14 March 2012 –NICTA will spearhead a $5 million dollar project, initiated by the Australian Centre for Renewable Energy, to locate geothermal energy sources deep in the Earth. It is the first project to be funded under the Australian Government’s $126 million Emerging Renewables Program, which has been established to provide support for the development of renewable energy and enabling technologies across the innovation chain. Data Fusion and Machine Learning for Geothermal Target Exploration and Characterisation is a two year program with $1.9 million of the total cost funded by ACRE. Geothermal energy comes from the intense heat generated by rocks located several kilometres underground. It is abundant, renewable; and has zero carbon output – making it an ideal energy source. Locating suitable hot rocks, however, is a manual, expensive exercise, a NICTA statement said. NICTA – Australia’s Information and Communications Technology Research Centre of Excellence.– is leading... 
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By Tina Perinotto 14 March 2012 -– CarbonSystems, an Australian company barely three years old, has fended off competition from the world’s heavy hitters in technology to win a contract with Microsoft for its global greenhouse gas management and reporting to stakeholders. Read More  
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By Lyn Drummond 7 March 2012 – Building information modelling has the power to revolutionise the construction industry impacting all sectors, including buildings, infrastructure and industry, a report by WSP has shown. Partner and manager WSP, Sweden, Pontus Bengston, who spoke at the Green Cities conference in Sydney said the report, “10 Truths about BIM” was the result of research into how BIM is understood and being adopted by different sectors of the construction industry across the globe. Read More  
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By Lyn Drummond 28 November 2011 – The wheel has turned more than 100 years to an electric car comeback in Sydney.  Read More  
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By Peter Scuderi, senior associate, Arup Brisbane 10 August 2011 – Governments in the UK, Singapore and Australia are moving to building information modelling, or BIM systems,  for new buildings, but are these three dimensional, real time programs as good as the hype suggests, or are they oversold and under delivered, asks Peter Scuderi. The recent launch of the UK Government’s Construction Strategy Report has stated that “Government will require fully Read More  
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By Lyn Drummond 2 June 2011 – FAVOURITES: According to Deb Noller of Switch Automation wealthy owners of eastern suburbs  energy prices are starting to bite hard, even in the wealthy eastern suburbs of Sydney. Read More  
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8 June 2011 – The Australian Institute of Refrigeration, Air Conditioning and Heating, assisted by the Victorian government, has launched an online resource, Mycoolingtower.com.au to calculate efficiency of water in cooling towers. AIRAH chief operations officer Neil Cox said it is estimated that cooling towers can account for about 30 per cent of a site’s total water use. “Given that water is becoming an increasingly valuable – and expensive – resource in parts of Australia, it makes sense to be able to assess a cooling tower’s water use,” Mr Cox said. “This is especially important when simple adjustments to cooling towers can save substantial amounts of water and money.” Mr Cox said there is an estimated 30,000 cooling towers operating in the country, many using between 5000 to 10,000 litres per day. This equates to more than 150,000 million litres nationally, which is about the same amount of water used by 200,000 homes. He said the site supplied solid data on... 
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Antony Hing was one of the featured guests at an green building fringe event held in Melbourne in February to co-incide with  Green Cities 2010 conference. By Andrew Starc - 25 March 2010 – Since its widespread establishment in the late 1990s, the internet has opened up a limitless avenue of potential for individuals and organisations interested in promoting environmental sustainability. Now emerging new computer technologies are providing cutting-edge ways for environmentalists to interact, collaborate and spread their message. Antony Hing, a digital media consultant for some of Australia’s largest food and beverage brands, believes that harnessing the power of grid computing, the synergistic combination of computer resources and technology from multiple locations around the world, is key to finding solutions for the environmental problems of the future. “Grid computing will provide a means by which human knowledge and problem solving, otherwise known as the ‘collective... 
