From the New York Times - 10 August 2009 -  GDP measures activity not benefit, like a cheque book that records all activity, including repairs to damaged property. It tells you nothing about whether you are better off this year or worse. And the value of natural capital, such as drying your washing in the sun, or the lost New Orleans wetlands, carved up for development, that could have prevented some of the $82 billion of damages from Hurricane Katrina, is not counted at all, argues Eric Zencey  Read more >>>  
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5 August 2009 – The Property Council of Australia has released for public consultation a new do-it-yourself guide to sustainability and corporate responsibility for property companies. Launched by Assistant Treasurer Senator Nick Sherry, A Guide to Corporate Responsibility Reporting in the Property Sector, will standardise the metrics the industry uses to report corporate responsibility, according to Property Council chief executive officer, Peter Verwer. “It provides a simple, voluntary, entry level template for property companies that can be easily customised to the needs of individual corporations,” Mr Verwer said. “While the rules for financial accounting are (relatively) well accepted, there is no cut-out-and-keep guide to reporting for the property sector. “This guide will revolutionise corporate responsibility (CR) reporting in our industry, and ensure non-financial performance is transparent, meaningful and comparable,” Mr Verwer said. The move comes ahead of an... 
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Federal Treasurer Wayne Swan with the Allsafe team By Lynne Blundell One company that is bucking the trend of business caution and retraction right now is Townsville-based business, Allsafe Energy Efficient Products, poised to create hundreds of new green jobs across the country. The company has boomed on the back of the Federal Government’s rebates for insulation and solar hot water systems, recently opening a new administration centre in Brisbane and about to open a string of franchises. The opening of the new centre was a feel-good moment for Treasurer Wayne Swan, who spends much of his time talking about rising unemployment and tough economic conditions these days. This story was the opposite, with Allsafe’s expansion expected to create jobs both here and in New Zealand. When opening the centre Mr Swan said he was positive about the creation of jobs through the government’s energy efficient homes package. “Jobs are being created everywhere … we should all celebrate... 
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by Lynne Blundell As the effects of global economic conditions continue to impact across Australian office markets, with rising vacancies and increasing incentives, two government departments in Melbourne are taking the opportunity to strike new property deals and move to more sustainable buildings. The Australian Taxation Office (ATO) and Melbourne Water are both engaging property consultants to find larger premises that allow them to amalgamate current offices and that also meet the government’s sustainability requirements. The ATO has appointed property consultant United Group Services to run an expressions of interest campaign to find new 25,000 square metre headquarters. An ATO spokesperson told TFE the only stipulation for the new space was that it was located in the Melbourne CBD, which could extend as far as the new Dockland developments. In terms of sustainability, the ATO would be seeking a building that reflected current government policy and benchmarks. “Currently the Department... 
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A dizzying array grants by Russell Fortmeyer… FAVOURITES – 18 July 2009 -The Australian federal and state governments offer a wide range of grants for sustainable design, but weeding through the mix can be a confusing exercise… As much as the private sector thinks it can do just fine without government support, the dirty secret of so much innovative building technology is that it owes its very existence to public subsidies. Nearly every country’s solar photovoltaics industry is driven by government subsidies—when the grant matching stops, so do sales. The Australian federal and state governments offer a dizzying array of grants and alternative funding mechanisms to support sustainable design. Institutions, particularly the universities, and private property developers are increasingly using these to fund innovative things like black water treatment plants with sewer mining and solar thermal cooling systems, in addition to more conventional green approaches like... 
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By Tina Perinotto - 24 July 2009 – Investa has established a leading reputation for greening its existing building stock. Now it wants to share its knowledge through its initiative, the Investa Sustainability Institute, launched on Wednesday. . According to Craig Roussac, Investa’s General Manager, Sustainability, Safety & Environment, the Institute will create a platform for deeper research into what makes a property tick more sustainably and it will be available to “everyone and anyone.” He said the Institute would collaborate with research, academics, industry, professional bodies and government organisations to better understand the processes and results of greening existing buildings. The move followed a growing demand to share results of environmentally friendly work on buildings, Mr Roussac said. “It came about because over the years we’ve had a lot of researchers wanting to get hold of our data and lamenting that they couldn’t. “We realised we could partner... 
