By Tina Perinotto 23 September 2011 – The bar for sustainable property reporting world-wide  just got higher, thanks to the new reporting guidance for the property construction sector released today (Thursday) by the highly regarded Global Reporting Initiative. According to Steve Driscoll, director of sustainability and policy for Landcom, who was one of two Australians on the two-year Read More  
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By Tina Perinotto 21 September 2011 – It’s got Richard Branson and his Carbon War Room and potentially billions of dollars of investment in the United States. Australia is also in on the act and Melbourne and Sydney are vying to be the first to market. It’s the race to roll out the first batch of energy efficiency retrofits for commercial buildings that pay for themselves Read More  
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By Tina Perinotto 21 September 2011 – News today (Wednesday) that one of Australia’s most highly rated green buildings under construction in Canberra for the Department of Climate Change and Energy Efficiency will use high greenhouse gas emission aluminium from China raises one of the biggest elephants in the room for green buildings. At issue is about $5 million of aluminium extrusions that will be imported from China, which typically produces 50 per cent more GHG emissions Read More  
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20 September 2011 – Lend Lease on Monday night showcased its new six star Green Star Commonwealth Bank Place at Darling Quarter in Sydney in its launch event for World Green Building Week Read More  
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By Lyn Drummond 21 September 2011 – Sustainable Business Australia and the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade’s APEC secretariat are developing a carbon capability program for Vietnam and Indonesia. Read More  
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The violence of ABC listeners, Rod Leaver and Green Building Week, Low Carbon calls for interests and will Turnbull cross the floor? 15 September 2011 – Interesting comments came from Janne Ryan this morning (Thursday) speaking to a class of young architecture students at UTS in Sydney. Read More  
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By Tina Perinotto 14 September 2011 ­– If there were any green building deniers still out there in property world, Monday’s release of the latest research by the Australian Property Institute and the Property Funds Association of Australia will hammer the last nail in their coffin. Green buildings make financial sense, especially if they are rated five star NABERS energy, not just by a fraction but by a huge 9 per cent overall and a massive 21 per cent if the asset is in Canberra, the report found. Read More  
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By Tina Perinotto 14 September 2011  – Dexus Property will reap a major upside to its industrial investment property at Perris in Southern California in the US with the lease of the rooftop space for a massive solar power installation. Read More  
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By Tina Perinotto 23 August 2011 – There are plenty of people keen for the environmental upgrade agreement models to be finalised, but perhaps none more so than property and development consultants, Napier & Blakeley. The company recently launched Verdigris Capital to capture some of the opportunities that could flow from the agreements. Put simply EUAs are funding mechanisms for energy efficiency Read More  
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By Lindsay Bevege 13 September 2011 – Australian cities were prominent in the top 10 most liveable cities based on the Economist Intelligence Unit’s global liveability index. But we are also in the top 10 of another index that shows us in a less favourable light: the per capita ecological footprint measured by the Global Footprint Network. The two indices have a roughly inverse relationship. Developing nations have the lowest per capita ecological footprint but their cities are at the bottom of the EIU’s index – and almost every other index of human welfare. Read More  
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By Amanda Stanaway, Woods Bagot 13 September 2011 – The refurbishment of the GPT Property group headquarters at the MLC building in Sydney’s CBD was a unique challenge and could re-shape industry concepts of older buildings. Read More  
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By Michael Mobbs 14 September 2011 – It was the “cheep” that did it. Tiny. Almost inaudible. And the vet’s question, too. That did it. “Has it been vaccinated for Marek’s disease?” Little things like that. Changed my mind, well, about chooks, at least. And now I’m even more bamboozled by this thing called ‘food’. The whole experience has been . .  . weird. Let’s go from the start. Last Friday I took my sick chook, Bert, to the specialist vet.  They did birds, mainly.  Exotics, too. Snakes, spiders. Hell, what do you say when you take a crook spider to the vet: “It’s gone off it’s food and not biting like it should”. Never been there before.  Never had a sick chook before. The vet felt Bert’s tummy.  Lumps everywhere.  Cancer. Had to put her down. Funny feeling, coming home with an empty cage. Her mate, Bob, called out straight away when I walked into the house.  Not to me, to Bert. But Bert wasn’t there. She knew.  Never heard her... 
