Good ideas are Go – and Green By Tina Perinotto Move over Sydney’s Festival of Dangerous Ideas (Opera House, 3-4 October), this green urban revolution is getting way more interesting –  generating safe ideas (for the planet) but ideas that are also exciting, fun and creative. OK, for some old dinosaurs there could be some danger too. In Melbourne, the city council’s urban planning guru, Rob Adams, reckons that with clever thinking and no new infrastructure you can fit another 2.4 million people along existing tram and bus routes.— on only 6 per cent of the 1.5 million metropolitan sites examined, leaving 94 per cent development free. Now that’s certainty. See the full story here. Also in Melbourne, a most interesting crowd of 11 people has emerged, with a website called Urban Coup (don’t you love the name?) and its logo is, yes, a chicken coop, to signify they want to build themselves a housing development with a big difference —  new land titles, shared garden... 
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by Tina Perinotto 3 September 2009 - Australian needs to start shaping the new Green Economy now, according to a paper released last week by the Total Environment Centre’s business engagement arm, Green Capital. “Australian politics is dominated by outdated arguments about climate change, and mired in ad-hoc quick fix solutions which fail to connect the dots.  We’re also falling behind the debate about green economic solutions which is taking place overseas,” said TEC director Jeff Angel. “The green economy isn’t going to miraculously grow itself. It’s high time Australia’s political parties showed us the leadership we urgently need.” The paper, Australia’s New Green Economy equation: Can environment + enterprise = a sustainable future? points to evidence of The New Green Economy taking shape around the world including: The US State of Washington (with an economy similar in size to NSW) assigning a leading economic agency to develop its “green economy strategy framework”... 
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By Tina Perinotto If the property industry had any doubt that its world was about to be irrevocably changed, then those doubts were dispelled at ‘The Carbon Obligation – Everything you need to know if you buy, sell, lease, develop or manage property’ seminar, hosted by the Property Council of Australia in Sydney last Thursday. In a sweeping wrap up of the events massing on the horizon, the seminar’s panel line up did a thorough demolition job on any lingering hopes that the property industry might soon wake up as if from a bad dream and everything would get back to normal. On the panel were Romilly Madew of the Green Building Council, Rowan Griffin of Colonial First State Global Asset Management, Felicity Rourke of Deacons, Kevin George of Jones Lang LaSalle and Garielle Kuipper of Investa. Opening the proceedings was the Environment Minister Peter Garrett and facilitator was the PCA’s chief executive officer, Peter Verwer. Setting the scene for the new business environment was... 
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By Lynne Blundell The head of the world’s carbon trading association has urged Australian businesses and consumers to focus on the benefits of an emissions trading scheme and to make some decisions ahead of the international meeting in Copenhagen. Henry Derwent,  chief executive officer of the International Emissions Trading Association, was in Australia last week to talk with government and business about the impending introduction of the Australian ETS and to offer some tips from the European experience. Formerly the international climate change director for the UK Government and the man responsible for overseeing the introduction of Britain’s ETS scheme in 2005, he had a lot of useful advice to pass on. Mr Derwent spoke to media representatives at a joint conference with KPMG last week about the implications of delaying the ETS scheme in Australia, emphasising the importance of certainty for business. He said the rise in energy prices was inevitable and putting a definite price... 
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Have a conversation – but get to the point By Tina Perinotto Have you noticed? The word-du-jour is “conversation.” Suddenly everyone is talking about starting a conversation. From architects to councils to planners. The Built Environment Meets Parliament conference in Canberra this month was all about conversations. NSW Planning Minister Kristina Keneally was on a similar tack, as was the Sydney office of Allen Jack + Cottier who recently staged a  jam-packed “conversation” about greening the city streets. Now the built environment’s Gang of Five who organised BEMP – the  Association of Consulting Engineers, Australian Institute of Architects, Green Building Council, Planning Institute and Property Council -  are going to thrust the conversation out to the broader field. Within days you will be able to log on to the wonderfully named bangthetable.com and have your two bob’s worth on how you think the future of Australia should pan out. Planning wise. And using... 
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by Lynne Blundell Despite widespread criticism, some innovative designs are starting to emerge in the Rudd Government’s schools construction program, with the private and independent schools sector making the most of the funding opportunity to push through concepts that may otherwise have been stymied by red tape. Chris Johnson, former Government Architect and chair of the Design Review Panel for the Building the Education Revolution (BER) program, told The Fifth Estate that there are some very exciting and innovative designs coming before the review panel. “Most public schools are doing fairly standard designs but some of the private schools are using the opportunity to create buildings with some very exciting and innovative aspects,” said Johnson. The tight deadlines for applying for funding meant schools were streamlining their internal design approval processes with some positive outcomes as a result. “At times the normal processes contain so many checks and balances that... 