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By Tina Perinotto The property industry might be in the clutches of the global financial crisis but this hasn’t stopped the biggest commercial property owners – and many not so big – digging deep to in order to qualify for a 50:50 green building fund grant from the Federal Government to improve the energy efficiency of existing buildings. Most of the well known names were there – AMP, ISPT, Abacus, GPT and Mirvac, Valad, Westpac and FKP – claiming the maximum or close to the maximum grant of $500,000 – in the first two rounds of grants. But one property owner stood out – Commonwealth Property Office Fund. Not only did it pull out the stops to claim funding for three of its buildings but it managed to lodge a successful case to snare a special grant of nearly $3 million in order to install a wind array scheme on the roof of its 385 Bourke Street, Melbourne. Bronwyn Williams, manager, Green Building Fund, which is being administered by AusIndustry,the program... 
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by Lynne Blundell Amanda McCluskey is a woman on the move – literally. When she did this interview with The Fifth Estate she was walking between engagements, on her way to an international corporate governance forum, and later attending a forum on the United Nations Prinicples for Sustainable Investing.This is how she likes it – fast moving and thinking on her feet. It is no surprise that McCluskey, sustainability manager for Colonial First State Global Funds Management, ended up as a sustainability crusader. Passionate about environmental issues since she was a child (she chose to write about the Exxon Valdez oil spoil for one of her first primary school projects) she went on to study environmental economics and international relations at the University of Sydney. Instead of attending her graduation ceremony, she joined a protest outside the AGM of a prominent Australian company that was performing badly on environmental issues. “It was a very exciting thing to do. I was a ratbag... 
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By Tina Perinotto With climate change, “maps are political bombshells”. The speaker is Donovan Burton, head of local government and urban planning for Climate Risk Pty Ltd. Burton is talking about the type of maps institutional property infrastructure owners are now commissioning to assess their specific risk in the medium term with climate change. A general climate change map produced, by organisations such as CSIRO, that shows the potential rise in water levels, storm surges or rainfall patterns can be misleading if it not tailored to the specific locations and requirements of the client, Burton says. “They might see lines drawn in the sand and make a decision without looking at the inherent uncertainties associated with it. “It impacts on property values.” On 29 July Climate Risk will host a high level conference in North Sydney for professionals in the insurance, legal and infrastructure fields to better understand the risks that are emerging for infrastructure, in particular... 
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16 July 2009 – If you are wondering about the power of the coal miners and the other giant polluters in running the emissions trading scheme debate, this article from Crikey’s Canberra correspondent Bernard Keane, earlier this month is worth putting on the record… Amid the email-related shenanigans of the weekend before last, one of the more extraordinary articles in the entire climate change debate appeared in The Weekend Australian. It was, in essence, an attack on, and warning to, the Australian Conservation Foundation and the Australian Climate Justice Program by News Ltd business writer Matthew Stevens, on behalf of some of the country’s biggest polluters. The ACF and the ACJP had got up the noses of Boral, BlueScope Steel, Caltex, Rio Tinto, Woodside and Xstrata by noting the remarkable disparity between the apocalyptic rhetoric coming from those companies about the impact of the Government’s “no-polluter-left-behind” emissions trading scheme, and... 
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By Tina Perinotto 13 July 2009 – Japanese developer, Sekisui House’s recent majority purchase of Australian residential developer Payce Consolidated, promises a long awaited sustainable shakeup of the local multi-housing industry in Australia if all goes according to plan. The company has bought a 75 per cent stake in the Payce’s existing development pipeline at Waterfront in Homebush in Sydney’s inner west, which still has another 1900 apartments to be developed as well as 173 hectares at Ripley Valley near Ipswich in Queensland, together worth around $190 million and replacing Babcock & Brown as Payce’s joint venture partner. But in separate deals Sekisui is understood to be buying up additional parcels of land throughout Sydney and Queensland. Payce Consolidated sales manager, Jim Keats, told The Fifth Estate on Friday that it was early days and that the company was still investigating what would be considered the appropriate level of sustainable investment for Australian... 
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by Lynne Blundell FAVOURITES – 4 July 2009 – The merit of investing in sustainable buildings would seem to be a no brainer – lower energy consumption, good design and, hopefully, a more pleasant, productive workplace. But for one of the most sophisticated property sectors in the world where more than 70 per cent of institutional grade commercial property is in listed trusts, the Australian investment sector has been slow to target sustainable property as a specialist area of investment. There is just one standalone fund dedicated to sustainable buildings – the Drapac Sustainability Fund, and it contains only one 6 Star building in Melbourne. On the listed side, while there are a number of property funds with a sustainable overlay, there are none purely focused on green buildings. So is this a sign that the investment sector doesn’t believe in the earnings potential of sustainable property? According to Adam Murchie, director of capital and funds with Drapac, the problem... 
