By Tina Perinotto 16 May 2012 – The Association of Building Sustainability Assessors says the move to more efficient housing has taken another step backwards with the decision by the new conservative Queensland Government to scrap the Home Sustainability Declaration on energy efficiency. Read More  
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By Michael Paton 16 May 2012 – Fengshui, literally wind and water, is generally understood in the property sector in Australia to be a Chinese superstition used for the selection of sites for residences and businesses in terms of their auspiciousness. Read More  
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By Lyn Drummond 15 May 2012 – A refrigerant black market could be among the dramatic outcomes of a steep carbon equivalent levy due to be imposed by the federal government after 1 July, according to the Australian Institute of Refrigeration Air Conditioning and Heating. In concerns raised by the institute with the federal government chief executive officer Phil Wilkinson said the levy’s price impact across the main refrigerant gases would range between 300 and 500 per cent at the point of import. Read More  
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16 May 2012 – Parramatta Lord Mayor, Lorraine Wearne today (Wednesday) announced a feasibility study into a western Sydney light rail network with tenders expected to be selected in July. Ms Wearne, speaking at the Parramatta Economic Development Forum Read More  
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By Monique Alfris 17 May 2012 – This year is the UN’s International Year of Sustainable Energy for All). The focus is on providing energy access to the 2.7 billion people worldwide who still rely on traditional biomass for cooking and heating, and the 1.4 billion who have no access to electricity. Read More  
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By Matt Mushalik 15 May 2012 – Are recent news reports of impending gas shortages in NSW genuine or a way to soften up opposition to coal seam gas development, asks Matt Mushalik, a specialist observer of energy trends. Australia, wanting to project itself as the energy super power faces domestic gas shortages in its premier state, NSW. This is what the public is made aware of in articles in The Sydney Morning Herald titled “Gas supply to dwindle in the next 2 years” and “AGL warns of shortage as Gladstone sucks up supply”. Is this just a strategy to soften up the opposition to coal seam gas development or is there really something more serious behind this news? We read: Read More  
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14 May 2012 – The City of Sydney has appointed Origin Energy to be lead contractor on a major overhaul of its 45 properties to make them more energy and water efficient, ahead of the rollout of the city’s trigeneration network, also by Origin. Read More  
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11 May 2012 – Following is the text of an open letter sent to  Greg Combet, Minister for Climate Change & Energy Efficiency, from Australian Sustainable Built Environment Council president Tom Roper, sent Wednesday, 9 May 2012. Dear Minister Combet, I write to you, both in sorrow and in anger, at the Government’s action in breaking its key election promise on Tax Breaks for Green Buildings. Many of our members have already contacted us, concerned at what this broken promise means for future government/industry relations. You will remember Read More  
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On sentiment, follow the leader (not) …and a birthday note from TFE 11 May 2012 –It’s tough but we’re really busy. We’ve heard that comment about Sydney, oh maybe 10 times now… BIS Shrapnel’s Frank Gelber, speaking at the Property Funds Association conference on the Gold Coast last week nailed this curious and amusing attitude of Sydneysiders: ” Sydney investors know Sydney will never recover ever again…” Read More  
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11 May 2012 – The Property Funds Association conference at Sanctuary Cove on the Gold Coast last week provided a bird’s eye view of how hard the challenge is for owners of secondary properties to engage in energy retrofits. PFA president, Rob Olde asked where all the money had gone. Property would come back, but for many in the industry it was currently a waiting game, he said. Read More  
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By Tina Perinotto 11 May 2012 – Tony Crabb, national head of research for Savills, taps into regular six weekly meetings with the Reserve Bank, and recently with demographer Bernard Salt and Paul Keating for some of his insights. A key feature of the economy right now, said Crabb, speaking at the Property Funds Association conference at Sanctuary Cove on the Gold Coast last week, is the trailing Read More  
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By Tina Perinotto 10 May 2012 – Australian Greens Leader  Christine Milne has jumped to support the sustainable property industry declaring she will challenge the federal government on its axing of the $1 billion Tax Breaks for Green Buildings program. The sustainable and mainstream property industry and energy efficiency associations in unison have slammed the action Read More  
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By Tina Perinotto 11 May 2012 – Low Carbon Australia Ltd chief executive Meg McDonald told the Property Funds Association annual conference at Sanctuary Cove on the Gold Coast last week that the multiple pressures facing owners of property right now made this an ideal time to consider sustainable retrofits that would help the bottom line. In a presentation that also included views from Eureka Funds Management Niall McCarthy and Harvest Property’s Chris Slack, McDonald Read More  
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By Tina Perinotto 11 May 2012 – Frank Gelber of BIS Shrapnel told the Property Funds Association conference on the Gold Coast last week that other than mining, the country is “pretty well in recession.” Property was “bumping around the bottom and trying to come off the bottom, and the investment industry just isn’t out there.” The corollary was that this is precisely the time to invest. Read More  
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2012 federal budget coverage 9 May 2012 –[Updated 10.26 am and 11.23] Well, they axed the $1 billion  Tax Breaks for Green Buildings program in last night’s federal budget, amid a few scraps for sustainability and casual redirection to the Clean Energy Finance package.  We were warned early last week. The Property Council chief executive Peter Verwer was scathing. The axing of the Tax Breaks was sending a valuable program that could leverage $7 billion of investment to the “policy knackery,” he said. The PCA would ask The Greens to step in and try to reverse this “short sighted decision.” Tom Roper, president of the Australian Sustainable Built Environment Council and chair of the industry roundtable convened to  redesign of the program was also furious. Read More  