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By Tina Perinotto Peter Verwer is on a roll. When it comes to the environment, Verwer, who heads up the Property Council, on behalf of the country’s biggest developers and property owners, is unblinking. Revolution? No problem. Transforming the built environment to survive climate change will require the biggest revolution since the industrial age – precincts that generate their own power, mine their own waste and collect and process their water, he says. It will involve creating smart grids that take green power and feed it straight into existing brown [coal fired power] grids. It will mean rebuilding everything you see out there, he says, waving to the city streets outside his Sydney office window. What climate change will do for the built environment, he says, is create “yet another urban revolution.” “Revolutions are nothing scary for the property industry. They’ve presided over every revolution. Ultimately it’s the built environment which houses all social activity.” The... 
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by Lynne Blundell 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 weather events and an alarming decline in... 
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By Tina Perinotto We all know that throwing away the partitions, carpets, furniture and sometimes even the stairwell that’s been punched through to the next floor in office building at the end of each lease is a big waste of resources. Hard to believe it happens.  But it’s all part of the Make Good clauses in a commercial lease, that force the tenant to return the premises fairly closely to the condition they were at the start of the lease. This might even mean removing an energy efficient piece of equipment so that the tenancy matches the rest of the building, old and inefficient as it might be. Now the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors has produced a document designed to avoid such waste. Entitled Greening Make Good, the document is a companion piece to a new guide for green leases, a Guide to Environmental Performance Clauses. (Contact Info@rics.org.au for information about the guides.) Both reports have been produced by RIC’s sustainability committee, comprising chair... 
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By Tina Perinotto We all know that throwing away the partitions, carpets, furniture and sometimes even the stairwell that’s been punched through to the next floor in office building at the end of each lease is a big waste of resources. Hard to believe it happens.  But it’s all part of the Make Good clauses in a commercial lease, that force the tenant to return the premises fairly closely to the condition they were at the start of the lease. This might even mean removing an energy efficient piece of equipment so that the tenancy matches the rest of the building, old and inefficient as it might be. Now the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors has produced a document designed to avoid such waste. Entitled Greening Make Good, the document is a companion piece to a new guide for green leases, a Guide to Environmental Performance Clauses. (Contact Info@rics.org.au for information about the guides.) Both reports have been produced by RIC’s sustainability committee, comprising chair... 
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By Tina Perinotto For chief executive officer of the Australian Institute of Architects, David Parken, the reaction from the audience, the Canberra bureaucrats and the organisers to the Built Environment Meets Parliament conference on 12 August, could not have been more encouraging. “We were very pleased with the level of engagement from everyone and that spurred us on to continue that dialogue and hope to see the same in the lead up to BEMP next year – so we have the start to a conversation,” Parken told The Fifth Estate after the conference. Held jointly by the Association of Consulting Engineers Australia, the, Australian Institute of Architects, the Green Building Council of Australia, the Planning Institute of Australia and the Property Council of Australia, the event featured a long parade of politicians (see program below) dipping in and out of the conference, minders in tow, keen to show they cared about cities. It’s about time. Under the Howard Government, there was... 
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Consultation draft July 2009 Report to Built Environment Meets Parliament (BEMP) Partners by The Allen Consulting Group From Chapter 1 Introduction This project’s aim is to provide a model, principles-based framework about the shape and form that strategic plans for cities and our communities should take. These are provided in a form that would be suitable for adoption by the Council of Australian Governments (COAG) or substantially assist consideration of this framework by COAG. The Built Environment Meets Parliament (BEMP) partners have commissioned the project. The BEMP partners include: • Association of Consulting Engineers Australia • Australian Institute of Architects • Green Building Council of Australia • Planning Institute of Australia • Property Council of Australia It is expected that this project will be an input to discussion at the BEMP event to be held in Canberra on 12 August 2009. Planning change and changes to planning Governments, businesses, community groups,... 
