By Lynne Blundell The Senate has rejected the Efficient Building Scheme proposed by Lend Lease and WSP Lincolne Scott. The Property Council’s Peter Verwer has lambasted the scheme and has pinned the PCA strategy for sustainable building upgrades on accelerated depreciation, despite doubts that it will be effective. The Senate’s rejection yesterday ...Read More > >

By Tina Perinotto NABERS, the environmental rating system that today measures the performance of about half of Australia’s CBD office space is under review - and the property industry has been promised full consultation. 11 March 2010 - For many people NABERS, the performance rating tool managed by the NSW Government, is ...Read More > >

by Nicola Woodward - FAVOURITES - 21 April 2009 - Accelerated Depreciation is a core platform of the property industry as a way to green buildings – but there are major flaws in this approach and better ways to achieve the desired outcomes…. “Green depreciation” is a term that has recently been ...Read More > >

By Tina Perinotto 16 March 2010 - Ranked in the top quartile for climate change leadership and best practice in the latest Climate Institute survey are - in alphabetical order - AustralianSuper, Cbus, Christian Super, HESTA, HOSTPLUS, Local Government Super, NGS Super and Vision Super. The news is not so good ...Read More > >

By Tina Perinotto 17 March 2010 - Australians could be on the cusp of “getting it” in terms of downsizing their houses to more sustainable and affordable levels, if you take note of Stockland chief executive Matthew Quinn. Mr Quinn, who heads Australia’s biggest residential developer, said the evidence was coming through ...Read More > >

By Tina Perinotto COMMENT 18 March 2010 - “What we have here is failure to deliver,” the surly prison guard in the mirror glasses might have said in Cool Hand Luke. The NSW Government deserves to be locked up. It has failed to deliver the credible long term planning which is the fundamental ...Read More > >

Landcom's Precinx tool is a winner By Tina Perinotto In the sustainability revolution, things are getting serious. You can tell by  the  number of  ratings tools that are under way. It’s as if the time for talk and promises and green bling are over and the industry wants “real measures” for “real ...Read More > >

By Lynne Blundell After weeks of controversy over its green schemes, The Federal Government recently announced changes to the Renewable Energy Target, the most positive sign yet that it might be serious about promoting investment in the renewable energy sector. But then last week the NSW government announced expansion of two coal-fired ...Read More > >

REPORT- 3 March 2010 - The Global Financial Crisis has sharpened the appetite of investors for sustainable property and driven a new interest in slashing outgoings, according to a new survey from Jones Lang LaSalle. Even more impressive was that 100 per cent of all investors surveyed recognised that sustainability issues ...Read More > >

By Tina Perinotto Five years after Cbus Property signed up Insurance Australian Group and other tenants to pay about $10 million in extra costs so their new premises at 181 William Street in Melbourne’s CBD would be a 5 Star Green Star building the property industry is still asking does “green” ...Read More > >

by Lynne Blundell The push for urgent action was palpable at Green Cities 2010. It was there in the conference sessions, in calls to remove regulatory barriers preventing the uptake of renewable energy and in the drive to get hard data on green building performance. And it was definitely there in conversations ...Read More > >

By Tina Perinotto 25 February 2010 - Mandatory Disclosure, expected to take effect later this year was likely to be delayed, delegates at Green Cities 2010 conference heard this week, as a  string of accusations of bad management and program cancellations continue to beset the Federal Government agenda to green the ...Read More > >

BRIEF - 25 February 2010 - UK environmental consultancy SLR Management Ltd has paid $18 million to acquire Heggies Pty Ltd, an Australian environmental consultancy to clients in the infrastructure, natural resource and land development sectors. Heggies has 130 employees in eight offices across Australia and one in Singapore. It ...Read More > >

25 February 2010: If you are confused about the difference between a Green Star rating for buildings and a NABERS rating, you are not alone. One rates the design of a building - the Green Star - and other rates the performance - NABERS - so the numbers of stars ...Read More > >

21 February 2010 - While architects, engineers and developers are learning the “green” game, so too are Australia’s blue collar construction workers. And at the forefront of change will be plumbers who deliver the majority of energy consumed in buildings. According to the Green Building Council of Australia major re-training is ...Read More > >

