and even some of the lawn has been replaced with less thirsty wildflowers.
Every detail has been designed to halve energy bills and reduce what's called "embodied carbon".
"Embodied carbon is the carbon created when we manufacture building materials like concrete, steel, glass, or even wood," Green Building Council's Andrew Eagles explained.
The Green Building Council has given it the highest possible sustainability rating.
But this is an expensive one-off which is 25 percent more than a standard home.
Mass production is hoped to bring that down but saving the planet has a premium.
"We think that's probably 5 to 10 percent greater, but when you look at it in terms of the operational savings over the life of the home, it's phenomenally cheaper," Evans said.
"And that's the message that we want to try and give."
New Zealand's built environment - roads, buildings and homes - generates about 20 percent of the country's carbon emissions.
With 35,000 houses built every year, the push is on to not only make them more sustainable but to convince Kiwis to buy them.
One suggestion is an energy performance certificate for each home - similar to those health stars on food and energy ratings on your new appliance.
"Almost all of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) have had this for decades, and we think that New Zealanders would benefit from it," Eagles said.
The Building Council believes we would also benefit from signing an international declaration to decarbonise the global building sector.
Seventy other countries have, but we haven't. So, what is the Government doing?
"Specifically, we want to encourage ways of building, that are replicable. We want to reduce the costs," Minister of Building and Construction Chris Penk told Newshub.
"We want to speed up the time frames, and we want to have a good quality product at the other end."
Fletchers said the industry has to do better - so it's made its eco-home plans public - so other builders can help reduce New Zealand's carbon count.
