Landcom's Precinx tool is a winner By Tina Perinotto In the sustainability revolution, things are getting serious. You can tell by  the  number of  ratings tools that are under way. It’s as if the time for talk and promises and green bling are over and the industry wants “real measures” for “real ...Read More > >

By Tina Perinotto NABERS, the environmental rating system that today measures the performance of about half of Australia’s CBD office space is under review - and the property industry has been promised full consultation. 11 March 2010 - For many people NABERS, the performance rating tool managed by the NSW Government, is ...Read More > >

By Lynne Blundell India is determined to reduce carbon emissions and to supply renewable power to its enormous population. But with the massive hydro power generation dam projects under way in the sensitive Himalayan foothills, the cost is high. Lynne Blundell recently travelled to the region and here presents a ...Read More > >

by Michael Mobbs Ah! As I write this, it’s such a perfect day for a Burr. A beauty of sun, clear light and, here and there, drops of silence. But Burrs will be burrs, so buckle up. We have here a classic case of do-gooders who, in seeking to do good, actually ...Read More > >

by Nicola Woodward - FAVOURITES - 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 ...Read More > >

- By Marcus Spiller - 9 March 2010 - Vision and Plan for Social Housing" is a report on the future of affordable social housing in Australia, commissioned by PowerHousing Australia last year and undertaken by SGS Economics and Planning,  Following is an introduction to the report by Dr Spiller who ...Read More > >

4 March 2010 - Susan Roaf  is a UK academic who designed and lives in the well known Oxford Ecohouse. Her passion is help blend the architecture and engineering professions to achieve buildings that operate on a tenth of energy for comparable buildings; a single payment package might help. In ...Read More > >

- By Greg Budworth - HOUSING - 3 March 2010 - Superannuation funds in Singapore, Canada, Europe and North America are partly channelled into building the economy of the future. Australian super funds could do the same. And they could start with one of the most critical elements  in the national ...Read More > >

By Tina Perinotto REPORT - 2 March 2010 - Less than 200 corporation operating in Australia account for a whopping 30 per cent of total greenhouse emissions and 44 per cent of all energy related emissions. And of those, only 20 companies are responsible for half all emissions measured through the ...Read More > >

By Michael Mobbs 25 February 2010 - Councils are the biggest obstacle preventing us from living sustainably. They design, build and maintain the roads; they control most development. But they are creatures spawned by state and federal governments and dance to their tunes. Getting rid of councils would not automatically open the ...Read More > >

From the ABC - 19 February 2010- Federal Environment Minister Peter Garrett is scrapping the Government's troubled $2.5 billion home insulation program and the solar hot water program. Mr Garrett says the initiatives will be shut down at close of business today and will be replaced by a renewable energy bonus ...Read More > >

By Lynne Blundell The smart grid is a “much riskier business model, beyond poles and wires, as it’s now about a customer response. Letting customer response drive initiatives is riskier. We have to break the existing business model and build a new one. And it’s a riskier model because there is ...Read More > >

By Michael Mobbs - 8 February 2010 - The waste and pollution from 26,000 gas and coal drills holes is polluting the rivers in the Murray Darling system. Miners are drilling 26,000 exploratory holes to assess how much coal and gas there is to mine in over 25,000 hectares of farming land ...Read More > >

by Lynne Blundell Four consortia put in some high quality bids for the Smart Grid, Smart City pilot project last week. The Federal Government will announce the winning bid in April, with funds to be released in July 2010. The pilot, announced in the May 2009 Federal Budget as part of the ...Read More > >

By Tina Perinotto 5 February 2010 - The Greens have attacked the government for its Green Home Loans scheme, but it appears the biggest sin is that the scheme has been too popular, in a feared re-run of the solar energy rebate program that last year was shelved after over-subscription. The Greens ...Read More > >

By Tina Perinotto 3 February 2010 - Green groups - including The Greens, the Australian Conservation Foundation and the Energy Efficiency Council - yesterday slammed the Opposition’s climate policy released yesterday (2 February 2010) which they said relied too heavily on sequestering carbon in soil and not enough on other ...Read More > >

By Lynne Blundell FAVOURITES: 5 November 2009 - The Southport Broadwater Parklands project may well be a blueprint for adaptive planning solutions to combat sea level rise and storm surge on our coastlines. It involved some creative methods, including raising ground levels in some places by two metres. With its spectacular Nerang ...Read More > >

By Jonathan Howcroft “In any moment of decision making the best thing you can do is the right thing, the next best thing is the wrong thing, and the worst thing you can do is nothing.” (Theodore Roosevelt)Being right is a tricky business. First of all, you have to be ...Read More > >

GOVERNMENT  - 1 February 2010  - 9 (UPDATED 4 March 2020) Sydney Theatre company’s home at Walsh Bay will soon be equipped with one of  Australia’s largest building-integrated solar photovoltaic array in the country as part of a $1.17 million greening program under NSW Climate Change Fund. The fund has allocated ...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 Brian Moore - FAVOURITES - 27 July 2009 - Sustainability is at the forefront of every significant commercial development. Building owners understand only too well that there is no point building projects for the future using yesterday’s technology and a sustainable building represents the future more than ...Read More > >

- By Michael Mobbs - FAVOURITES - 1 October 2009 - No city can be sustainable until it is a "city of villages". Only in a village can we walk to work, or buy and carry home our food. Only in a village can new businesses be easily born ...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 Jeff Angel Price rises for electricity are attracting headlines at the moment for all the wrong reasons. Erroneous reports of hugely inflated power bills as a result of the Emission Trading Scheme overlook one important point: the energy industry wants to boost its infrastructure so ...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 > >

By Andrew Pettifer FAVOURITES - 20 June 2009 - Fans of Dr Seuss who have looked past the Cat in the Hat may be familiar with the story of the inept Sneetches and the competitive instincts aroused between those with “stars upon thars”  and those whose bellies are not so endowed. I ...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 > >

By Lynne Blundell 30 November 2009 - There has been a battle going on. It is a battle between sections of the forestry industry and the Green Building Council of Australia and so far it has taken place behind closed doors. But it is gathering pace and the big guns have ...Read More > >

By Tina Perinotto So 42 to 41: The vote that this morning that ensconced Tony Abbott as leader of the Opposition against Malcolm Turnbull and completed the rent that will drive Australia into two camps, divided along climate lines. How deep and divisive this will be on a social and political ...Read More > >