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by Tina Perinotto Think of it like this: 3000 commercial buildings throughout Australia – a total of 11 million square metres of space. Get these using less water, less energy and making less waste, and that’s not a bad set of environmental outcomes you can credit to your job. Add the ability to influence 1500 property professionals and associated staff and this particular job offer starts to look irresistible. At least for Anita Mitchell, it did. Even though it meant leaving Bovis Lend Lease where she was working under the tutelage of Graham Carter, a man she describes as one of great quiet achievers in the engineering design heros of sustainable buildings. Today, as Jones Lang LaSalle’s Head of Energy and Sustainability Services, Australasia and Strategy, Asia Pacific, Mitchell is well into her mandate to influence not only the risk profile of client portfolios but the “DNA” as she puts it of how business is done in one of the “big four” commercial real estate agencies... 
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By Tina Perinotto FAVOURITES – 13 July 2009 - Japanese developer, Sekisui House’s recent majority purchase of Australian residential developer Payce Consolidated, promises a long awaited sustainable shakeup of the local multi-housing industry in Australia if all goes according to plan. The company has bought a 75 per cent stake in the Payce’s existing development pipeline at Waterfront in Homebush in Sydney’s inner west, which still has another 1900 apartments to be developed as well as 173 hectares at Ripley Valley near Ipswich in Queensland, together worth around $190 million and replacing Babcock & Brown as Payce’s joint venture partner. But in separate deals Sekisui is understood to be buying up additional parcels of land throughout Sydney and Queensland. Payce Consolidated sales manager, Jim Keats, told The Fifth Estate on Friday that it was early days and that the company was still investigating what would be considered the appropriate level of sustainable investment... 
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by Nicola Woodward - 21 April 2009 – Accelerated Depreciation is a core platform of the property industry as a way to green buildings – but there are major flaws in this approach and better ways to achieve the desired outcomes…. “Green depreciation” is a term that has recently been coined for providing accelerated tax depreciation for property related capital expenditure that provides a green payback. Tax depreciation is a tax deferral mechanism that already provides capital allowance deductions for refurbishment works as well as write offs for any plant or building items that are demolished or disposed of as part of the project. The rationale for the introduction of green depreciation has been this: there is an environmental need for existing buildings to be brought into the “green” fold but there is a cost premium in refurbishing an existing building to green standards over traditional design. There is an existing framework for providing tax deferrals for capital... 
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By Lynne Blundell The Climate Institute report released on 25 May shows that renewable energy projects under construction or planned in response to the proposed emissions trading scheme could create a boom in jobs. The research shows that nationally $31 billion worth of clean renewable energy investments are underway or are planned, which will create over 26,000 jobs, the vast majority in regional Australia. “The good news is that taking action on climate change will create tens of thousands of jobs, many of them in regional Australia, as we shift gears to a less polluting and more efficient economy,” Climate Institute CEO, John Connor. “This research shows that if climate change and renewable energy legislation passes through Federal Parliament without being weakened it will help drive the industrial shift that can put Australia at the front of a global renewable energy boom, which already employs more people worldwide than those directly employed in oil and gas,” The findings... 
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Businesses are being urged to join the green building revolution and boost their productivity through a new joint-funded Rudd and Brumby Government public awareness campaign and a dedicated website. Building and Plumbing Industry Commissioner and Chair of the World Green Buildings Council, Tony Arnel, said the campaign would help businesses improve their profitability by thinking green when leasing or refurbishing offices. “The CSIRO estimates that lost productivity from poor office environments costs Australia up to $21 billion a year,” Arnel said. “Green offices make commercial sense because they create a healthier, more productive workplace and employees take less sick leave.” Arnel launched the joint State and Federal government funded campaign with the chief executive of Sustainability Victoria, Anita Roper, at 500 Bourke Street, Melbourne. The building at 500 Bourke Street has undergone one of Australia’s largest sustainability refurbishments over the last two years. Features... 