From the ABC - 19 February 2010- Federal Environment Minister Peter Garrett is scrapping the Government's troubled $2.5 billion home insulation program and the solar hot water program. Mr Garrett says the initiatives will be shut down at close of business today and will be replaced by a renewable energy bonus ...Read More > >

- 4 February 2010 - It’s hard to go past Matthew Wright’s article in the Sydney Morning Herald this week for a definitive look at the world’s solar race. And guess where Australia is coming, Mr Rudd? Following is an introduction and link: Renewable energy is the fastest growing power ...Read More > >

REPORTS - 3 February 2010 - Following is a second extract from  ASX-Listed Office Trusts: Does "Green" Pay? a definitive new study of green buildings by Citigroup Global Markets’ Elaine Prior and Felipe Faria, with Adrian Dark, Laurence Parisi and Jackie Tin. See Part I -Studies Into "Does Green Pay?" In theory, ...Read More > >

BRIEF - INVESTMENT - 4 February 2010- THE Property Council's latest Office Market Report showed all is still not well on the office investment front, as vacancy increased from 8.3 percent to 9.3 per cent in the half-year to January 2010, “the highest since January 2005,” the PCA said. PCA ...Read More > >

- REPORT - 2 February 2010 -In one of the most definitive and widely discussed reports on green buildings in recent years, Citigroup Global Markets last month produced a rare insight into the motivations and impacts of sustainable property from the viewpoint of five leading property companies : Commonwealth Office ...Read More > >

by Lynne Blundell FAVOURITES - 15 July 2010 - Amanda McCluskey is a woman on the move – literally. When she did this interview with The Fifth Estate she was walking between engagements, on her way to an international corporate governance forum, and later attending a forum on the United Nations ...Read More > >

By Tina Perinotto - FAVOURITES: 6 April 2010 -Property owners can raise their NABERS energy rating to 4 stars  by better management practices and no major capital investment, the Warren Centre for Advanced Engineering at Sydney University has found in its Low Energy High Rise Building Research Report. The project, which called ...Read More > >

BRIEF: 1 December 2009 - Clean Up Australia Chairman and Founder Ian Kiernan yesterday (10 December 2009) joined Auburn and Parramatta City Councils on Sydney’s west for the launch of Streamline, a new sustainability initiative targeting the business community. The collaboration between the two councils has already engaged 45 business that ...Read More > >

SURVEY - 2 December, 2009: Sustainability is a major issue for the property industry but few truly understand the impact of potential changes to government policy, according to a recent survey. Delegates surveyed at the Australian Property Institute and the Australian Direct Property Investment Association conference in Sydney last month ...Read More > >

By Philip Pollard Chapter 2 A collaborative approach to delivering the built environment –Design and Art Gallery precinct Philip Pollard’s Phd thesis, Campus as Place, on the transformation of the University of Newcastle into one of the world’s leading sustainability exemplars, is a rare insight into the enormous complexities – human ...Read More > >

By Tina Perinotto Here comes more proof that green buildings make sense - dollars and sense in fact. This time a study by the University of San Diego and CB Richard Ellis Group, found that tenants in green buildings experience increased productivity and fewer sick days, and that green buildings have ...Read More > >

Brief - 23 November 2009 - Minerals Corporation has received its first commercial sales order for its low carbon cement that the company claims reduces carbon emissions by 80 per cent from international building materials company CRH plc. Minerals Corporation claims its technology is “revolutionary” given that cement production is the ...Read More > >

By Lynne Blundell 19 November 2009 -The inaugural conference on Profitable Sustainability in Property, held in Sydney last week, brought together the pointy end of the property industry – decision makers and those with financial influence from valuers to developers, engineers to bureaucrats –all keen to hear whether or not green ...Read More > >

By Lynne Blundell 19 November 2009 - So you own a building. What if you could get investment returns of 23 per cent on retrofitting it without having to invest any of your own money? And get an energy star rating at the same time. Sound too good to be true? Well ...Read More > >

SURVEY: 1 December 2009 - Sustainability remains a key agenda item for CRE and for many it’s becoming a personal imperative, according to the third annual CoreNet Global and Jones Lang LaSalle sustainability survey released today. Figures from the latest survey, conducted in September and October, showed that 70 per cent ...Read More > >