Posts Tagged ‘governance’
Zero Carbon Britain 2030: Report
Posted in Research by Kate Archdeacon on June 22nd, 2010
zerocarbonbritain2030 provides political and economic solutions to the urgent challenges raised by the climate science, outlining how we can transform the UK into an efficient, clean, prosperous zero-carbon society. Covering energy, transport, land use, the built environment and industry, each chapter of the report has been written by bringing together the UK’s leading thinkers in their field including policy makers, scientists, academics, industry and NGOs.
zerocarbonbritain2030 is a fully integrated solution to climate change. It examines how we can meet our electricity and heating requirements through efficient service provision, while still decreasing carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide and other emissions.
The report starts by examining the current “Context” in the Climate Science and Energy Security chapters. It then moves on to how we can “PowerDown” heat and electricity demand largely through new technology, efficient design and behaviour change. The “Land Use & Agriculture” section considers the tremendous potential of the land not only to decrease emissions but also to sequester residual emissions. We then move on to how we can “PowerUp” through the use of renewable technology. Finally we examine the policy that can help bring this about and the job creation that will come with it, in the “Framework, policy and economics” section.
A full copy of the new report is available as a free pdf , or buy a printed copy from the Centre for Alternative Technology.
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Cities and their Regions: Catalysts for Change
Posted in Events by Kate Archdeacon on June 9th, 2010
The Golden Jubilee Congress of the Eastern Regional Organisation of Planning & Human Settlements (EAROPH)
Congress Objectives and Philosophy
The main theme of the Congress is the impact of population change related to climate management and the associated issues that are being debated at an international level including infrastructure planning, water security, renewable energy and sustainable tourism. The conference aims to draw these themes together to allow debate about their impact on the Asian Pacific rim. The key purpose of the conference will be to focus the various opinions presented by international speakers into a forum that allows for policy directions coming from the Congress to be directed to the EAROPH Executive, the Planning Institute of Australia and all spheres of Government within the region.
Local Government Caucus
A parallel session to be hosted by the Lord Mayor of the City of Adelaide, The Right Honourable Michael Harbison, will be conducted at the Town Hall on Wednesday, 3rd November 2010 to allow visiting Mayors and Executive Local Government Staff to address the topic of Leadership as a Catalyst for Change within the region. It is proposed that the Lord Mayor will lead a forum of speakers during a morning session that will focus upon the need for strong leadership at a Local Government level to address the impacts of growing cities on environmental sustainability through ‘green initiatives’. The afternoon will be devoted to inner-city inspections of buildings and sites devoted to the principles of sustainability. The conducted tour will be undertaken on the World’s First Solar Electric Bus, “Tindo”.
Student Forum
On Sunday, 31st October 2010, the combined Universities of Adelaide, Flinders and South Australia will come together to present a forum for students and young professionals. The objective of this forum is to provide a platform for students and young professionals to raise issues and concerns related to congress themes. The guest speakers will include those delivering keynote addresses to the Congress. The forum wil be facilitated to enable students and young professionals to focus on the topics from their perspective and learn from each other.
October 31 – November 4, 2010
Adelaide, South Australia
Visit the website for registration and further information.
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Green Building Demonstration Project: Commercial Viability
Posted in Models by Kate Archdeacon on June 8th, 2010
Source: Green Building Council Australia (GBCA)
When the Queensland Government’s Accommodation Office (AO) recognised the need for a Government Joint Contact Centre (JCC) in 2006, they embarked upon a project to demonstrate to government agencies and industry that projects can achieve the highest ESD outcomes at a commercial cost. Design decisions were made for their ‘green’ benefits, payback periods and quality. The JCC project was earmarked to achieve and exceed the Queensland Government’s benchmark of 5 Star Green Star Office Design buildings, and adhere to strategic policies relating to the reduced consumption of water and energy and the use of renewable and sustainable construction materials for existing and new building stock.
Project Outcomes:
The result is a building that has achieved a 6 Star Green Star – Office Design v2 rating representing ‘world leading’ green building design. At the time of certification (25 September 2009), JCC achieved the highest number of points (92/100) to date for any Office Design v2 project in Australia. At the time of publishing this case study, this achievement had not been surpassed. The JCC building is expected to deliver substantial economic savings as a direct result of the symbiotic relationship of its building components, building services, and building generation elements relating to maximising energy efficiency and passive design.
