By Cameron Jewell 23 May 2013 — The green building industry in Western Australia has taken a while to get into gear, but according to Georgiou Capital development manager Greg Hancock, the only way is up. Georgiou Capital looks set to build a 15-story office tower and hotel for Perth’s CBD, which will be chasing a five-star NABERS rating and a five-star Green Star rating, too. Read More  
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  By Cameron Jewell 23 May 2013 — It’s a technology that to many defies logic: using the sun’s heat to cool your home or office. But solar cooling is on the brink of a boom, and Australia is the perfect place for the technology, says the CSIRO’s Stephen White. Solar cooling works by trapping the sun’s heat and transforming it into cold through a “sorption” cooling process. In a typical system, solar collectors installed on roofs capture the heat energy of the sun. A sorption... 
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By Donna Kelly 23 May 2013 — Conergy has commissioned a 100 kiloWatt solar plant, installed at a newly constructed retirement/nursing home in Brisbane, that operates without any feed-in tariff and will save the operator $16,000 a year in bills, in a project it says signals grid parity. The home, Casa d’Amore, consumes the entire solar electricity produced itself, with about 400 Conergy PowerPlus modules on the 640 square metre roof surface are producing 146 megawatt hours of solar power. Read... 
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  23 May 2013 – How did your story rate? Every now and again we like to look at what our top rating stories are since we started the site in April 2009 Here are top 30 articles and categories and the average time spent on the article, from our Google Analytics. Click on the headline or image for the whole post. Article or section title                                        Average Time On Site Job News | The Fifth Estate 00.02:49 Sekisui House:... 
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22 May 2013 — Author Michael von Hausen shares his theories and knowledge regarding sustainable land development based on his over 30 years practicing and teaching in the field in his latest book, Dynamic Urban Design: A Handbook for Creating Sustainable Communities Worldwide. Read More  
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By Cameron Jewell 22 May 2013 — New Zealand Green Star offices outperform non-Green Star office buildings, according to the latest IPD Green Property Index. The latest results showed that Green Star offices attracted an 11 per cent total return compared with 9.1 per cent for non-Green Star offices. Read More  
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22 May 2013 — New research shows that sustainability is an increasingly critical factor in attracting, engaging and retaining the best of the best. Harvard Business Review has pointed to a growing number of “sustainability enthusiasts” who see sustainability as a key factor in job choices, and are even willing to accept lower remuneration to work for employers who are aligned with their beliefs. Read More  
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22 May 2013 — While US politicians are still engaged in heated debate over whether climate change exists, climate disruption cost US taxpayers close to $100 billion in 2012. The National Resources Defense Council recently released a report, Who Pays for Climate Change?, which found that federal government spending on droughts, storms, floods and forest fires was $96 billion in 2012 Read More  
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By Cameron Jewell 21 May 2013 — For a volunteer-based community outfit, the Better Planning Network knows how to pull the big guns. Speaking at yesterday’s community forum was a broad array of politicians and planning luminaries of all persuasions. Read More  
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20 May 2013 — Lend Lease’s Darling Quarter and Commonwealth Bank Place development has snagged the awards for best new sustainable building and development of the year in the 2013 Property Council of Australia awards. Read More  
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22 May 2013 — As part of its community focus on water conservation, the Western Australian Government requires all WA business customers using more than 20,000 kilolitres of scheme water per reading year to take part in the Water Efficiency Management Plan program. Read More  
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By Dick Clarke, Envirotecture 15 May 2013 — Sweet vs sour, bass vs treble, regulation vs free market, cost vs benefit. Balance is the key for many areas of life. But Dick Clarke suggests current standards have the balance wrong when it comes to building in bushfire-prone areas. Read More  
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By Leon Gettler 14 May 2013 — Think of a silent electric engine that can sneak into enemy territory. It uses fuel cell technology. Portable fuel cells also power US soldiers’ power goggles, GPS, radios and laptops. And the  US’s Great Green Fleet runs on 50 per cent petroleum and a 50 per cent mix of waste food, oil and algae biofuel.  And Australia is playing role through the Australian Institute for Bioengineering and Nanotechnology. It’s all about how a sustainable defence... 