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By Andrew Aitken,  Green Building Council of Australia 9 February 2011 – The Green Building Council of Australia is inviting industry to have its say on the development of a new Green Star assessment methodology to rate the operational performance of existing buildings. For eight years now, the presence of Green Star in the Australian market has driven innovative design and construction of buildings and generated strong demand for new green products, services and technologies. But what happens once the Green Star rating is achieved, the builders down tools and the tenants move in? Is a building still green if it is not managed and maintained to the intended sustainability standards? In November 2010, the GBCA announced that it was following the USA’s LEED and UK’s BREEAM, and developing a new Green Star assessment methodology to assess the operational performance of existing buildings. The government-developed National Australian Built Environment Rating System  currently provides... 
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From CNN: 3 February 2011 – Could a floating dome that can house up to 10,000 people be a model for future living? Russian architect Alexander Remizov thinks so — and his prototype design, called “The Ark,” bears more than a passing resemblance to the classic children’s toy, the Slinky. Remizov believes his Ark, designed to be constructed from timber, steel and high-strength ETFE plastic, could be adapted for all kinds of environments and put to a number of different uses, including emergency housing — its prefabricated structure should allow it to be constructed quickly — and hotels. Read More  
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19 January 2011 – An innovative  social network website SolaMaps is connecting solar power users around the world. “While NASA and Google provided snapshots of the Earth brilliantly lit by the burning glow of consuming energy,  SolaMaps promises the connectivity of current online social networks, but with a green mission and desire for environmental change,” SolaMaps developer Steve Ewings said. The site will feature community chat rooms, renewable energy classifieds, a business directory, renewable energy forums, and its signature interactive map. “Recent analysis by the International Energy Agency found that solar electricity could represent 20 per cent to 25 per cent of global electricity production by 2050, and there is potential for home PV systems to produce a significant share of any country’s electricity,” Mr Ewings said. “Collectively home solar installations add up to some serious energy production, and we want these little power producers... 
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18 January 2011 – Australia’s GDP may fall and vegetable prices will soar, but some industries are poised to benefit from the flood disaster in Queensland and northern NSW, according to business information analysts IBISWorld. IBISWorld today downgraded Australia’s GDP forecast from 2.9 per cent to 2.6 per cent but said the construction industry in particular would benefit. “Industries set to decline rapidly are perhaps more obvious and include agriculture – especially cotton and cane growers – Read More  
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13 January 2011- Jerry Yudelson, leading US green building and sustainability consultant and a speaker at last year’s Green Cities 2010 conference in Melbourne has released a list of top worldwide green building trends for 2011. “What we’re seeing is that more people are going green each year, and there is nothing on the horizon that will stop this trend, ” Mr Yudelson said. Green building and sustainability consultant Jerry Yudelson says that the green building industry will rebound in 2011 in spite of the continuing economic difficulties in most developed countries, citing 10 major trends. Speaking about his annual “Top Ten” list of green building trends, the green building expert and author said, “What we’re seeing is that more people are going green each year, and there is nothing on the horizon that will stop this trend.” In a global media release Mr Yudelson said: “In 2010, the slowdown in commercial real estate put a crimp in the start up rate... 
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By Lynne Blundell FAVOURITES – 18 October 2010 – AIRAH conference - There was no shortage of cutting edge technology discussed at AIRAH’s Achieving the green dream conference- tomorrow’s technology today. An impressive array of technologies and their practical applications were presented by speakers over two days. There was solar cooling, blackwater and greywater reuse, change phase materials that increased buildings’ thermal mass, co- and tri-generation, airconditioning systems using ammonia and CO2, cool roof technology, cooling buildings using seawater….. and the list goes on. Read More  
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By Lynne Blundell FAVOURITES – 2 OCTOBER 2009 - A new life cycle assessment tool being developed by a consortium of industry and government bodies is set to raise the sustainability bar for building materials and to push manufacturers to be more competitive and innovative. It should also help cut through the green marketing dross. The environmental impact of building materials is widely acknowledged as a major weak point in current environmental ratings tools. There is also currently no agreed Australian standard for assessing a material’s impact. Just ask any designer or architect daily faced with manufacturer claims of “recycled” “recyclable” and “non-toxic”. The project responsible for the new ratings scheme, the Australian Life Cycle Inventory Database Initiative is jointly funded by the Building Products Innovation Council and AusIndustry to the tune of $1.6 million. Partners in the project include the Australian Life Cycle Assessment Society CSIRO, BRANZ, and... 