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It’s a war out there…and there’s money to be made by Tina Perinotto 13 August 2009 – Walking into his new job on Tuesday was Peter Briggs, one of Australia’s leading environmental lawyers, to take up a partnership with Freehills, after around 10 years at Clayton Utz, also as partner. It’s a sign of the times. In the middle of the GFC, while law firms and accountants quietly hemorrhage staff connected to the old economy, in the green economy they’re hiring. The very same economy that the some Opposition members are trying to hold back with all their might. Whatever its timing and eventual shape, the carbon pollution reduction scheme is now a certainty. Business at the top end is starting to slowly understand that the implications will be huge. And they need advice. By default, as our writer James Paton has discovered in his story Kevin Rudd has handed the big law firms and accountants their very own stimulus package. PKF partner Tony Rose told The Fifth Estate in a... 
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by James Paton It may not be part of the Rudd Government’s plan, but laws designed to tackle climate change are turning into a highly welcome economic stimulus for lawyers and accountants. While a number of these professional firms are shooing redundancy victims out the back door, inside they are strengthening specialist teams to deal with the impact of what one source said was a regulatory change that would be as big as the introduction of the GST. Everyone agrees the proposal to reduce greenhouse gas emissions has huge implications. “It’s a very significant business opportunity for all firms simply because the legislation is far reaching and because the legislation is complex,” said Grant Anderson, a Melbourne-based partner at the law firm Allens Arthur Robinson. “It will have a transformative effect as Australia moves from a high carbon economy to a low carbon economy.” Firms have published stacks of reports on their Web sites, created a mini boom in seminars and made key... 
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By Tina Perinotto - 20 August 2009 – Green groups have applauded the passage of the renewable energy target legislation in Parliament today, but say compensation to big polluters means consumers will be the brunt of the costs and the polluters will get windfall gains. Greens senator Christine Milne said the Government and Opposition voted against an Australian Greens amendment that “would have prevented polluters from making windfall profits thanks to their exemption from the renewable energy target. “Economic models predict that wholesale electricity prices will fall thanks to the renewable energy target because renewable energy technologies shave off some of the massive price spikes that occur at times of peak demand,” Ms Milne said. “The exemptions in the bill mean that polluters will benefit from the predicted lower wholesale electricity price without having to pay for the installation of the renewable energy that reduced the price.” The Australian Conservation Foundation... 
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By Tina Perinotto - 21 August 2009 – For a “former feminist theologian with a funny accent” Kristina Keneally sure knows how to hold the rapt attention of the property industry’s core players. As NSW planning minister for nearly 12 months, the industry generally acknowledges – as it’s done with every planning minister for the past 10 years – that she’s been “doing OK”. Making reforms,  working on slashing red tape and speeding up approvals. Creating the “country’s best planning system,” as she put it. Just what the property doctor ordered you might think. But for Property Council members and guests crammed into the Hilton Hotel planning breakfast last Thursday morning, the frustration that lies just beneath the surface of the always polite, ever-smiling industry, managed to break through, thanks to panelist Sylvia Hrovartin As a planner with a postcode’s worth of housing development under her belt (as PCA NSW chief executive Ken Morrison put it)... 
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Two winners of the prestigious Australian Award for Urban Design were announced last week (11 August) at the Hyatt Hotel in Canberra in a prelude to the Built Environment Meets Parliament conference. They were the Paddington Reservoir Gardens, designed by Tonkin Zulaikha Greer Architects with James Mather Delaney Design and City of Sydney and City of Melbourne and Victorian Department of Transport for Transforming Australian Cities. A Commendation was made to the City of Sydney for Sustainable Sydney 2030 – The Vision Environment Minister, Peter Garrett, announced the winners on behalf of the Prime Minister who is patron of the award, which originated in 1996, through Paul Keating’s  Urban Design Task Force. Hosting the award was Planning Institute of Australia with support from the Australian Institute of Architects, the Urban Design Forum, the Property Council of Australia, the Green Building Council of Australia and Association of Consulting Engineers Australia. “The Paddington... 
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By Clover Moore, Lord Mayor, City of Sydney, from a speech delivered at the Westin Hotel on 1 July this year. In September 2006, the City of Sydney unanimously endorsed the creation of a long-term vision and strategic plan. In April 2007 we engaged a consortium led by SGS Economics and Planning to work with us to develop it, and commenced the most comprehensive program of consultation and research the City has ever undertaken. Importantly, their work will not become a report that gathers dust on the shelf. Today is our report back day to you on action and progress so far. In 2007, we also joined the C40 Large Cities Climate Leadership Group, a network of international cities committed to action on global warming. Our involvement with C40 confirmed that a long-term, carefully-consulted strategy is vital if Sydney is to retain and strengthen its position as a liveable, progressive and sustainable global city. It also clearly confirmed that sustainability must be the fundamental, guiding... 
