Sustainable Investment Guidelines – linking sustainability into the investment decision

The single largest investor in capital works  is the public sector, but it’s the same sector that struggles with some of the fundamentals of sustainable investment. Key challenges include: • the prioritisation of construction over operational spends; • a lack of focus on long term benefits realisation at the expense of immediate delivery pressures; • a narrow definition of sustainability, often singularly toward environmental (as opposed to social or economic) issues; • and a fundamental disjoint between sustainability and the investment decision. Major Projects Victoria and AECOM have tackled the issue by developing guidance that explains why and how to …

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The Many Sides of Sustainability – revisted

In early 2011 Oracle released a white paper on the “The Many Sides of Sustainability” The following is quoted directly from the paper and refers to 2010 data… “Regardless of how large or how profitable they are, businesses today do not stand alone. They are inextricably linked with the societies in which they operate. Every decision they make—whether it‘s to close a plant, move opera tions to a different country or set a price for a new product—affects the surrounding community and the natural environment, for better or for worse. Regulations resulting from corporate scandals, the rising influence of non-governmental …

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Ikea Targets Energy and Resource Independence by 2020

Source: Environmental Leader, Oct 23 2012 Ikea today announced a plan to become energy and resource independent by 2020, which includes constructing $2.4 billion of wind and solar projects. The retailer’s new sustainability strategy, dubbed People … continue reading on: Environmental Leader

Integrated reporting “the next step”

FSinsight editor Jeroen Derwall, Assistant Professor at the Tilburg Center for Sustainability and at Maastricht University, talks about the upward trend that more companies are reporting on their sustainability practices. However, the quality of the reporting differs. He calls integrated reporting “the next step.”

Positive Carbon Management: The Buck Starts with the Environmental Data

What separates leaders from followers in the area of energy and carbon management?  Bigger cost reductions and better operating performance.  How do they achieve these results? By outperforming followers with executive sponsored programs and investing in technology to manage and analyse data. That’s the message to take away from a recent energy and carbon management report by research firm Aberdeen Group. What can be inferred from this report is that delivering improved business performance will, in the long term, only be achieved by a systematic and consistent approach to energy and carbon, which will accommodate the increasing complexity and quantity …

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New sustainability assessment system recognised by AILA

LESS (Local-area Envisioning and Sustainability-scoring System), developed by HASSELL, has been recognised in the 2012 Australian Institute of Landscape Architecture (AILA) national awards for its excellence in research and communication. LESS is a design decision-making framework developed to generate sustainable design solutions that lessen emissions, use of resources, and social disparity. It enables integrated mapping, measuring and monitoring of sustainability in urban areas across the four domains: social, infrastructure, governance and environmental. This allows for a triple bottom-line assessment in both the built environment and society, along with diagnosis of problems, and identification of strengths, weaknesses and successes in policy …

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What’s the British music scene got to do with selecting the right environmental software?

I’ve just finished watching another brilliant episode of the series “Legendary Music Cities of the World” – this time spotlighting the extraordinary music successes of London. Beatles, Stones, The Who, the rock of Led Zeppelin evolving into the Punk phenomenon, Glamrock of Bowie & Queen, the Brit Pop gems of Blue, Happy Mondays and Oasis sandwiched between the Hit Factories of Stock, Aitken & Waterman and the Spice Girls, which in turn inspired the blossoming of modern feminine songstresses of Adele, Lily Allen and Florence & the Machine. The truly exceptional artists were able to evolve their music as the …

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GlobalData Forecasts Increasingly Volatile Carbon Market

The price of carbon credits traded in regional and national emissions markets worldwide will become increasingly volatile and difficult to accurately forecast through 2015, according to a report by GlobalData. GlobalData said the prolonged European sovereign debt crisis, a glut of carbon credits and uncertainties under the Kyoto Protocol are expected to keep prices low through 2012. The recession in the European Union, which operates the EU Emissions Trading Scheme, will cause emissions to grow less than expected through this year. Economic conditions in the eurozone and outcomes of the Kyoto Protocol will determine the global carbon prices between 2013 …

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