November 2025: Silent Discos, SBN Glory & Government Impacts
November 25, 2025
The grass needs cutting again, the weeds are out in full force, and somehow… again… nezo found itself in the sustainability spotlight this month. Grass, trees, sustainability. It’s all very on-brand until you scroll down to the part where we talk about New Zealand’s recent climate decisions (spoiler: bring a paper bag to breathe into).
We’ve been demo’ing (not a real word), we’ve been building (very real), and we’ve even been award dancing — which our team should legally not be allowed to call “dancing.” But we’ll take the win.
👥 Team News
Let’s start here because we have a very small window where we’re allowed to be shamelessly proud of ourselves before “humble brag” becomes an accusation again.
Last month, we told you ηezo was nominated for the Disruptive Innovation Award at the NZ Sustainable Business Network Awards. We didn’t win (sad tiny violin), but we did walk away with a commendation, and honestly, it feels pretty massive.
Here’s why:
• Only two awards exist at SBN. (Already 98 fewer than the NZ Tech Awards. ;-))
• There were 109 finalists across all categories.
• The Built Environment was the biggest and toughest category (21 finalists, construction folks don’t play).
• Only one winner and six commendations.
• That places us in the top 5.5% of all the finalists.
Not bad for the weird little startup that started life as three people in a cold Christchurch room arguing about whether CLT was just chunky plywood or a whole new product.
What did the judges want? Game-changers. Disruptors. Fearless trailblazers. People resetting benchmarks and nudging the whole industry toward transformation.
That’s literally the ηezo job description. (We’re allowed one bragging sentence per quarter. This is it.)
We didn’t make the awards night, BD > awards, always, so we quietly celebrated in an Auckland airport lounge, where confused onlookers witnessed what can only be described as a silent disco choreographed by people with no sense of timing.
A huge thank you to our mate Gabriel James of Solarferm who accepted the commendation on our behalf and presumably danced better than we did.
You can see the category here:
☕ Out & About
It’s been a month of events, cancellations, Melbourne trams, and enough baked goods to qualify as a carbon sink.
1. ALCAS Young Leaders Scholarship
Our CTO, William Roberts, was awarded the Young Leaders Scholarship by ALCAS and thinkstep-anz ANZ to attend their international LCA conference in Melbourne. Three days. Global experts. Intense sessions on EPDs, carbon disclosure, supply chain transparency.
Plus the quote of the month: “We need better data and better tools.” – Tim Grant, ALCAS President.
We were, unsurprisingly, very happy to be the only platform in the room built explicitly to solve exactly that. Will came home, slightly sleep-deprived, and even more dangerous at dinner parties.
2. Morning Tea & Heritage Walk
Our new “field-trip demo” is officially a hit. This month, the team at Context Architecture joined us at the Christchurch Arts Centre, complete with backstage access to heritage areas the public never sees, and some frankly illegal levels of pastry from @grizzly. If you’re in Christchurch or Sydney and want a baked-goods-powered demo: 👉 info@nezo-app.com
3. Green Party Catch-Up
Barry met with MPs Julie Anne Genter & Scott Willis to talk about how ηezo can support public and private projects and fix the growing pain points caused by, how do we say this politely — policy turbulence. They immediately saw how ηezo fits into the bigger climate picture, and even agreed to help open doors in NSW. Great people. Great chat. Great to know we’re not the only ones worried about the direction of local policy.
⚙️ Features, Features, Feature
1. User Interface Refresh – Update
Will is moving at the speed of light and several coffees. The new UI has:
• a lighter, cleaner colour palette
• all V-Quest leftovers scrubbed out (if you find one, tell us — we’re hunting them like Easter eggs)
• a layout that no longer looks like it was designed during a power cut
The refreshed interface will drop just before Christmas. Yes, it’s early. Yes, you may open it.
2. NECO2, H1 & NABERS: New Features are nearly here
NECO2 is fully live.
H1 is almost wrapped.
NABERS Carbon is now good to go.
A data-rich trifecta for the holidays.
3. Material Database — User Console
This one’s big. No other carbon tool gives users this level of flexible, build-it-yourself control. This is ηezo’s biggest workflow unlock to date. The new User Console gives you:
• the ability to build your own material recipes
• complete control over cost, carbon, weight, naming and units
• instant use — no waiting on our specialists
• simplified naming conventions so you can actually find things
4. Mid-Rise Wood Free Tool
In partnership with MPI and the Mid-Rise Wood Construction programme, we’ve almost finished our free tool for early-stage carbon/cost/weight comparisons across structural systems. Launching December. Register your interest here — www.nezo-app.com/contact (just smash the Mid-rise button).
• Access to free frame analysis and easy to use carbon, cost and weight data
• Mass Timber pricing examples
• Pre-loaded building frame projects
• Benchmarked reference projects
• Zero cost
🏡 Superhome Movement
Ngā Whare Pārara + ηezo: A Partnership Built for the Future
December is shaping up to be a big month for the Superhome Movement, and we’re stoked to be right in the middle of it.
ηezo is officially the carbon and design-efficiency partner for Ngā Whare Pārara, Christchurch’s first carbon-neutral superhome development — and honestly, this partnership feels like one of those “finally, this is how the industry should work” moments.