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by Peter Fagan FAVOURITES – 3 June 2009 – According to a recent study by researchers at James Cook University and the Australian National University, the Murray Darling Basin, which drives the rural economy of eastern Australia, has lost approximately 200 cubic kilometres of water since 2001. This water loss – equivalent to 400 Sydney Harbours – is a shocking statistic and an impactful reminder of the behavioural changes required to secure a sustainable future for farmers and agribusiness across Australia. But not all current headlines spell doom and gloom for agriculture; just two weeks before this research was reported, Australia’s largest manufacturer and exporter of Densified Biomass Fuel (DBF) pellets signed a three-year, A$69 million supply agreement with a Belgium-based company. Australian experts are leading the world in dry-land farming solutions, including efficient use of scarce water resources, innovative technologies and farming practices – in particular,... 
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17 November 2010 - UK building expert Roderic Bunn believes there is an unacceptable disconnect between the design intent of a building and its energy consumption. He also believes that it’s about time the property sector started to emulate the aeronautical industry by ensuring the developer retained an interest and responsibility over the project throughout its life. “It would be unthinkable that a corporation like Boeing would walk away from a project once it built a new type of plane,” he said. The same must occur for building owners in the likely zero carbon world of the future. Mr Bunn, principal consultant with the Building Services Research and Information Association is currently touring Australia and New Zealand with this message  in a series of seminars organised by the Chartered Institution of Building Services Engineers. (The last seminar in the series will be in Melbourne on Monday 23 November.) Read More  
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By Tina Perinotto 10 November 2010 – It’s official, the Federal Government will open the flood gate on the next tranche of Green Building Fund money to retrofit existing buildings for greater energy efficiency. But the word is, be quick. Chances are the funds are likely to be taken up ultra quickly and Round 7 could well be closed by January. In an announcement at Tuesday’s joint sustainability conference in Sydney held by the Australian Property Institute and the Australian Direct Property Investment Association, Green Building Fund manager Bronwyn Williams told delegates that unlike previous criteria, this round would accept applications for shopping centres and hotels. Read More  
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Warning: 30 October 2010 – It is now too late to avoid global warming of less than 2 per cent and too late to avoid “serious and pervasive ” climate change impacts that would “significantly disrupt the national economy” the federal government has said in a document released on Friday under the Freedom of Information Act, according to national newspapers today. Highlights of the reports include that electricity prices will rise.  But a speech by a senior bureaucrat mid-year explained exactly how serious the outlook was, how very difficult if not almost impossible it will be to achieve a 5 per cent reduction target, how risk was unavoidable and why the allocation of risk was the principle urgent question, and its  price set to escalate the longer we remained indecisive, he said. Key points in a Sydney Morning Herald report Include: electricity prices will rise further unless power generators get a clear carbon price by 2012, and that Australia’s greenhouse... 
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Favourites: 28 September 2010 -In this second article of a series of three, Anthony Szatow and George Quezada explore what new business models capable of realising value from distributed energy may look like. The final article will examine the conditions that enable innovation. Our first article gave a sense of the huge value of distributed energy (collectively distributed generation, energy efficiency and demand management) and how that value could be realised. We explored how re-visioning strategic direction through a backcasting process with collaborators, be they government, industry, researchers or community, can help galvanise collective action and effective partnerships for transforming energy systems. We introduced the idea that backcasting has an ethical sub-text, because it asks us to imagine the future as it should be, and to work backwards from that vision to determine how to get there. Backcasting helps us break out of thinking that may be constrained by our sense of what... 