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By Lisa Curtis 9 May 2012 - From Grist: I believe in climate change. I ride my bike everywhere, I work at a solar company, I buy organic and local when I can. I am young, liberal, and idealistic. But I’m not an environmentalist. And I’m not alone. Over the past decade, the number of Americans who support the environmental movement has declined, with supporters increasingly split along partisan lines. Read More  
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9 May 2012 - Queensland planning projects swept the field  at the 2012 Planning Institute of Australia Awards for Planning Excellence in Adelaide on 1 May winning eight of the 12 awards. Read More  
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8 May 2012 – Walmart has been fooling its green customers and swindling a free ride from publicists and journalists who are not checking the facts of the grand and famous claims of this massive retailer brand, argues Stacy Mitchell in a series of investigative articles published in Grist. See article  
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By Alan Pears 10 April 2012 – One of the frustrations facing people working in the green building space is the lack of information on how our award winning buildings actually perform. We need to learn from what has worked well, and what hasn’t been so successful. The 60L Green Building in Carlton was completed in late 2002. The developer was a green philanthropic organisation Read More  
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On cheap rent, and green promises 4 May 2012 – Let’s be frank: the job of turning around sentiment on green retrofits among owners in the non-premium property sector right now is on a par with changing the prospects of the Labor Party in a hurry. It’s tough out there and any additional expenditure is a big ask. Read More  
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By Tina Perinotto 4 May 2012  –If you think the  political world is stacked against sustainability right now, go to a book launch by a former Liberal Leader John Hewson, a strong climate change supporter. Listen to the author, young climate campaigner Anna Rose, who her publisher Louise Adler of Melbourne University Press  tips could well be a future Prime Minister of this country. Read More  
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By Tina Perinotto 2 May 2012 – On Monday Eureka Funds Management executive director Niall McCarthy told the Property Funds Association annual conference on the Gold Coast that the Tax Breaks for Green Buildings program worth $1 billion would be scrapped. Where he got his information from, he would not say; he would not even confirm he “knew” this to The Fifth Estate, but there it was. By Wednesday the story had broken in the financial press and two more indicators emerged. Read More  
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3 May 2012 – Case study: WT Sustainability wanted to raise the bar when it aimed for a minimum six star NABERS energy rating under the CitySwitch program when it planned its new offices at 181 Miller Street, North Sydney. Director of WTS Stephen Hennessy said: “”WTS is in the business of delivering energy and sustainability advice to a range of clients, obviously we need to practice what we preach, Read More  
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By Tina Perinotto 27 April 2012 – Property taxes, land use planning and building regulations are in the front line of the Productivity Commission report released today on how to deal with climate change. The report, which focuses on removing the barriers to an organic response to climate change, both in economic and social terms, tackles policies that have for years sat on the wish-list backburners of economic rationalist thinkers. Stamp duty on property transactions for instance. Read More  
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By Tina Perinotto 26 April 2012 – The tale of two cities just got a little more intense with this week’s release of Victoria’s population numbers showing that the state exceeded 2008 expectations on growth. Meanwhile separate research reveals a growing gap in the capacity of Australia’s major competing cities Melbourne and Sydney to deliver on housing and jobs. Read More  
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By Lyn Drummond 25 April 2012 – Interns from the award winning Green Steps program run by Melbourne’s Monash University Sustainability Institute have successfully tackled challenges such as an energy efficiency plan for Darwin international airport and the first ever carbon footprint and inventory for The Body Shop Australia. Read More  
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By Lyn Drummond 24 April 2012 – The federal government is providing $3.75 million towards the City of Sydney’s Sydney’s trigeneration plant at Green Square, the major inner urban redevelopment project where work is now underway. Read More  
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By Lyn Drummond 19 April 2012 – A Brisbane commercial property has delivered a major profit of 33 per cent for the Harvest group after an energy efficient retrofit using Low Carbon Australia finance. Harvest Property and the Harvest Denison Opportunity Fund are owners and managers of the building, O’Connell’s OBM House, at 26 Wharf Street, Brisbane. Read More  
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18 April 2012 – A range of property related low emissions energy technology will form part of the investment considerations under the $10 billion Clean Energy Finance Corporation, the expert review panel has recommended. The CEFC plans to start investing from July 1, 2013, and recommends that $2 billion a year for five years from 2013-14 be specially appropriated in government legislation. Read More  
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By Jerry Yudelson 3 April 2012 – US green building expert Jerry Yudelson does not mince words. Nature does not care about relative improvements in building performance; it only cares about absolute carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere. Time to get real, and audacious he says in this extract from his forthcoming book The World’s Greenest Buildings: Promise Vs. Performance in Sustainable Design Read More  
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