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By Philip Pollard Philip Pollard’s Phd thesis, Campus as Place, on the transformation of Newcastle University into one of the world’s leading sustainability exemplars, is a rare insight into the enormous complexities – human and technological – that need to managed, nurtured and coaxed into a creative outcome. In the last issue of The Fifth Estate, the thesis together with new observations by Mr Pollard, backed by Glenn Murcutt, one of Australia’s leading architects, formed the basis of an explosive story that claimed recent actions by the university administration had caused vast environmental damage. Following is Chapter 1 of Campus as Place From garbage tip to bio-diverse wetlands Chapter Two Chapter Three The former University of Newcastle was amalgamated with the Hunter Institute of Higher Education and the Newcastle Conservatorium of Music in late 1989, a move strongly encouraged (in essence compelled) by the Federal Minister for Education at the time, John Dawkins.... 
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By Philip Pollard Chapter One: From garbage tip to bio-diverse wetlands Philip Pollard’s Phd thesis, Campus as Place, on the transformation of  the University of Newcastle into one of the world’s leading sustainability exemplars, is a rare insight into the enormous complexities – human and technological – that need to managed, nurtured and coaxed into a creative outcome. In the last issue of The Fifth Estate, the thesis together with observations by Mr Pollard, backed by Glenn Murcutt, one of Australia’s leading architects, formed the basis of an explosive story that claimed recent actions by the university administration had caused vast environmental damage. The former University of Newcastle was amalgamated with the Hunter Institute of Higher Education and the Newcastle Conservatorium of Music in late 1989, a move strongly encouraged (in essence compelled) by the Federal Minister for Education at the time, John Dawkins. As I learned firsthand when I joined the newly amalgamated... 
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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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Keynote Speech –Sustainability Built Environment Meets Parliament 2009 Canberra, Wednesday 12 August 2009 By The Hon Peter Garrett,AM AMP, Minister for the Environmnet, Heritage and the Arts. I would like to begin by acknowledging the traditional owners of this land the Ngunnawal people, their elders, past and present. I also acknowledge my Parliamentary colleagues here today. It is a pleasure to be with you at this year’s Built Environment Meets Parliament Summit. I congratulate all the hosts of this important event. There are many aspects of the built environment that are being discussed here today, spanning the themes of liveability, prosperity and building partnerships. While I am here to talk about environmental sustainability, it is also the case that today’s themes are both interlinked and interdependent. Put simply, a built environment that is more sustainable is without question more liveable and -as we are increasingly recognising -more prosperous, both now and... 
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Keynote Speech –Sustainability Built Environment Meets Parliament 2009 Canberra, Wednesday 12 August 2009 By The Hon Peter Garrett,AM AMP, Minister for the Environmnet, Heritage and the Arts. I would like to begin by acknowledging the traditional owners of this land the Ngunnawal people, their elders, past and present. I also acknowledge my Parliamentary colleagues here today. It is a pleasure to be with you at this year’s Built Environment Meets Parliament Summit. I congratulate all the hosts of this important event. There are many aspects of the built environment that are being discussed here today, spanning the themes of liveability, prosperity and building partnerships. While I am here to talk about environmental sustainability, it is also the case that today’s themes are both interlinked and interdependent. Put simply, a built environment that is more sustainable is without question more liveable and -as we are increasingly recognising -more prosperous, both now and... 
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Resilient Cities.  Responding to Peak Oil and Climate Change by Peter Newman, Timothy Beatley, and Heather Boyer Island Press. 2008. Review by Greg Paine Cities are in constant change. But are they heading in the right direction? This book suggests they (we) are not. At the same time it remains positive – pointing, through reference to numerous examples of what cities around the world are doing, to a more viable urban form that we can – and must – create right now. The choice of resilience as a connecting principle or objective is a good one. It is seductive in its imagery, clear in its aim, and familiar. The authors equate the idea of resilience in our personal lives with resilience within cities. As they say, it is about lasting, about making it through crises, about inner strength and strong physical constitution (and built form). The notion is also of its time. Elisabeth Wynhausen for instance covers resilience in one of the series of books by University of Melbourne... 