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21 September 2010 - The Investa Sustainability Institute launched its on-line Green Buildings Alive tool Monday 20 September, an interactive hub of graphs, raw data and information about the energy and water use and carbon emissions of Australia’s buildings. To help learn more about the tool, an introductory live blog session took place from 12 noon Wednesday (22 September) on the Green Buildings Alive website. One of the key features of the site is an interactive “datalyser” made up of charts that draws on eight years of monthly data from over 50 office buildings all around Australia. The site has a wealth of information and interesting snippets on the performance of buildings such as: On older buildings “Why do the buildings that are more than 30 years old appear to perform well compared to newer buildings? Given that it’s World Green Building Week, it’s a sensible time to be asking some probing questions about what makes a building truly “green”.... 
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by Lynne Blundell FAVOURITES – 21 April 2010 – Carbon neutrality, the sustainable holy grail for buildings, is likely to remain just as elusive as that legendary object unless those who design and operate them up the ante. This was the message in a session on carbon emissions at the Australian Refrigeration and Building Services conference held in Sydney last week. Convener of the session, executive director of the Green Star rating system, Robin Mellon, told delegates that while many facilities managers had a carbon neutral target for their buildings by 2012, most had no budget and no idea how to achieve it. There were a variety of options for buildings to reduce emissions including balancing carbon released by using renewable energy or offsetting emissions through carbon credits or sequestration. But it was time to start thinking differently about the way buildings operate and to embrace technologies that allowed them to create energy, whether through co- or tri-generation... 
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by Lynne Blundell FAVOURITES – 26 August 2009 – Summer is on the way – well it certainly feels that way with Sydney last week experiencing the warmest August temperatures on record – and we haven’t even got to spring yet. And there’s a lot of talk of record high temperatures, low rainfall and more bushfires again this summer. But isn’t this how we always talk as winter comes to a close, our fear of drought and bushfire ever lurking? Well, if we do, these days there’s good reason – in the words of Bob Dylan, “The times they are a-changin’”. The statistics tell the story. The last few years in Australia have been dry, particularly in the southeast. In Melbourne in each of the past three years only about 450 mm of rain fell in the city centre, down from the long-term average of about 650 mm. Last summer’s catastrophic Victorian bushfires were a harsh warning of things to come, say scientists, with climate change causing increased incidence of extreme... 
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25 August 2010 – The NSW Government’s Solar Bonus Scheme will undergo a performance review after it reached its first milestone capacity of 50 megawatts. NSW Minister for Energy Paul Lynch said that the important terms of the Scheme, such as its length and the tariff rate, were locked into legislation. “If any changes are to be proposed, the legislation would need to be amended and we are on the record stating that any changes would not be applied retrospectively,” Mr Lynch said. “That means no customers who have already entered the Scheme will be affected by the review,” he said. Public submissions for the review will be received before 30 September, with the review to be tabled in Parliament towards the end of its next session. A further review of the Scheme will be undertaken by the Auditor-General early next year. The Total Environment Centre has praised the success of the Scheme with over 30,000 households taking part in the program so far. Executive director of TEC... 
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25 August 2010 – It’s not often that a building exceeds its targetd NABERS Energy rating, but the five-star building at 66 Waterloo Road, at Macquarie Park in Sydney has done just that after a workout by PC Thomas’  Team Catalyst consultancy. Develped by Stockland and designed Team Catalyst, the 10,000 square metre, five floor commercial office building originally set out to achieve a NABERS Energy rating of 4.5 stars within 12 months of normal operation by developer Stockland. But after 18 months of operation, the result was an impressive five stars, with a 58 per cent reduction of greenhouse gas emissions compared to the performance of a 1999 building. According to PC Thomas, the fast-tracked achievement came as a result of a number of late changes to the building’s design commissioned by Team Catalyst. “In late 2005, Stockland invited Team Catalyst to work with the project delivery team and contribute to ESD initiatives on the development,” Mr Thomas... 