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12 September 2011 – Stockland has been named the world’s most sustainable property company in the highly regarded Dow Jones Sustainability Index for 2011-2012. The index evaluates the corporate governance, risk management, climate change mitigation and stakeholder engagement performance of companies. Read More  
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By David Gait, Senior Portfolio Manager of Emerging Markets, Colonial First State, Global Asset Management 8  September 2011 – We are in the office of the CEO of an Indian bank, struggling to make ourselves heard. Just to the right of the sofa we are sitting on is a large statue of Lord Vishnu, enclosed in a glass case. Every 10 seconds he comes alive, glows bright red and broadcasts a loud mantra across the room Om Namo Narayana. See accompanying article by CFSGAM by Amanda McCluskey We quickly learn to time our questions between chants. To our left is an equally large TV screen, where the Business Anchor of the hour is shouting at us above the flashing stock prices. Read More  
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6 September 2011 – The 10 American cities in the Large Cities Climate Leadership Group – the C40 –  have switched to hybrid or electric taxis and buses, are encouraging cycling and retrofitting home and offices, according to The Economist. Read More  
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By Leon Gettler 1 September 2011 – When it comes to creating a sustainable building or refurbishing an old one so that it picks up NABERS stars, there is no one size fits all solution. Read More  
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By Lynne Blundell 19 August 2011 – NABERS yesterday launched a new 6-star energy and water rating for buildings and announced new ratings tools for transport, data centres and hospitals. But while the launch was lauded by many in the industry, others were less enthusiastic, the Property Council’s chief executive officer Peter Verwer accusing NABERS of failing to consult with industry, a claim that NABERS denied. In launching the new higher rating, chief executive of the Office of Environment and Heritage, Lisa Corbyn, said the extra Read More  
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By Adam Murchie, vice president, Property Funds Association 21 August 2011 – The Property Funds Association recently voiced its support for a carbon pricing system.  However, we believe the scheme needs to be widened to include complementary measures that incentivise the upgrading of existing properties to make them more energy efficient. Read More  
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17 August 2011 – Case study: The time has come when tenants want to know how many bicycle racks there are in a building, rather than car spaces. Read More  
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12 August 2011 – GPT officially launched its new offices on three high rise floors at Sydney’s MLC building on Wednesday with a panel discussion that delved into some of the complex thinking that has delivered a virtually paperless office and six star Green Star ambitions in a 33 year old building. Read More  
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By Michael Mobbs 16 August 2011 – What does a generation of failed leadership look like? It depends where you’re looking from. During World War I, when the leaders sent millions of young men to certain, stupid and avoidable deaths, the war was conducted by generals and politicians better at grinding meat than intellectualising strategic options for saving their warriors. One of the views during that appalling moment of sustained idiocy came from the mouth of the last surviving Australian warrior of the war.  Read More  
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By Richard Dinham 9 August 2011 – Linking Sydney from north to south by cycle and pedestrian bridges would be a great enhancement for connectivity,  argues Richard Dinham. The Bridges of Rome, Paris and London are an integral part of those cities.  Venice made an art of them, Buda and Pest lived apart until joined centuries later by the bridge that made the city of Budapest.  For Sydney, it was just short of one and a half centuries from European settlement, before the north and south shores Read More  
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9 August 2011 – A coalition of social, union, environmental and research organisations today said the federal government’s clean energy future plan would provide unprecedented investment in Australia’s renewable energy resources and energy efficiency, with the potential for major job creation, especially in Queensland. The Southern Cross Climate Coalition, comprising The Australian Conservation Foundation, The Australian Council of Trade Unions, the Australian Council of Social Services and The Climate Institute ,made the claims in an analysis that also urges the federal government to release measures to meet Australia’s international climate finance obligations, in advance of the next round of climate negotiations in Durban in December Read More  
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8 August 2011 – In The Long Emergency, James  Kunstler forecasts a future of smaller cities, centred around traditionally important natural features such as ports, not airports, and localised food and services. One of his biggest challenges, though, is his prediction for tall buildings. “We’ll be painfully short of financial resources and fabricated materials—everything from steel to the silicon gaskets needed to seal glass ‘curtain walls’… Read More  
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By Tina Perinotto 17 February 2011 – Favourites: A glittering line-up of speakers at a Property Council of Australia lunch in Sydney in November last year provided a rare glimpse into the problem-solving, decision-making and sometimes heart-stopping dilemmas behind Sydney´s first high rise six-star Green Star office building at 1 Bligh Street. Architect Christoph Ingenhoven, visiting from Düsseldorf, Germany provided a taste of how he and Australian firm Architectus arrived at an oblique solution to the site. Also speaking was Victor Hoog Antink, chief executive officer of developer Dexus, who must have lived a few lifetimes at the moment he gave the thumbs up to the massive project – just as the global financial crisis started to reveal its killer fangs. Read More  
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By Tina Perinotto 4 December 2011 – Berkeley and Maastricht universities’ academic Nils Kok arrived in Australia last week to confirm what every sane investor knew all along, that sustainable and energy efficient buildings are better buildings and worth more Read More  
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By Tina Perinotto 3 August 2011 – Following hot on the heels of our story last issue on the mass retrenchment of four staff at the NSW chapter office has come some of the reasoning behind the move and an indication of the pressure architects are facing as a profession. According to chief executive officer for the AIA David Parken the roles made redundant in the NSW chapter last month were not because of any new strategic direction in the institute Read More  
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2 August 2011 – The Total Environment Centre is in search of C and D grade buildings in Sydney that have been successfully upgraded, or are in the process of doing so in order to develop a set of case studies to assist other owners. According to manager of the project Matt Fisher, the buildings will have set out to achieve a NABERS Energy rating of 4 – 4.5 stars Read More  
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