by Tina Perinotto 22 July 2010 – For the owner of the building the Local Government Super it was the photo opp of a lifetime: Federal ministers Kim Carr and Maxine McKew, both corralled for the mid morning launch just days into a federal election. The venue: the chilly rain-swept roof at Macquarie Park in Sydney’s high-tech heartland, which happens to be in John Howard’s old seat of Bennelong. The occasion: the unveiling (so to speak) of one of the biggest solar panel installation on a commercial building, enabled and partly paid for by Labor’s $90 million Green Building Fund. To top it all off just the day before (on Tuesday) Opposition Leader Tony Abbott said that if it got into the power the Coalition would scrap the Green Building Fund. Perfect. You can guess the media posse that turned up. The cuts to the $90 million Green Building Fund (See our latest round up on this) designed specifically to help to retrofit existing buildings, were “disappointing”, said Mr Carr,... 
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By Andrew Starc 18 June 2010 - Investa has released its latest sustainability report,  with findings from seven years of data revealing the energy and greenhouse emissions of the group’s tenants. The sustainability report, Investa’s eighth, is presented in a new online format with interactive graphs that allow the user to view performance and trend data for energy, emissions and water usage in each of Investa’s buildings. Key environmental points from the report include: Energy and Greenhouse emissions: An 11 per cent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions from operations within all businesses and facilities under Investa’s operational control. Water: A 15.5 per cent reduction in Investa’s water footprint NABERS Ratings: Of the 32 Investa properties rated during 2009, the weighted average NABERS Energy rating dropped from 3.89 to 3.73 stars. According to the report this was mainly due to a 62 per cent reduction in GreenPower purchases ahead of the introduction of Mandatory... 
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Brief – 9 June, 2010 – The Queensland Government has appointed Umow Lai to master plan the new $1.97 billion Sunshine Coast University Hospital. Umow Lai’s team will provide technical and documentation advice as well as a full range of engineering services, including mechanical, electrical, fire, communications, hydraulics, lifts, civil and structural services for the hospital, set to open in 2016, Director of Umow Lai Elizabeth Coe said that the company is looking forward to creating more sustainable hospitals in Queensland. “We are looking forward to assisting in delivering a sustainable hospital to complement the state’s recent investment in other hospitals in South East Queensland.” Recent health care projects by the firm include the proposed new $1.7B Royal Adelaide Hospital; providing sustainability advice for the $350 million redevelopment of the Epworth Health Care’s Richmond Hospital, Melbourne; part of the $1.76 billion Fiona Stanley Hospital at Murdoch,... 
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CASE STUDY: 18 May 2010 – The Australian representation at the Shanghai World Expo 2010 has showcased its sustainability credentials by designing a pavilion boasting a number of sustainable features. Running under the theme “Better City, Better Life,” more than 70 million visitors are expected to visit this year’s expo from 1 May until 31 October, with representatives from around the world showcasing their approaches to sustainable and harmonious urban living. The $49 million Australian pavilion, which as part of a gold sponsorship was designed, project managed and constructed under budget over a 15-month period by Bovis Lend Lease, features a number of leading sustainable building practices, including; Solar panel heating system: There are 40 square metres of panels installed on the top of the roof plant supplying hot water for the kitchen and wash areas. Two heating systems were originally proposed – both electric and gas – which would have meant duplication in the safety... 
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13 May 2010: Investa’s Ark building officially opened today, adding a landmark sustainable building to North Sydney’s skyline. North Sydney mayor, Genia McCaffery, unveiled two pieces of significant public art at the building’s official opening – a painting on the foyer ceiling by Aboriginal artist Freddie Timms and a sculpture sited directly on street level by Hany Armanious and Mary Teague. The Ark development, with an estimated end value of AU$240 million, began on the site of the old North Sydney Telephone Exchange in 2006, and was designed by Rice Daubney Architects. The building has been awarded a 6 Star Green Star design rating from the Green Building Council of Australia (Office Design v2 Certified Rating) representing “World Leadership” in environmentally sustainable design. It has also been designed to achieve a 5 Star NABERS Energy rating. Prior to practical completion 85 per cent of the building was leased, with both Coca-Cola Amatil and Vodafone Hutchison... 