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by Lynne Blundell 20 July 2010 – A small Australian manufacturing team is bucking the trend with its linear fluorescent light fitting, using what many consider outdated technology to achieve what it says is a 70 per cent reduction in lighting energy use and more effective lighting. Some large property owners, including Local Government Superannuation, are converting to the fitting. T5 linear fluorescent lighting is now pretty much the standard in commercial buildings in Australia, replacing the previous T8 fittings. Most people in the industry consider T5s to be superior to T8s, pointing out they use less power because fewer are needed per square metre and they have a longer lamp life. But Allan Turnbull, principal of light manufacturing company Envirolite begs to differ. His e1 light fitting, based on the T8 but with significant modifications and improvements, has been taken up by Local Government Superannuation for use in buildings across its entire portfolio. Optus also used... 
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By Tina Perinotto 19 August 2010 – Lend Lease’s Chris Carolan is a happy man right now. He’s heading up a new company venture that has the potential to transform the average Australian’s view of renewable energy, by making it safer, cheaper and easier to have a mini-solar energy plant on the roof of your home or workplace. In the process he may just be in time to rescue an industry that shows signs of heading down the same path as the Federal Government’s failed attic insulation rollout. The new company, Lend Lease Solar, is planning big things. With its main ‘channel partner’ in energy, AGL, the venture has instant access to up to three million households. That’s not bad for a start-up. See our story on the launch It has also teamed up with two solar panel suppliers, the US firm First Solar and the Norwegian firm REC, and plans to build a 100-strong team to roll out the business. Carolan says portfolio managers of commercial property have already been... 
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Brief – 11 August 2010 – A twin tower development in Singapore designed by designed by Denton Corker Marshall and Architects 61 has been awarded the Leadership in Energy & Environmental Design Core & Shell Platinum certification by the US Green Building Council (click here to view the case study). Developed by MPGA and, the “Asia Square” development, of about 185,800 square metres of office space, is expected to consume about 33 per cent less energy than most standard commercial buildings, saving close to 10 million kilowatts per year. It is also expected to save approximately 40 per cent or 65 million litres of water per year as compared to most standard commercial buildings. Asia Square’s project director Jeremy Choy says that the development’s sustainable features will provide a healthier working environment that will add value to business. “Asia Square has been designed for long-term sustainability and to create a healthier working environment for tenants... 
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11 August 2010 – A lift that generates kinetic energy is one of the features that helped the Asia Square twin tower development in Singapore win a Leadership in Energy & Environmental Design Core & Shell Platinum certification by the US Green Building Council. Developed by MPGA and designed by Denton Corker Marshall and Architects 61, the development located in the New Downtown section of Singapore’s Marina Bay will feature about 185,800 square metres (two million square feet) of office space as well as a 280 room hotel. Still under construction, one of Asia Square’s centrepiece features will be a natural light enhancing 100,000 square foot atrium called “The Cube,” featuring a 16 metre-high ceiling and extensive tree planting to help bring overall temperature down. In terms of energy savings, Asia Square is expected to consume about 33 per cent less energy than most standard commercial buildings, saving close to 10 million kilowatts per year. It is also expected to... 
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Brief – 10 August 2010 - Thermal imaging company Digital Mapping Australia, who specialise in thermal orthophoto technology (see our story here), will be hosting a presentation on the multi sensor approach to digital imagery in Sydney on 14 September. The presentation will give details on the use of LIDAR, thermal and Hyspex sensors in thermal orthophotos as well as introduce climate change applications used in thermal imagery. Analysis on light pollution, solar rooves, surface hydrology and building footprints caputred by thermal imagery will also be discussed in detail. Event details: Where: The Grace Hotel, Pinnaroo Room 5, 77 York Street, Sydney, NSW When: 14th September 2010 Time: 9.00am 12.00noon (morning tea provided) RSVP: By 1st September 2010 – bruce.mason@dimap.com.au  
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