6 May 2011 – Bluescope Steel last night won the Insurance Council of Australia Resilience Award Competition with an innovative home design, by Caroline Pidcock of Pidcock Architects, aimed at preparing Australian communities for extreme weather conditions... 
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By Tina Perinotto 6 May 2011 – Last issue Lynne Blundell conducted one of her exhaustive investigative reports on the tools that rate the building materials. This issue she looks at the building materials. If you want to know if timber is good because... 
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By Amy Kelly Michael Rayner is one of Brisbane’s most high profile architects and contributor to the city fabric. After the recent floods he has also come up with strong ideas about how to interact with the city’s “snaking river.” 6... 
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6 May 2011 – Fifteen members of the National Association of Women in Construction (NSW) and three women from Dexus answered a call in Nepal from the charity Habitat for Humanity and helped build the first 10 of 250 homes for female-headed households... 
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6 May 2011 – Following is an extract on PVC from the  New Zealand Ecolabelling Trust for its proposed licence criteria for interior lining products for buildings, published last year. Environmental and health concerns about PVC 9,10,11, There are... 
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5 May 2011 – The Minister for Climate Change and Energy Efficiency, Greg Combet, today joined the chorus of blame on solar energy for rising electricity prices when he announced solar credits would be pared back. The move he said in a media statement... 
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8 July – Ashak Nathwani wrapped up 33 years with Norman Disney & Young last month with a rousing farewell in Sydney at the Sergeants Mess in Chowder Bay and some reminiscing thanks to a Q and A session organised by his daughter Rehana.... 
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By Lyn Drummond 4 May 2011 – Developer Cameron Rosen, who has built a highly sustainable house as his family home in Sydney’s eastern suburbs, is on a six month national tour to promote the concept. Rosen built the family home for his wife... 
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By Lynne Blundell A second case study from the Australian Institute of Refrigeration Air Conditioning and Heating, conference, held in September in Melbourne, on the theme of  just how critical good facilities management is for achieving energy efficiency... 
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2 May 2011  – Jeremy Grantham is chief investment officer of GMO Capital which has more than US $106 billion in assets under management. In this article for The Oil Drum he catalogues many of the issues related to resource depletion. As the publication... 
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4 May 2011 – Aurecon engineering has won a major contract to work on one of the world’s largest solar projects – the $104.7 million Kogan Creek Solar Boost Project near Chinchilla, Queensland. CS Energy’s 750 megawatt coal-fired Kogan Creek... 
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3 May 2011 _ Dieter Helm, writing in Prospect magazine says peak oil is a furphy. Gas is on the rise and rising fast. Fossil fuels are not about to run out. That’s our biggest problem— and our big opportunity Peak oil—the idea that we have passed... 
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By Tina Perinotto 3 May 2011 – The Reserve Bank of Australia’s decision to leave interest rates on hold and resist inflationary pressures and a tightening labour market will improve building industry confidence,  at a time when workload expectations... 
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By Tina Perinotto 29 April 2011 – The NSW government has all but axed the solar bonus scheme, citing a major blowout in costs after high take-up by consumers. The scheme was officially suspended for two months from midnight Thursday, but NSW resources... 
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By Tina Perinotto 29 April 2011 – More than 200 people attended a “flicking of the switch” ceremony on Thursday morning at Investa’s Coca-Cola Place in North Sydney to send gas fired trigeneration energy into the Sydney grid. The... 
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28 April – A national poll shows a majority of people want the revenue raised by a carbon price to be used to boost clean energy, help households and rehabilitate the natural environment. Fifty-six per cent – including more than half the Coalition... 
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28 April – Developers and community groups could at last be able to see the impact of new developments thanks to a new free app, Walkabout3d from UK based Deliverance Software. The app’s 3d panoramas shows users how their surroundings may appear once... 
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By Maggie Macrae 21 April 2011 – Leading listed services company, Spotless, has not only become serious and seriously organised about environmental sustainability, but it has charged the former head of environmental sustainability at the ANZ Banking... 
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FAVOURITES: 9 September 2011. [Updated] The Zero Carbon Australia Stationary Energy Plan, published recently by Beyond Zero Emissions, has received widespread support from eminent scientists, academics, industry leaders and energy sector businesses. At... 
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By Tina Perinotto 20 April 2011 – Updated: The federal government has axed the $1billion tax breaks for green buildings program from the coming budget and put it up for consultation for 12 months after a storm of protests from the property industry... 
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20 April – Case study: A Perth building has earned the city’s first five star NABERS energy base building rating for a new office development. According to joint owners Hawaiian and Brookfield, the 18,000 square metre, nine level office tower at 235... 
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By Tina Perinotto 15 April 2011 – Paul Banister was one of several respondents who put in submissions to the NABERS Energy review currently under way on whether the rating should be extended to more than five stars, and if so, how. NABERS has come under... 
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By Lyn Drummond 20 April 2011 – Market mechanisms reduces emissions most effectively and cheaply, a report by the policy think tank, The Grattan Institute has found. Three market-based schemes have produced 40 per cent of Australia’s emissions reductions... 
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20 April 2011 – From Celsias: In September last year Gull New Zealand announced the introduction of its B5 blended biodiesel at its public service stations. That particular fuel consisted of a 5 per cent biodiesel and 95 per cent ordinary diesel blend. Now... 
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30 March 2011 – The Australian development industry’s environmental rating system, EnviroDevelopment, has launched the first ever national standards. They were announced at the Urban Development Institute of Australia’s national congress in Adelaide... 
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By Tina Perinotto 19 April 2011 – Property industry lobbyist Caryn Kakas was among the long line up of people today announced by the Gillard Government to sit on the Land Sector Working Group to examine the benefits and opportunities for the land... 
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19 April 2011 – The Australian Conservation Foundation and the University of Technology, Sydney today released a sustainability assessment of six Victorian seafood products. “Overfishing, bycatch and habitat damage mean commercial fishing can... 
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By Lyn Drummond 21 April 2011 – Ponder these questions with the Eco Innovators sustainability quiz for iPods, iPhones and iPads. The Eco Innovators app is a quiz designed to test general environmental knowledge by navigating through three rounds of... 
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23 February 2011 – The weather is turning bad, with disastrous consequences for food supplies, prices and political stability. Russia, Brazil and most worryingly China, are facing food shortages and soaring prices. Writing powerfully on this topic in... 
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By Tina Perinotto 15 April 2011 – It could be a tale of two cities. Again. Sydney City Council last week rejected the tender for its deep sea plunge into the brave new world of large scale trigeneration – the gas-sourced, low-carbon energy that it... 
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