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By Tina Perinotto 6  May 2010 - In the absence of an emissions trading scheme, the mandatory disclosure legislation due out in about October is expected to work magic to transform the office property sector to a more sustainable profile. But maybe not so much. Sure, property owners with a premium brand to protect will care what the tenant or prospective buyer thinks of the energy rating – especially if they want a premium tenant. In fact, market drivers to energy efficiencies and sustainability have already had a huge impact. NABERS manager Matthew Clarke told The Fifth Estate in a recent interview that he expects only incremental take-up of new energy ratings with MD because the majority of the CBD majors are already up to speed with current NABERS energy ratings, and they are already publicly displayed on the rating system’s website. But for the small private investor or unlisted trust with one or two B or C grade buildings, the response may well be: “who cares?”. That, at least... 
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By Lynne Blundell 6 May 2010- Let’s face it energy efficiency is not sexy. Like electricity it’s a bit hard to get a handle on and it’s a pretty dull conversation starter. It’s even worse for politicians facing the great moral challenge of our times. Wizz bang technology on the other hand is much more exciting – it is shiny, highly visible, you can tie a ribbon around it and it’s wonderful for photo opportunities. But energy efficiency is the sleeping giant. Both political parties have made noises about taking it more seriously. And with the building sector alone estimated to account for at least 23 per cent of Australia’s carbon emissions it’s hard to understand why they’re taking so long. Research by McKinsey and Company estimates that energy efficiency in commercial buildings can save $130 per tonne of CO2 reduction. Commercial buildings have also been identified by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change as the largest and most cost effective sector for achieving... 
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by  Simon Wild, managing director Asia Pacific, Cundall - 6 May 2010 – Over the past six months our company has been running Cool Walls [interactive workshop] across Australia,  to help business owners, designers and developers think beyond the business as usual; to connect into and create an integration of personal vision with business direction. Across Australia, the common theme to emerge so far is that business as usual over the next five years will be determined by increased electricity cost, coupled with mandatory disclosure which will in turn drive a mass regeneration of our existing building stock. The view from the industry is the next five years will not be driven by legislation but will be driven by the market. Nothing new here! If industry continues to be the driver – and research has shown Australian property owners have led the world over the last decade – we cannot sit back and accept that the next five years will be defined by rising electricity... 
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By Andrew Starc 15 April 2010 – One look of Sydney’s skyline lit up at night tells you everything about the simple things we can do to save energy. This “Low Hanging Fruit” was the topic of discussion at a seminar held at the ARBS [Air Conditioning, Refrigeration and Building Services] Trade Exhibition 2010 in Sydney this week, with panelists Bryon Price, Shaun Condon and Dr John Ward lending the industry, business and scientific perspectives on what businesses can do to reduce their buildings’ energy consumption. There’s a two pronged approach to achieving energy sustainability, said energy efficiency and building sustainability expert Bryon Price who is strategic development director of AG Coombs Group. “We need to attend to the ‘dumb stuff’, like switching off lights or appliances that don’t need to be on, but we also need to be more proactive and engage with contractors more. As an industry we need to get more involved, engaged and proactive,” Mr Price said. While... 
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By Lynne Blundell 14 April 2010 – There could be light at the end of the tunnel for cogeneration projects seeking co-operation from energy agencies. In a victory for precinct-style power generation, a proposed shared cogeneration project between The University of Queensland and the Royal Brisbane Hospital has received support from gas suppliers. It was very much an industry-driven victory. After an initial knock-back by gas suppliers to support the project, sustainability consultants from Cundall, armed themselves with extensive technical data to back their case. But it took some political nous as well – this time they bypassed the technical people and went straight to the top. Cundall’s Brisbane head, Rob Lord, told The Fifth Estate the decision by the gas authority to fund the necessary infrastructure to supply gas to the shared power plant was a sign of a shift in attitudes. “It is a kind of awakening for these authorities. They are bureaucracies and are very focused... 
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By Lynne Blundell Sooner or later if you are involved in green buildings, someone is going to tell you to speak to Deo Prasad. 24 November 2010 – Deo Prasad has a vision. It’s a vision of a future where building materials function as renewable power generators and heat sources – and zero carbon, waste and water are the norm. Every household, precinct and city will be able to check its current carbon footprint in real time data. And he believes this future Read More  
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15 March – Case study: Saving energy is not normally linked to the start of the AFL season but that’s what the new redeveloped Gold Coast stadium – home of the appropriately named Gold Coast Suns – is all about. The owner, Stadium Queensland, worked with key consultants: Norman Disney & Young, engineers; ARUP, structural engineers; architects, Populous and builder, Watpac to adapt a fully integrated solar solution which will be promoted as part of the Gold Coast’s 2018 Commonwealth Games bid. Funding was provided by the Queensland Government, Federal Government, Gold Coast City Council, and the Australian Football League The work incorporated a solar photovoltaic roof designed to generate 20 per cent Read More  
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By George Quezada & Anthony Szatow 4 November 2010 -Favourites: In this third and final article of the three part series, George Quezada and Anthony Szatow look deeper at what is needed to transform the energy sector and bring forward innovations in clean energy service provision. They highlight the role that grass-roots community groups and professional networks can play in overcoming institutional and market inertia, and implementing precinct scale energy service “exemplars” that can be scaled up and become mainstream over time. Our second article invited you to imagine and to visualise the economy and energy supply system as an extension of the natural world. See first article in the series We set about describing the energy provider of tomorrow that was integrated with, and sensitive to, Earth’s life support systems. This new energy provider, we reasoned, would understand the inter-dependencies between our economy and ecosystems, and operate an energy service model... 