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By Greg Paine In a world that is as full of distractions as this one, how does one stay on-track, or mindful, of the important bits – particularly those that are, like sustainable behaviour, difficult, un-habitual and easy-to-avoid. Psychologists refer to the dilemma as a cognitive dissonance – the peculiar human ability to justify to ourselves the continuation of certain behaviour even though we also know it is having a detrimental impact. The environmental commentator Alan Brennan has referred to the dilemma as an incontinence: faced with the difficult situation of a mismatch between our actions and our attitudes, we adjust those attitudes rather than our behaviour. We all have a degree of mindfulness. Otherwise, we could not accomplish anything. But how does one train one’s mind to maintain an awareness to a task we may not relish and can easily avoid?  It is a central need – and dilemma – of sustainable development. But curiously it appears to receive little attention.... 
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by Lynne Blundell While Australia continues to flounder on the issue of fast-tracking independent power generators (see our story on cogeneration), elsewhere in the world cogeneration systems, also referred to as decentralised power, are bypassing the grid altogether. The small city of Woking in the UK has been at the forefront of decentralised energy, which has allowed Woking Council to slash energy use by nearly half, and council CO2 emissions by 77 per cent, since 1990. There, the generators are connected to users via private electricity wires owned and operated by Thameswey Energy Ltd – a company set up and partly owned by Thameswey Ltd, a municipal energy and environmental services company itself wholly owned by Woking Borough Council. Woking raised capital for energy infrastructure development initially through energy efficiency savings. These savings then allowed the council to invest millions in energy supply innovation and also attracted investment from Danish pension companies... 
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by Lynne Blundell Cogeneration plants can generate their own power, they have lower carbon emissions and property developers and building owners want them. But tell that to the energy agencies who are doing everything they can to hold them back. A key problem is feeding the energy into the grid. With cogeneration, and trigeneration, buildings can generate their own power from gas-fired generators, reduce their reliance on the electricity grid and use waste heat tohelp cool and heat a building. Selling power back to the grid makes the whole thing more efficient and viable. With cogeneration two types of energy, such as electricity and heat, are generated using the same fuel. Trigeneration, or trigen, is where electricity, heating and cooling are generated from a single heat source such as fuel or solar energy. According to Alan Pears, energy efficiency expert, the current obstacles to integrating with the grid is a major disincentive for building owners. “If buildings generate more... 
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by Tina Perinotto - 11 August 2009 - (Updated) John Tabbart, the man who got Melbourne’s Docklands off the ground and then went on to run VicUrban, and more gigs in the UK and Middle East, is in Sydney heading up the Barangaroo Delivery Authority that will transform the CBD’s last remaining brownfield site, its former working harbour. At the Property Council lunch last Friday Tabbart spoke for close to 30 minutes if you include questions, but true to form he gave nothing away. Or next to nothing. You had to read between the lines to see what was going on. Occasionally you could read the lines themselves. Here was a spectacular 22 hectare site at the city’s edge that had the potential to be the grand vision buried in its bones. But could it/would it? “It’s very important we get this absolutely right,” he told the packed Westin Hotel lunch crowd. “Sydney needs transformation today. It’s not what Sydney can do for Barangaroo, it’s what Barangaroo can do for Sydney.” The... 
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by Lynne Blundell Australia’s chances of cutting greenhouse gas emissions cost-effectively are being seriously undermined by Energy  Ministers and bureaucrats who are maintaining a system that encourages inefficiency and high usage, according to energy efficiency expert Alan Pears. Winner of the Centenary Medal for contribution to climate change and environment policy in 2003 and currently Adjunct Professor at RMIT, Pears has been a major contributor to energy policy reform and energy efficiency schemes in Australia, including helping to formulate the GreenStar ratings system for buildings and reforming the Building Code of Australia. He told The Fifth Estate in an interview this week that he has serious concerns about the ability or will of Energy Ministers and energy regulators to make the necessary changes that will allow Australia to cut emissions in the most cost effective way and to create a viable renewable energy industry. “The Energy Minister and regulators seem amazingly... 
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- 9 August – On 17 August about 100 people have been invited to the Sydney offices of PricewaterhouseCoopers  to decide the future of the world. Or at least how we build it. The occasion will be the preliminary meeting to establish a Data Cities Society. A proposed working party is expected to include members of the National Association of Women in Construction, the Lighting Council, Australian Institute of Architects, Planning Institute of Australia and Engineers Australia. But what exactly are Data Cities? Data Cities is one name for a revolution under way that will develop and apply 3D digital technologies from aerospace to the challenges of organising cities. Instead of lines on paper or a screen, the new “Sim City-Star Trek-Google” technologies will enable “the biggest revolution in urban development since the Pyramids”. At least that’s how Davina Jackson puts it. Jackson is “catalyst” for a proposed global public-private partnership to accelerate research, development... 
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