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Category Archives: Climate Change

Financing Climate Change Adaptation in Australia

The National Sustainability in Business Conference will be held in Brisbane from the 23-24 March 2017. Dr Zsuzsa Banhalmi-Zakar, Lecturer at James Cook University, QLD joins us at the conference to discuss ‘Opportunities and Challenges for Financing Climate Change Adaptation in Australia’. While there is a great need for projects that help coastal communities adapt to the impacts of climate change, investment flows into adaptation are scarce. A recent study commissioned by the National Climate Change Adaptation Research Facility describes several ways to finance and/or fund the broad range of adaptation initiatives needed to secure coastal assets. The study draws on …

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How New Systems Can Make The World A Greener Place

Global energy consumption has grown steadily over the past century. This trend, driven by population and economic growth, is set to continue in spite of rising efficiency of both production and consumption. The IEA estimates that over the period to 2035 the investment required each year to supply the world’s energy needs will rise steadily to $2,000 billion. In response to new opportunities such as renewable energy and smart technologies – and new policy goals – to reduce emissions and extend energy access, Distributed Energy Systems (DES) encompasses a diverse array of generation, storage, energy monitoring and control solutions. DES …

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Climate Change And The Sustainability of the Dairy industry

There are a lot more problems with the dairy industry than the price of milk. The Australian dairy farming industry is in a state of crisis. Cheap dairy products and fluctuations in both the domestic and global markets have taken a financial toll on farmers. Consumers have rallied to help struggling dairy producers. But this is only half the problem. The true cost of dairy is also paid by dairy cows and the environment. With the meat and dairy industries as the leading cause of global warming, in 2010, the UN announced that a global shift towards a plant-based diet …

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Air New Zealand turns to sustainability as global carbon price looms

The Sydney Morning Herald Air New Zealand has launched a major drive to “future-proof” its business partly due to its belief a global carbon price will emerge in the coming years. The aviation sector is responsible for an estimated 2 to 4 per cent of global carbon emissions, making it a target of environmentalists concerned about climate change. At some point when carbon is priced – and it is coming – then we will be more ready for it than our competitors and it will improve our relative competitiveness as a result. At a time when some banks are refusing …

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Save $10,000 by downloading a sustainable home plan

Domain, 11 September 2015. Sustainable home designs are now available for free online as the government encourages prospective home builders to go green. The initiative, Design for Place, offers three individual floor plans for a single-storey home, which vary according to the site size and target a seven-star energy rating. Parliamentary secretary for industry and science Karen Andrews said the material was a great resource for anyone planning a new home. Architect-designed home plans are available to the public at no cost. “The plans use sustainable design principles that will help people save energy and money, no matter where they live in Australia,” she said. A Department of Industry and …

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Naomi Klein says building new nuclear power plants ‘doesn’t make sense’

News.com.au, 1 September 2015. BUILDING new nuclear power plants to create a carbon-free world “doesn’t make sense” and just serves as a distraction from the risks, Canadian author Naomi Klein says. The activist and author of This Changes Everything, was asked what she thought about the possibility of building a nuclear power plant in South Australia, which a Royal Commission in the state is currently considering. Backers of nuclear power often spruik it as an alternative to renewables because it does not produce greenhouse gases, unlike coal-fired power stations. But Klein said building new nuclear plants did not make any …

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Sustainability – the logic and power of transformative collaboration

Climate change is a global issue, and action must come from every aspect of society to yield the needed change. How can corporations make a difference without losing income? Keith Weed from Unilever argues that sustainability and economic growth can go hand-in-hand, after implementing a few key approaches.

Climate impacts– analysing infrastructure interconnectivity and flow-on effects for Australian cities

Manidis Roberts, KPMG and The Climate Institute (TCI) collaborated to undertake an exercise to credibly identify, quantify and cost, climate impacts on city infrastructure (Melbourne) as a result of extreme heat event. We modelled the impacts on infrastructure and their interdependencies under a specified climate event. This provided a case study of the flow-on impacts of the damage to infrastructure from future climate events. We explored the interdependencies that play out between businesses and infrastructure owners and operators under future climatic conditions, such as an extreme heat, sea level rise or extreme rainfall events. The exercise identified nodes of interconnectivity …

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Local Councils responding to Climate Change – just don’t call it adaptation or mitigation!

As with many local Councils around Australia, Randwick Council in Sydney’s Eastern suburbs has been developing and delivering comprehensive environmental programs via an innovative environmental levy program for 8 years. Many of these programs involve close collaborations with neighbouring Councils and are targeting community and operational initiatives aimed at responding directly or indirectly to the impacts of human-induced Climate Change. Over the years these initiatives include: providing financial incentives for energy changes in local homes; the first attempts to establish carbon trading between 12 NSW Councils; installation of 1330kilowatts of renewable energy including small scale wind; recycled and waste water …

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Warmer climate boosts northern crops but the bad soon outweighs the good

By Sunanda Creagh, The Conversation Climate change is creating warmer growing conditions in parts of the Earth’s northern regions, a new study has found, but experts warn that drought and heat wil soon cancel out the agricultural benefits. The international study, published in the journal Nature Climate Change, analysed NASA satellite data and 30 years of land surface temperature records for 26 million square kilometres between the Arctic Ocean and 45 degrees north latitude. “Higher northern latitudes are getting warmer, Arctic sea ice and the duration of snow cover are diminishing, the growing season is getting longer and plants are …

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