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FAVOURITES – 10 August 2009 - Winner of the Sustainable Architecture Award at the Australian Institute of Architects (AIA) Victorian Chapter Awards was Lend Lease building, The Gauge. Located in Victoria Harbour in the Docklands precinct, construction of the project commenced in 2005 and was completed in April 2008 and achieved Australia’s first 6 Star Green Star – Office As Built v2 Certified rated building. According to Lend Lease: “The objectives for The Gauge were to demonstrate real and measurable environmental gains over The Bond, at a lower price, in a building that the industry sees as readily accessible in an overall push to make the highest level of sustainability mainstream. “Symbolically, The Gauge responds to the two significant environmental challenges facing Australia, greenhouse gas emissions and water supply.” Following is a case study statement from Lend Lease on The Gauge: Water saving initiatives in The Gauge’s design will reduce potable water consumption... 
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By Tina Perinotto FAVOURITES – 15 January 2010 – The Green Building Council of Australia is seeking public comment on its revised PVC credit, which paves the way for some PVC products used in flooring, pipes and conduit to contribute to a green star rating. GBCA chief executive, Romilly Madew, said the new credit revisions follow an 18 month investigation period and will encourage the development and use of best practice PVC material in Australia. “Rewarding best practice PVC products within the Green Star rating system will stimulate demand for best practice, responsibly-produced PVC products in Australia.” The guidelines for PVC, or or Polyvinyl Chloride, cover the key areas of: Chlorine (production of materials for PVC); Vinyl Chloride Monomer (VCM) (production of materials for PVC); Waste, Water, Air and Product Emission thresholds for Ethylene Dichloride (EDC), VCM, and PVC Resin (manufacture of PVC); Stabilisers and Plasticisers (manufacture of PVC); and End of Life... 
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15 February 2010 – Tracy Wakefield, managing director of Appalachian Log Homes responded to our article on timber, Timber: complex, sustainable and good in bushfires in a recent letter published here. Timber is highly resilient to fire, Dr Wakefield says in this article, which develops the theme in greater depth. With the recent drought and extreme weather in Australia, much focus has been brought to global climate change and what we can do to reduce carbon emissions to address it. It is possible that climate change is responsible for a series of disastrous bushfires, and as a result has necessitated significant changes to our building standards for bushfire prone areas. While timber as a building material is one of the most sustainable, renewable and lowest carbon emitting materials we can use to address climate change, it is severely restricted for use in bushfire prone areas, especially in the extreme category of bushfire attack (BAL-FZ or “Flame Zone”). Testing to Australian... 
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by Damien Leclercq and Shannon Mason FAOURITES 2009 – Small scale wind energy has recently gained a lot of interest, particularly in the urban context, due to the general drive for sustainability and the appeal of the technology. But there are limits to what it can do. Wind energy is one way of generating energy at the point of consumption. It can make a meaningful contribution where the wind resource is adequate, and it requires a detailed study of the site to maximise the return on a significant investment. Although the design phase makes use of advanced engineering techniques, a simple preliminary calculation is worth undertaking to assess the scope of a proposed wind installation at your site. Consider a commercial building in a location where the wind resource is adequate. The building has 20 storeys, each 1500 sq m in area, and its energy consumption is 150 kWh a sq m, yearly. If one were to develop wind energy at the site, what would a reasonable objective be for the amount... 
