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 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 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 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 > >

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 > >

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 > >

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 Professor Ralph Horne, Director of the Centre for Design at RMIT - FAVOURITES - 21 June 2009 - The bushfires in Victoria are tangible evidence of the sort of extreme weather events climate scientists have been predicting and they underline the need for significant action now to cut our greenhouse ...Read More > >

Producing a single, accurate digital map of proposed urban developments requires collaboration on an unprecedented scale by Davina Jackson The Commonwealth Government is considering a proposal for two new national research co-ordination organisations to support a future industry of professionals applying automatic digital technologies to create and manage smart cities. Emerging tools include ...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 > >

FAVOURITES- From The Atlantic magazine, some excerpts from the article, The Elusive Green Economy, by Joshua Green: “The best way to get an idea of what a green future might look like is to visit Silicon Valley. It’s impossible to convey how otherworldly the place felt this spring. While the rest ...Read More > >

by Lynne Blundell FAVOURITES - 2 October 2010 - The federal government this week announced the next step in its plan to overhaul Australia’s energy grid, which it says will reduce home energy bills, reduce carbon pollution and help tackle climate change. But, while green groups have welcomed the government's national ...Read More > >

As the era of carbon trading draws near, a new guide has been developed to help companies manage the financial and reporting impacts of carbon emissions. The guide, Managing Financial Impacts and Reporting of Carbon Emissions - A Guide for CFOs, has been launched by KPMG and the Group of 100, an ...Read More > >

By Tina Perinotto Last summer 374 people died in Victoria, almost certainly because of heat stress, more than double those who died in the tragic bushfires of 7 February. This year Melbourne has its hottest day on record with a temperature of 46.4C and maximum temperatures in the state were 12-15 degrees ...Read More > >

by Peter Robinson, Sustainable Urbanism September 25, 2009 - It’s indisputable that we are going to have to be incredibly busy if we are to reduce our CO2 emissions, or achieve the 20 per cent renewable energy target. And we are going to need some very serious action from governments, at ...Read More > >

by Lynne Blundell Renewable energy is for many the great hope for fixing climate change. They imagine a day when the hills are dotted with wind towers, solar panels adorn every building and are spread across vast tracts of desert. The energy of ocean waves will be converted into electricity and ...Read More > >

by Tony Rose The National Greenhouse and Energy Act requires certain businesses to report on their energy use, production, and greenhouse gas emissions. Property groups will be affected by many aspects of the legislation — particularly as contractor and joint venture GHG emissions need to be considered as well as the ...Read More > >

By Lynne Blundell 1 September 2009 - 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 ...Read More > >

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 ...Read More > >

BRIEF: The Rudd Government’s National Energy Initiative kicked off recently when industry consultation workshops were held in Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane. The initiative comes at a time when energy and sustainability consultants are expressing growing concern over the entrenched inefficiency of the energy network (see our story). Announced in the May ...Read More > >

BRIEF - 4 August 2009 -The Alternative Technology Association has called on the federal government to stand by its commitment to include the carbon saving contribution of households, businesses and community organisations in the design of the carbon pollution reduction scheme. The current design of the scheme, due to go before ...Read More > >

BRIEF: 16 July 2009 - Environmental impact assessments for new developments are expected to be more streamlined following bilateral agreements between the Commonwealth and all Australian states and territories, with Victoria and the ACT both signing agreements in the past month. The signing of the agreements fulfils a goal set out ...Read More > >

BRIEF: 15 July 2009 - Two Victorian Green Precinct projects have received funding for their water and energy-saving initiatives through the Rudd government’s Green Precincts funding program The Centre for Education and Research in Environmental Strategies (CERES), located on the banks of the Merri Creek in East Brunswick, Melbourne has received ...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 > >

BRIEF - 3 July 2009 - The Council of Australian Governments yesterday released a communique, “Dealing with Climate Change Through Energy Efficiency”. Reproduced here is the section dealing with energy efficiency for the built environment. For the first time, Australian Governments have agreed a comprehensive 10-year strategy to accelerate energy efficiency ...Read More > >

By Tina Perinotto South Australia’s Sustainability and Climate Change Division has a unique problem - not how to spread its message, but how to field the daily flood of web hits and red hot telephone traffic. This small state is leading Australia on an impressive number of environmental fronts - on wind ...Read More > >

by Lynne Blundell In a perfect world Sam Capelli, environment manager with City of Ryde Council, would like to see local government sustainability requirements for developments pushed much higher. But in this far from perfect world, where developers and residents baulk at paying extra for green, he knows he has to ...Read More > >