By Tina Perinotto -Welcome to 2010, and to our readers, our contributors and to our wonderful supporters and sponsors. Get ready for a rough ride in the year ahead. After so many great signs last year on climate change action, a late and powerful swing to the sceptics halted the emissions trading ...Read More > >

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 ...Read More > >

GPT Group has achieved top position in a world survey of the world’s best environmental performers among property companies, closely followed by Stockland in third place and other Australian property companies also scoring at the top of the league. GPT Group scored 86 out of 100 in the inaugural Environmental Real ...Read More > >

27 January 2010 - The Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors took part in CONSTRU India in Mumbai in December 2009 with a presentation on "Challenges and Opportunities in Green Buildings in India". Following are highlight from that presentation. Sachin Sandhir, Managing Director and Country Head of RICS India stressed ...Read More > >

By Tina Perinotto Leading Australian climate scientist Andy Pitman has slammed the misuse of an error in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report and the so-called “email scandal” to discredit the science on climate change, and the IPCC report in particular. The IPCC error, revealed last week by New ...Read More > >

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 ...Read More > >

The forestry industry and union have been stirring up controversy on the way Green Star ratings account for timber sustainability certifications. Now Lynne Blundell looks at the underlying sustainability of timber and how it stacks up against other materials.The debate over which construction material is the most sustainable – timber, ...Read More > >

1 January 2010 - The Australian Greens have proposed a compromise deal to break the impasse on the carbon pollution reduction scheme. On the table is the proposal originally made by Ross Garnaut, author of the Garnaut Climate Change Review for a two year carbon price fixed at $20 a tonne ...Read More > >

By Tina Perinotto The Centre for Sustainability Leadership is searching for the next 25 people who can change the world - or try to. On offer is a full scholarship - worth $15,000 - for an intensive seven month course that will teach the participants leadership skills in 19 core competencies including ...Read More > >

by Lynne Blundell FAVOURITES - 15 July 2010 - 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 ...Read More > >

From the Guardian - 30 December 2009 - Mark Lynas was an eye witness at Copenhagen when China flexed it's muscle, insulted US President Barack Obama and single-handedly stopped a world agreement on climate change. Here's what he wrote on 22 December. Copenhagen was a disaster. That much is agreed. ...Read More > >

From The Economist- 4 January 2010 - an ever-larger proportion of sewage is being used as a raw material for energy generation. Germans already process about 60 per cent of their faeces this way, and the Czechs, Britons and Dutch are close behind (see chart). One company involved in this ...Read More > >

By Tina Perinotto - FAVOURITES: 6 April 2010 -Property owners can raise their NABERS energy rating to 4 stars  by better management practices and no major capital investment, the Warren Centre for Advanced Engineering at Sydney University has found in its Low Energy High Rise Building Research Report. The project, which called ...Read More > >

By Tina Perinotto 21 December 2009 - Australia’s urban survival strategies in 2050 might include cities whose urban growth boundaries are at the centre, vertical cities that produce energy and food at the top for those below, or cities built from Noosa to Geelong. At least if the architects, engineers even the ...Read More > >

COP-15 - the conference is over, and so is a lot of good will. Here are some of the reactions: Australian Conservation Foundation, executive director Don Henry: “Strong national laws to cut greenhouse pollution and grow clean energy jobs are more important than ever after the Copenhagen climate talks ended in ...Read More > >

By Tina Perinotto 18 December 2009 - Professor Rob Adams AM was this month awarded the prestigious Sidney Luker Memorial Medal for 2009 by the NSW Planning Institute of Australia at a ceremony on 10 December. Professor Adams, director, design and urban environment at the City of Melbourne, was recognised for the ...Read More > >

In 2010,  let's get greener By Tina Perinotto Greg Paramor, one of the property industry’s golden men, has gone a distinct shade of green. His new Palm Beach house in Sydney’s northern beaches will be off the energy grid and be self sufficient in water. And it will have no air-conditioning. For Paramor, ...Read More > >

By Lynne Blundell FAVOURITES - 17 December 2009 - With November bringing record temperatures across much of southern and inland Australia, bushfires are well and truly back in the headlines. And after last summer’s catastrophic Victorian bushfires, awareness of building design and safety in bushfire-risk areas has never been greater. While there ...Read More > >

From CNN - 17 December 2009- Could China be the world's green champion? It seems unlikely. The vast nation is typically portrayed as a dire threat to the planet, with a booming population and a commitment to that dirtiest of fuels -- coal. But all that might be about to change. In ...Read More > >

BRIEF - 15 December 2009 - Monsanto has beaten Shell and the American Petroleum Institute to win The 2009 Angry Mermaid award for worst corporate climate lobbyist. The biotech giant pulled in 38 per cent of the vote, putting it clearly ahead of a field of eight pushing for its Roundup ...Read More > >

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 - ...Read More > >

From Senator Christine Milne - 15 December 2009 - As we head into the final frantic days of Copenhagen, all the work has boiled down to draft negotiating texts for the two streams of negotiations - the Kyoto stream and the non-Kyoto stream (known as KP and LCA, or long-term ...Read More > >

COP 15 - 15 December 2009 - Giles Parkinson, writing in Business Spectator today said Climate Change Minister Penny Wong “pretty much told the audience what they wanted to hear, saying that the switch to clean energy might not have been as fast as people wanted, but it would be ...Read More > >

Sustainability in a company like Bovis Lend Lease needs to permeate every nook and cranny of the business, writes Tina Perinotto “You can have a passion about the planet, but still not know what to do,” According to Ann Austin, sustainability manager for Bovis Lend Lease. Austin has been with Bovis (or ...Read More > >

14 December 2009 - Professor Steffan Lehmann, holder of the UNESCO Chair in Sustainable Development for the Asia-Pacific addressed the COP-15 summit, calling on the need for an environmentally conscious design focus within architectural teaching to better equip students to establish sustainable design principles. In his address entitled  "Cities and ...Read More > >

BRIEF: 1 December 2009 - Clean Up Australia Chairman and Founder Ian Kiernan yesterday (10 December 2009) joined Auburn and Parramatta City Councils on Sydney’s west for the launch of Streamline, a new sustainability initiative targeting the business community. The collaboration between the two councils has already engaged 45 business that ...Read More > >

FAVOURITES: 11 December 2009 - Sydney could soon have its own amazing Frank Gehry building, with today’s announcement that the UTS would engage the master architect, designer of the famous Bilbao Guggenheim Museumand the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles (pictured) in talks over a new creation for  the ...Read More > >

BRIEF - 10 December 2009 - As the political row on the emissions trading scheme continues the Energy Efficiency Council has seized on commitment by the major political parties to save energy and called on the Federal Government to release the $200 million it has set aside for the purpose. These ...Read More > >

AWARDS -  9 December 2009 - Stockland was named Sustainable Company of the Year at the Australian Sustainability Awards announced in Melbourne today. And Dyesol, a supplier of equipment materials and components for dye solar cell technology, has won the Sustainable Small Company of the Year Award, for its innovative technology ...Read More > >

EVENTS: 8 December 2009 - The Fifth Estate columnist Michael Mobbs was one of the winners in last night’s awards for the 100 most influential people in Sydney, presented by the Sydney Morning Herald's Sydney Magazine. Other winners in the environmental category were director general of the NSW Department of Environment, ...Read More > >