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By Lynne Blundell There is a new mantra in sustainable engineering and design – “keep it simple and make sure it works in the real world”, says WSP Lincolne Scott and Advanced Environmental director, Matthew Jessup. It is a philosophy, he believes, that will help new developments meet the growing emphasis on cost effectiveness and the shift to large scale precinct style projects. “We spend a lot of time trying to make things more simple. When it comes to commissioning large-scale green projects, the more complex you make your design, the more things there are to go wrong.” That’s not to say that technology has not played a major part in pushing sustainability forward. But it should play second fiddle to smart design that makes buildings easy to use and maintain. This is becoming even more important as projects around the world move away from a focus on individual buildings to precinct-based projects, Jessup says. “It’s not as if we’re not using cutting edge technology... 
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27 January 2010 – Vanuatu is one of many Pacific island-nations that are extremely vulnerable to predicted sea-level rises due to climate change. It is a very poor nation, by international standards, and one of its biggest challenges is to raise living standards through sustainable economic and social development. Crucial to that transition is slashing the country’s total – and, at present, unsustainable – dependence on imported fossil fuels for energy generation and transport, and cutting its carbon dioxide emissions by using more sustainable energy-generating techniques. Enter global engineering firm Cundall and a University of New South Wales student, Chris McGrath, who have installed a sustainable hydro-electric power station in Imaki, a small community on the southern coast of Tanna Island, part of the Vanuatu archipelago. McGrath (funded by Cundall) designed a remote area power system (RAPS) for the Imaki community while working with the UNSW School of... 
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17th December 2009 – A new report by UNEP’s Division of Technology, Industry and Economics (DTIE) was tabled at the same meeting. “Buildings and Climate Change: summary for Decision Makers” highlights opportunities for drastic emission reductions in the building sector and shows how these opportunities can be harnessed. “No government – let it be in an industrialised or in a developing country – can leave buildings out of its policy toolbox if it wants to save energy and reach serious greenhouse gas emission reduction targets,” said the Finnish Housing Minister, Jan Vapaavuori, who opened the meeting hosted by his government, and jointly organised by the United Nations Environment Programme’s Sustainable Buildings and Climate Initiative – whose chairwoman is Lend Lease’s global head of sustainability, Maria Atkinson; the Marrakech Task Force on Sustainable Buildings and Construction, and the UNEP Finance Initiative. Introducing... 
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FAVOURITES- From The Atlantic magazine, some excerpts from the article, The Elusive Green Economy, by Joshua Green: “The best way to get an idea of what a green future might look like is to visit Silicon Valley. It’s impossible to convey how otherworldly the place felt this spring. While the rest of the country suffered beneath the blackening clouds of recession, Silicon Valley buzzed with giddy anticipation that “cleantech,” in local parlance, represents the next great economic boom. In a place that reveres its idols the way ancient Rome did, no less than the famed venture capitalist John Doerr has pronounced cleantech “the biggest economic opportunity of the 21st century.” Today, Silicon Valley is the anti-Detroit. “Last year, cleantech was the third-largest recipient of venture funding, after IT and biotechnology, with investments of $5.8 billion. But that statistic doesn’t begin to convey its psychic significance. It’s all anyone wants to talk about. “Exhilaration... 
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CASE STUDY: The Melbourne Convention Centre won not only the Built Environment Award in the 2009 Banksia Awards, announced in July, but it was also the first convention centre in the world to be awarded [the equivalent of] a 6 Star Green Star environmental rating by the Green Building Council of Australia, setting a global benchmark in environmental design. The development is a Victorian Government private public ownership project developed by a Plenary Group Consortium which also included builders Brookfield Multiplex and joint venture architects Woods Bagot and NH Architecture. WSPLincolneScott and its specialist services company Advanced Environmental and Vision Design provided all building services, ESD and architectural lighting. This AUS$500 million project reveals a number of design ideas which make it a leading project in contemporary world architecture and is just one part of a PPP between the Victorian State Government and Plenary Group, which is delivering a $1.4 billion revitalised... 
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by Lynne Blundell… 26 May – Smart Light Sydney kicked off  with Brian Eno’s spectacular light show on the sails of the Sydney Opera House. Eno’s Lighting the Sails is part of Light Walk, a series of light art sculptures, interactive and performance-based art displays from local and international design luminaries and artists which celebrate sustainable low-energy lighting design and innovation. As part of a switch-off campaign in conjunction with the Property Council of Australia, Smart Light Sydney will turn off more power on the grid than it uses. The switch-off lights campaign, incorporating some of the major properties located within the Light Walk precinct, will offset the low levels of energy being used by the Light Walk’s installations to ensure the event creates a minimal environmental impact. Three of the installations on the Light Walk use no new energy at all, while some others use solar and pedal-power. Tree and Bench on Observatory Hill will... 
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