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Business Imperative and Market Demand Driving Green Building Growth

  As sustainability and energy efficiency initiatives take hold around the world, firms are finding business value and opportunities from green building, including the opportunity for new environmentally responsible products, according to McGraw-Hill Construction’s latest SmartMarket Report, “World Green Building Trends – Business Benefits Driving New and Retrofit Market Opportunities in Over 60 Countries,” released today. The report, developed in partnership with United Technologies Corp. (UTC), is based on a study of global green building trends and aims to discern drivers of the green building marketplace. According to the study, firms are shifting their business toward green building, with 51 …

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World’s Largest Investors Launch Effort to Engage Global Stock Exchanges on Sustainability Reporting Standard for Companies

Sustainability advocacy group Ceres, in collaboration with BlackRock and other major institutional investors, have announced an initiative to engage global stock exchanges via the World Federation of Exchanges (WFE) on a possible uniform reporting standard for sustainability reporting by all exchange members. The launch includes specific recommendations for integrating environmental and social disclosure requirements into listing rules for companies listed on U.S. and global stock exchanges. The proposal was developed by Ceres’ Investor Network on Climate Risk (INCR) and its member-driven Investor Initiative for Sustainable Exchanges. Over 100 institutional investors from six continents helped shape the listing standards proposal. The …

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Waste Management JV to Produce Liquid Fuels from Landfill Gas

Houston, Texas based Waste Management, has formed a joint venture company to produce renewable fuels and chemicals from biogas and natural gas using smaller-scale Gas-to-Liquids (GTL) technology. Read the full article here  Waste Management JV to Produce Liquid Fuels from Landfill Gas

How do we change behaviour in a consumerist society?

By Peter Newton, Swinburne University of Technology Many Australians are happy to declare their interest in sustainability, to reducing their environmental impact. But how many of them are prepared to reduce the amount they actually consume? We recently explored whether Australian households have an “attitude-action gap” on environment and consumption. We surveyed 1200 Melbourne households, examining attitudes, intentions and opinions related to the environment and urban living. We also recorded objective data on actual household consumption of energy, water, housing space, urban travel and domestic appliances. It’s not uncommon being a material green Three lifestyle segments emerged: a majority (40.3%) …

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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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100 Speakers at Joint Sustainability and Liveable Cities Conference Melbourne, June 2013

Over 100 Presenters over the 3 days – 17th to the  19th  of June 2013 at the Novotel Melbourne St Kilda. Confirmed keynotes presenters include; Dr Nick Fleming, Chief Sustainability Officer, Sinclair Knight Merz and Chairman of the Sustainability Taskforce of Infrastructure Partnerships Australia, and a Director of the Board of the Australian Green Infrastructure Council. NSW Jason Roberts, Co-Founder, Better Block,  USA Melissa Houghton, Director, Sustainability at Work, VIC Professor Anthony Capon, Head, Discipline of Public Health, Faculty of Health University of Canberra ACT Tony Wood, Energy Program Director, Grattan Institute, VIC Simon Lockrey, Research Fellow, Sustainable Products and Packaging, …

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Sustainable Outcomes Through Work Transformation

Organisations are at the brim of a major transformation. One fundamental element of this change is rapidly re-shaping itself to the beat of the sustainability drum, with innovative changes to how organisations interface with colleagues, the community and the environment. At the heart of this transformation lies one single, yet complex phenomenon. Work. Fuelled by a multitude of drivers, including globalisation, technology and management innovations, the how, when and where we work is revolutionising at full speed. Shifting economies, priorities and social structures means variations to the ways in which we do business and also in the ways in which …

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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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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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Carbon price to cost trucking industry $500m

The trucking industry wants to stay protected from Australia’s carbon price legislation beyond 2014. Under current plans, fuel used by trucks on Australia’s roads is not subject to the carbon price until middle of next year. That is when the Labor government’s legislation will reduce the fuel tax credits trucking operators can claim. Australian Trucking Association chairman David Simon has said the planned reduction of about seven cents a litre amounts to a 27 per cent increase in the fuel impost. To read the full story, click here