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The Re-tooling for Climate Change program is one of the three elements of the $240 million Clean Business Australia initiative. The other elements are the Climate Ready Program and the Green Building Fund. The Re-tooling for Climate Change program ($75 million over four years) will help small and medium sized Australian manufacturers reduce their environmental footprint, through projects that improve the energy and/or water efficiency of their production processes. The program provides grants of between $10,000 and $500,000, up to a maximum of half of the cost of each project. The program opened for application on 12 September 2008. The following are the dates for the application rounds: Round 1 – closed 20 October 2008 Round 2 – closed 16 February 2009 Round 3 – open till 1 June 2009 Round 4 – open till 24 August 2009 Round 5 – open till 30 November 2009 Round 6 – open till 22 March 2010 For further information contact the AusIndustry hotline on 13 28... 
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By Tina Perinotto… In a sign that the sustainable building industry is coming of age,  developer and energy consultancy Szencorp has revealed a “warts and all” report on its refurbished 6 star Green Star building in South Melbourne. According to Peter Szental, managing director of Szencorp, (a TFE sponsor) the Building Use Study benchmarked the premises in the top 4 per cent for overall building performance in Australia. But although the report found tenants were not happy with the air-conditioning system, they were forgiving because of the building’s “green” credentials. Mr Szental said said that while the building at 40 Albert Road, South Melbourne,  achieved excellent results in a number of areas including design, image, and perceived productivity and health, the study uncovered that 86 per cent of staff were unhappy with the temperature within the building. The results also showed that tenants’ reported perceived productivity was in the top 9 per cent of Australian... 
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by Lynne Blundell In a deal it is hailing as evidence of its leasing expertise in a tough market, Stockland has signed up Shell Development Australia as the major tenant in its new sustainable office building in Perth ahead of building completion. The building, 2 Victoria Avenue, is Perth’s first to be awarded 6 Star Green Star Office Design v2 rating. Shell Development Australia, currently located in Perth’s QB1 building at 250 St Georges Terrace, will rent two thirds of the building, or 5500 square metres for eight years. Stockland Commercial Property CEO John Schroder said: “We are pleased to confirm our long-term partnership with Shell. “This is another example of our commitment to attracting blue-chip tenants via our continued focus on active management and sustainable design.” But how prominent is the sustainability factor in the current tough economic climate? A company spokesperson for Stockland said it was increasingly difficult to attract tenants in the present market: “We... 
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Sustainable property gets a helping hand. Check what’s on offer: 2009/10 Estuary and Coastal Management Grant Programs The main objectives of the programs are to improve coastal and estuarine health through the development and implementation of management plans. Go to the NSW environment department website for more details and application forms. The Water for Life Water Education Projects Funding Package. This funding will support organisations across greater Sydney to deliver leading practice water education projects. Grants of up to $50,000 are available for eligible organisations to conduct water education projects that encourage water efficiency. More details can be found at the NSW government website. NRM Grants List The SCCG has produced a Natural Resource Management Grants list that is now available from its website. The grants list details funding that is available under a variety of grant programs for councils, individuals, businesses and communities to help develop solutions... 
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By Lynne Blundell Financial analysts may well be the dinosaurs of a sustainable world. They are holding back the global drive for more sustainable practices by failing to factor in sustainability issues when valuing companies. As a result, there is a serious mispricing of companies and the buildings they occupy. For this to change, companies must find a way to push sustainability onto the analysts’ agenda. These were some of the strongest messages to emerge from the Green Cities 09 conference. Held in Brisbane in early March, the Green Cities conference was jointly organised by the Green Building Council of Australia and The Property Council of Australia and brought together a vast range of property professionals and sustainability experts. Amanda McCluskey, head of sustainability & responsible investment, Colonial First State Global Asset Management, told attendees at the conference that unless the investment sector changed some of its traditional reward systems and ways of thinking... 
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[UPDATE 14 November 2009] : 5 November 2009 – Green buildings have many benefits, everyone agrees. But now investors have proof that green buildings also bring in bigger dollars – a premium of up to five per cent on comparable non-green buildings in fact – thanks to new research in the United States commissioned by the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors and presented last week in Sydney at the joint Australian Property Institute-Australian Direct Property Investment Association conference, Profitable Sustainability in Property. [Full report soon.] In an ironic twist, the research also found that after governments the next biggest occupiers of green buildings were oil companies. According to RICS the research, Doing Well By Doing Good, by Nils Kok and Piet Eichholtz of Maastricht University and John Quigley of the University of California, Berkley, proves what many people have believed anecdotally – that green buildings are worth investing in. RICS chief economist Simon... 
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