- 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 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 > >

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 - 5 November 2009 - Local government councillors say there could be enough forward buying power for electricity from local government areas to fund a thermal solar plant. A unanimous resolution passed at the Local Government Association of NSW Annual Conference at Tamworth in regional NSW, 24-28 October, promised to  ...Read More > >

There are critical issues to be faced by the meeting of the Environment Protection and Heritage Council in Perth on 5 November - not least the collapse of the valuable recycling industry and the scandal of our export of toxic rubber tyres to Asia, says Ruth Hessey. The stigma around the ...Read More > >

By Tina Perinotto FAVOURITES - 14 October 2009 - A company that has pioneered low cost solar desalination systems for industry and the home is about to start production of the units by November and already has around 5000 units on order. Peter Johnstone, the inventor of the Carosell desalination system and ...Read More > >

by Tina Perinotto UPDATED 19 October 2009 - Green group GetUp has raised $162,000 since last Monday (12 October 2009) to fund a television advertisement to counter the huge public relations campaign by the coal industry in federal marginal electorates. The GetUp ad, featured here, will be used to parody claims by ...Read More > >

INSTALLATION - 8 October 2009 - “Today 2/6/09 it was reported that the oceans are becoming more acidic. This is yet another in a series of markers on the road to irreversible damage of our environment. “When the oceans reach a certain point in this cycle all life within the water ...Read More > >

By Michael Mobbs One wish for music for the end of time.  (1)  Seven wishes for the end of cities. Burr makes these wishes having just read what is forecast for the Earth’s cities in the next 30 years: “Take all the cities that are currently in the developing world – Mexico City, ...Read More > >

- By Michael Mobbs - We citizens can cut 20 per cent of our individual climate pollution this month.  (Four times what the government wants to do by 2020 with their Kyoto Dreaming.) It’s easy for each of us to cut our climate pollution. We need only our own permission and some ...Read More > >

- Germaine Greer has been at it again, prodding conventional thinking. This time she says old houses in the Scotland need to be knocked down and rebuilt sustainably because the building fabric is too poor to be retrofitted. And she makes a case for high rise. Following is her article ...Read More > >

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, ...Read More > >

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 ...Read More > >

5 August 2009 - The Australian has come under fire for its anti climate change pro climate deniers stance (see stories on Peter Newman in TFE) But now the Murdoch newspaper is pitching for a new image with an ad from  Greenpeace that features a protester walking out of ...Read More > >

5 August 2009 - Total Environment Centre, Australian Conservation Foundation, WWF Australia, CHOICE and the Alternative Technology Association have thrown their weight behind a new campaign to stop the carbon pollution reduction scheme ignoring the greenhouse gas savings  of GreenPower and alternative energy users. Director of the TEC Jeff Angel today ...Read More > >

By Michael Mobbs This once, the Burr finds itself unable to prick the hides of governments, consultants, red tape worshippers and even those besotted with Kyoto Dreaming. Instead, we turn to a different type of digging. Gardening. Burr has been gardening. Aside from feeling good, and bloody sore all over, gardening ...Read More > >

By Rob Murray-Leach, chief executive officer, Energy Efficiency Council. The Energy Efficiency Council believes the Council of Australian Governments’ (COAG) National Strategy on Energy Efficiency is an important step forward, and calls for more action on industrial and commercial energy efficiency. [see TFE  post on this] The National Strategy shows that Australian governments are ...Read More > >

By Ché Wall... 24 May - Two very important events occurred 150 years ago. The first oil well in the US was drilled at Titusville in Pennsylvania and, on the other side of the Atlantic, John Tyndall demonstrated the physical basis of the greenhouse effect. The rest, as they say, is ...Read More > >

By Maria Atkinson... Dear Prime Minister, I am writing to alert you to serious flaws in Federal Government data on emissions from buildings and to request urgent action to establish accurate data, to ensure Australia’s carbon pollution reduction responses are soundly based. My specific concern is that inaccurate data from the Australian ...Read More > >

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 ...Read More > >

By Tina Perinotto... It’s amazing how quickly a targeted discussion about an important issue can gain momentum. At the Green Cities conference in Brisbane in early March this year, inevitable musings over the question of where to next for the green building movement have sparked what looks like a new wave ...Read More > >

by Lynne Blundell 6 May - There are some claims that you just shouldn’t bank on. Especially when it involves the coal industry, which in the US is every bit as dominant and influential as in Australia. In the US Barack Obama has been criticised for falling for the “coal can be ...Read More > >

by Peter Szental The Council of Australian Governments’ (COAG) draft National Strategy on Energy Efficiency makes important steps, but leaves the building sector out in the cold and Australia’s greatest energy efficiency opportunities untapped. Investing in energy efficiency is more than a double-dividend. Energy efficiency creates green jobs, improves Australia’s economic competitiveness, ...Read More > >

By Gavin Gilchrist Think about this. Just over 50 years ago when President Eisenhower and the US Congress realised they had a serious technological and political challenge – matching the Soviet Union in the space race – did they respond by imposing a new tax on non-space travel in the hope ...Read More > >

By Michael Mobbs Rating systems rate the wrong things. If you asked me, “What’s the best thing I can do to cut climate change for my kids?” I would answer, grow your own food and buy from local farmers.  I would not say, build a sustainable house or office. The climate impacts of ...Read More > >

By Peter Droege The confusion around building a “carbon economy” around emissions trading has served to disguise for too long that countries, regions and cities need crash programs to replace their entire energy supply systems, and exchange coal and oil for renewable power. The longer this is postponed, the more difficult the ...Read More > >

By Simon Carter We are businesses and people who live by incremental change. But we now enter a time of transformation in which we are being forced to examine the full systems that inhibit us existing sustainably, rather than just addressing the symptoms of our unsustainability. It is clearly a time of ...Read More > >