Here’s what we’ve been doing behind the scenes:
• ηezo has been used throughout the design process to analyse cost + carbon for every major decision.
• The project team used our tool to test multiple frame types, insulation, cladding options, and material substitutions, all with live feedback.
• Every decision made on Ngā Whare Pārara was informed by real numbers, not gut feel or best guesses.
• The result? A pathway toward achievable net-zero-carbon outcomes without blowing budgets or compromising performance.
This is exactly what we built ηezo for — early-stage design where decisions have the biggest impact and where cost/carbon fights usually break out in meeting rooms. For Ngā Whare Pārara, we’ve helped ensure those fights never had to happen: the data spoke first. And now we get to share the results.
On December 5th and 6th, we’ll be at the Superhome Pop-up Tour & Expo, walking people through carbon basics, design-efficiency thinking, and the Ngā Whare Pārara development itself — including how ηezo supported everything from concept to construction.
You’ll get to see:
• the homes under construction
• designers, builders, and suppliers giving on-site talks (and us)
• the brand-new Superhome Design Guide in action
• and real proof that net-zero carbon doesn’t require magic, just good design and good data
If you’re in Christchurch, come along and get inspired:
More on Ngā Whare Pārara here:
This is what the future of building in Aotearoa should look like: beautiful homes + real performance + verified low carbon — powered by ηezo.
🧑💻 User News
If October felt busy, November laughed in our faces. The ηezo team has been in full demo mode across New Zealand, Australia, and, unexpectedly — Vietnam. At this point we’ve spent more time talking to architects than talking to our families.
We kicked the month off with the Mid-Rise Wood Construction free tool launch, which drew in over fifty attendees and one extremely interesting surprise guest: Adam Corrall from Vietnam’s Structure Architecture Wood Association (SAWA). Vietnam’s mass-timber scene is booming, their supply chain is scaling fast, and Adam immediately spotted the same issue we’ve seen everywhere else: tons of demand, massive ambition, and a giant data gap in early design.
His words, not ours: “ηezo solves the barrier we’ve been stuck behind.” Within a week we were already talking partnerships, localisation, and how we can help unlock early-stage analysis across a rapidly growing market. Keep an eye on this one — it escalated quickly.
Back home, our weekly live demos on LinkedIn have essentially become a recurring carbon matinee performance. Every Thursday at noon (NZT/AEST), we stream a new walkthrough to an audience that has now crossed 500 attendees in eight weeks. What started as simple tours has evolved into a hybrid carbon clinic, model comparison lab, therapy session, and spectator sport — jumping between Revit, SketchUp and ArchiCAD while we unpack NABERS carbon reporting, run LCAs on simple bulk and mass models, and attempt to answer the most unhinged questions from the comments section.
We’ve actually started to enjoy them, which is concerning. All past episodes live on our LinkedIn page if you want to binge-watch carbon content like it’s Netflix.
Past demo recordings here:
🌍 World News
Ah, Aotearoa New Zealand — home of the electric fence, commercial rockets, world-class wine, and now a national sport: dropping down the global climate rankings at speed, while hiding behind bluff and spin.
We’ve slipped from 34th in 2023 to 44th in 2025, thanks to a year of climate U-turns, policy bonfires, and YOLO-for-profit decision-making. And because timing is everything, New Zealand picked up “Fossil of the Day” at COP30 after weakening methane targets… again.
The kicker? That backslide now means we’ll need 26 million extra tonnes of offshore mitigation to hit our 2030 goal.
The CCPI, a respected index covering 64 nations, confirms we’re now trailing countries we used to politely judge. Meanwhile, our Climate Change Minister is at COP30 trying to defend all this with a straight face. Thoughts and prayers.
If you want the blow-by-blow, here are the stories behind the carnage:
While NZ reverse parks into climate irrelevance, the rest of the world appears to be… you know… doing stuff. Here’s a snapshot of what’s happening elsewhere:
• Top 7 Global Developments — Sustainability in construction is increasingly mandatory around the world, not optional. TruBuild
• Global heat-transition projects — Europe and the UK are accelerating efforts to ditch fossil-fuel heating. Reuters
• Philippines pushes green offices — NEO Office PH is shifting its portfolio toward low-carbon operations. BusinessWorld
• Green skills shortage — A LinkedIn report shows demand for sustainability talent far exceeds supply, especially in construction. Construction Digital
• KEDGE Construction in Taiwan — Swapped out wood formwork for aluminium, cutting ~815 tCO₂e per project. Macau Business
• Urban Transformation Summit 2025 — 300+ global leaders aligning on sustainable built environment strategies. World Economic Forum
🪶 Closing Thoughts
And that’s November wrapped: silent discos in airports, commendations from national awards, global demo tours, baked-goods sales strategies, and another round of climate policy whiplash from Wellington.
We’re still building, learning, shipping features, meeting incredible people, and trying not to listen to the noise.
Keep sketching. Keep questioning, every single material.
And please: don’t be a prick to the planet.
— The 🦘 + 🥝 ηezo crew