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  Chris Begert - 11 March 2010 - Rising concern over climate change continues to place increasing demands on the design and efficiency of buildings. High performance buildings that provide optimal internal comfort without adding further pressure on the environment require innovative design solutions from Architects and Engineers. Passive Design, a ...Read More > >

By Romilly Madew, chief executive, Green Building Council of Australia Our conversation about the built environment has clearly shifted. Twelve months ago the individual building still loomed large in our debates about green.  At the recent Green Cities 2010 conference co-hosted by the Green Building Council of Australia and Property Council of ...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 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 > >

- By David Uhlhorn - Having recently returned from a study tour of research facilities and laboratories in the US and Britain, I found that many of our equivalent Australian facilities and laboratories are as good as, if not better than, their overseas counterparts. I also found that the principles of ...Read More > >

By Jim Stewart For a recent university assignment myself and others were tasked with creating a sustainability statement for a fictitious architecture firm. The ensuing discussions brought us to one central question - what is a sustainable architectural project? To which we developed the following response: "A sustainable architectural project is one ...Read More > >

- 8 February 2010 - Australian homes may soon be able to buy fuel cell technology and save up to $1100 off their energy bills each year through Australian company Ceramic Fuel Cells Ltd, a publicly listed company that was spun out of a CSIRO technology and now has ...Read More > >

- By Romilly Madew, chief executive, Green Building Council of Australia - 9 February 2010 - The city synonymous with the skyscraper has turned its attentions to the challenges of sustainable building. The New York City skyline is being transformed by green thinking, with the celebrated Art Deco design of the Chrysler ...Read More > >

By Mike Purtell 17 February 2010 - There has been an avalanche of negative news about the Federal Government’s Green Loans Program in the past few weeks. I have a very different view and wish to respond to that unwarranted criticism. I strongly support the Green Loans Program’s household sustainability assessor ...Read More > >

Lance Turner is a technical editor for ReNew magazine. His personal choice for insulation in the home is foil. In this article, he explains why. Insulation improves the comfort level inside your home by reducing heat flows into and out of the building. Reducing heat flows stabilises the temperature inside the ...Read More > >

By adjunct Prof Alan Pears AM, RMIT University and Sustainable Solutions Pty Ltd Introduction The 2009 Copenhagen COP/MOP (Conference of the Parties of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change/Meeting of the Parties to the Kyoto Protocol) was the culmination of an enormous amount of work and hype. It was framed as ...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 > >

15 February 2010 - Tracy Wakefield, managing director of Appalachian Log Homes responded to our article on timber, Timber: complex, sustainable and good in bushfires in a recent letter published here. Timber is highly resilient to fire, Dr Wakefield says in this article, which develops the theme in greater depth. With ...Read More > >

By Dr Tracy Wakefield, managing director, Appalachian Log Homes - LETTER:  11 February 2010 - I read your article , Timber, Complex, Sustainable and Good in Bushfires, with great interest and would like the opportunity to comment on the fire performance of log buildings mentioned by Justin Leonard. I submitted an article ...Read More > >

- 4 February 2010 -  Discussions on carbon price stole the day at the  9-22 January G’Day USA event -  the annual celebration of Australian capability in the United States. Following are some observations from Darren Bilsborough who attened at the invitation of the South Australian Government. For the past ...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 > >

By Michael Mobbs In Australia in 2010 there are no rules requiring houses or construction to be sustainable. There are, however, rules in most states and territories requiring houses (and in some jurisdictions units, too) to be designed to use less energy and water. There is almost no checking, however, ...Read More > >

- By Stafford Hopewell, partner, Gadens Lawyers, Brisbane - 31 January 2010 - Climate change is starting to emerge as a significant issue in planning and environment decision-making. Courts and tribunals are increasingly being required to take into account climate change issues and there is an emerging set of cases across ...Read More > >

From Rob Murray-Leach, chief executive officer of the Energy Efficiency Council - 1 Feburary 2010 - The Energy Efficiency Council has released guidelines to help evaluate the Opposition’s climate change polices due this week and the Prime Minister’s taskforce on energy efficiency which will report by June. A climate change strategy ...Read More > >

- From Stephen Mitchell, sustainability program manager, Timber Development Association - 28 January 2010 - I have just read your article from 21 January on timber - Timber: complex, sustainable and good in bushfires. It was a very good overview of a few complex issues. For your information, we recently invited ...Read More > >

By Bruce Rowse - FAVOURITES - 27 NOVEMBER 2009 -Who would have thought that a major company - let alone a trucking company - could cut its emissions intensity by almost 30 per cent in less than three years? Yet on Sunday logistics company Linfox announced a 28 per cent reduction in ...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 Adrian McGregor, McGregor Coxall - All the evidence points inexorably to the unsustainability of contemporary cities, especially in a fossil-fuel constrained future, coupled with predicted - and unpredictable - impacts of climate change. Our urban future may lie with a new kind of city - the biocity. Landscape architect and ...Read More > >

FAVOURITES - 6 April 2009 - Peter Szental explains how the Szencorp Building at 40 Albert Road, South Melbourne, claims it is the country's highest sustainability achiever with top ranking in each of the three major ratings systems. Szencorp's headquarters achieved a 6 star Green Star Office Design v1 certified rating ...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 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 > >

By Blair Palese, chief executive officer, 350.org Australia “As a human being I am fully supportive of the [350 ppm] goal. What is happening, and what is likely to happen, convinces me that the world must be really ambitious and very determined at moving toward a 350 target".--Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of ...Read More > >