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By Donna Kelly 14 May 2013 — For a long time Paul Metcalfe has had the burning desire to do something different. And he always believed that skills in communication would be important for sustainability. Read More  
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By Katie Fallowfield, WSP Built Ecology 6 May 2013 — “Section J” or “JV3” are phrases that strike fear into the hearts of many in the construction industry. What is it and why are we fearful? Section J was integrated into the Building Code of Australia (now the National Construction Code or NCC) in 2006 applying to all Class 2 to Class 9 buildings. Read More  
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By Cameron Jewell 9 May 2013 — An independent report has found that sustainability is a critical issue for Australia’s future. Read More  
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By Cameron Jewell 6 May 2013 — At SGS Economics and Planning’s “Up to the task?” forum last Thursday evening, a panel comprising ex-Lord Mayors Frank Sartor and Lucy Turnbull, SGS principal and partner Patrick Fensham and associate dean of the City Futures Research Centre Bill Randolph discussed how Sydney’s draft Metropolitan Strategy would address the city’s challenges into the future. Read More  
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8 May 2013 – From Greentech:  Apple might be one of the world’s most secretive companies but it’s reasonably happy to share some of its learnings on energy efficiency. Such as lower energy consumption in recent times, despite the number of employees at Apple headquarters going up. And that the energy efficiency case study at Apple’s Infinite Loop did not involve sleek aluminum housings with a minimum number of buttons, but rather replacing chillers and consolidating chiller... 
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7 May 2013 — The Property Council of Australia has teamed up with the Australian Greens for a study into the redevelopment potential along seven of Perth’s major urban arteries. The report, Regenerating transport corridors as a network of High Street precincts, uncovered the potential for seven of Perth’s transport corridors to accommodate between 94,500 and 252,000 new dwellings at medium to high density scenarios. Read More  
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By Cameron Jewell 7 May 2013 [UPDATED 9 May 2013]— A bill currently being pushed through NSW parliament and in the Legislative Assembly on Tuesday would give the state government the power to suspend councils for three months and potentially longer. Introduced by NSW Minister for Local Government Don Page, the Local Government Amendment (Early Intervention) Bill 2013 would allow the minister to suspend “poorly performing” councils. Read More  
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7 May 2013 — The first Australian entry in the international Solar Decathlon, the Illawarra Flame House, built by the University of Wollongong’s Innovation Campus, has been unveiled. Read More  
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By Donna Kelly 2 May 2013 — I was thrown an insult the other day. Apparently I’m a tree hugger – and apparently that’s a bad thing. I didn’t mean to be a tree hugger, I’m not a bad person. I like animals and babies and hold open doors for people older than me. And younger too, mostly. Read More  
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By Jennifer Fitzalan 1 May 2013 – Trigeneration offers an attractive solution to the threat of escalating energy and network costs through energy efficient, decentralised production of heating, cooling and electricity. With myriad economic and environmental benefits, and an increasing corporate focus on sustainability, it might seem like a no-brainer for building owners and occupiers, but as Jennifer Fitzalan from Baker & McKenzie notes, there are some significant issues that must first be... 
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By Donna Kelly 1 May 2013 — Workplace is not about space, it’s about people and the making of “place”, says BVN Donovan Hill principal Bill Dowzer in the introduction of the online publication, Transformative: the architecture of work culture. “New models of space generate from the collaboration of organisations and individuals aspiring to explore the changing Read More  
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By Donna Kelly 1 May 2013 — Tenix has been awarded Australia’s first Infrastructure Sustainability rating, achieving an “excellent” rating level for the design of two sewage treatment plants at Cannonvale and Proserpine in north Queensland. The rating was announced at the Queensland launch of the Infrastructure Sustainability Council of Australia. Read More  
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By Sarah-Jane Sherwood 1 May 2013 — The Fifth Estate reader Sarah-Jane Sherwood recently visited Tasmania’s Forest Walks Lodge and discovered a resort that aspires to responsible, sustainable, luxury complete with Trombe walls that absorb the sun’s heat during the day, a complex waste management system controlled by a two-metre high underground worm farm, and organic meals. Read More  
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By Cameron Jewell and Donna Kelly 30 April 2013 — Green Star Interiors :: Flying Start is helping owners of commercial property to use the base building’s standards of environmental performance to attract “green-minded” tenants. The program, developed by John Goddard of J Goddard & Co and Inge Diamond of ECO3, Read More  
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By Leon Gettler 30 April 2013 — Facilities management doesn’t sound that exciting. But it’s going to be the hottest job in the property sector. Facilities management, otherwise known as FM, is about effective operational management of buildings and precincts. True, it doesn’t yet have the sexy status of fields like architecture and engineering.  But that will change. Expect it to get a lot more focus as more companies confront sustainability. Traditionally, facilities managers were supposed... 
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By Barton Loechel 29 April 2013 – From The Conversation: Recent research suggests only a minority of mining companies are preparing for the biophysical impacts of climate change. Those that are preparing are going it alone: there is little collaboration on planning between miners and local government. Read More  
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29 April 2013 – The latest in Edie’s Resource Revolution videos sees design expert Sophie Thomas discussing waste as a “design flaw”, and looks at how greater collaboration between designers, the resource management sector and the materials sector could steer us towards a circular economy. For more details see this website.    
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