The Real Value of Cycling: Evidence-based report
Posted in Research by Kate Archdeacon on June 1st, 2010
Source: vicstig Sustainable Transport Interest Group
From “Benefits of bike network far outweigh cost, says study” by Matthew Moore:
AN INNER-CITY network of bike paths would deliver economic benefits more than triple the cost of building it, according to the first full economic appraisal of cycleways in Australia. The report, commissioned by the City of Sydney and to be released today {14-05-10}, says the 293-kilometre network proposed by 15 councils would deliver $506 million in economic benefits to the community over 30 years, $3.88 for every dollar spent.
The report, produced by the economic research firm AECOM, seeks to quantify the cost and likely benefits of building 160 kilometres of cycleways separated from general traffic and a further 70 kilometres of shared paths running from Kogarah to Chatswood and from Watsons Bay to Rhodes. Even if building costs were higher that expected, the benefits of the network would far outweigh the costs, with quicker trips delivering savings of $211 million, or 30.9 per cent of the total, health benefits after deductions for injuries estimated at $147 million and decongestion benefits at $98 million, the report says.
It says one of the biggest economic benefits would come from improved ”journey ambience”, or cycling free from the fear of being hit by cars, a pleasure it says is worth $139 million, or nearly 20 per cent of all savings. AECOM’s principal economist, Katie Feeney, who is one of the report’s authors, said the ”journey ambience” benefit was an attempt to put a value on an economic benefit that was hard to quantify and was calculated by working out what people would be prepared to pay for the improved experience. ”It’s best practice internationally to assign a value to the improved travelling experience of separated cycleways,” Ms Feeney said.
Read the full article by Matthew Moore.
Read the AECOM report on scribd.
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Shared Cogeneration Project: Queensland
Posted in Models by Kate Archdeacon on May 26th, 2010
Source: Green Building Council Australia (GBCA)
From “Co-gen in Queensland: green tick from gas supplier a positive sign for precincts” by Lynne Blundell
There could be light at the end of the tunnel for cogeneration projects seeking co-operation from energy agencies. In a victory for precinct-style power generation, a proposed shared cogeneration project between The University of Queensland and the Royal Brisbane Hospital has received support from gas suppliers. It was very much an industry-driven victory. After an initial knock-back by gas suppliers to support the project, sustainability consultants from Cundall, armed themselves with extensive technical data to back their case. But it took some political nous as well – this time they bypassed the technical people and went straight to the top.
Cundall’s Brisbane head, Rob Lord, told The Fifth Estate the decision by the gas authority to fund the necessary infrastructure to supply gas to the shared power plant was a sign of a shift in attitudes. “It is a kind of awakening for these authorities. They are bureaucracies and are very focused on risk. What we want is for them to be not only conscious of the risk but also the opportunities of cogeneration and shared energy schemes,” says Lord. “When the gas company was first approached they said it couldn’t be done. But when we got back to the upper echelons of the company with all the mechanical, hydraulic and sustainability information they were very positive about the opportunities and they told their technical people they wanted it to happen.”
With cogeneration, and trigeneration, buildings can generate their own power from gas-fired generators, reduce their reliance on the electricity grid and use waste heat to help cool and heat a building. But resistance from energy agencies to these plants putting energy back into the grid or to providing the necessary infrastructure for projects has been a major disincentive for developers and building owners considering the technology.
Stepping Up: Public Sector Leadership on Sustainability
Posted in Research by Kate Archdeacon on April 5th, 2010
Source: Forum for the Future
Download the report Stepping Up: A Framework for Public Sector Leadership on Sustainability
As we begin to see signs of recovery in the private economy, the hard times are just beginning for the 5.8 million public servants in the UK and millions more around the world. Faced with severe budget cuts, can public sector organisations stay true to their commitments to carbon reduction, sustainable regeneration, ethical procurement, greener healthcare and a wealth of other new practices and initiatives?
In theory, yes. If sustainable development thinking is no use in times of austerity, it is no use at all, and hard times should be when it proves its worth. But for providers of public services, it’s very tempting to drop expensive-looking ‘green’ activity when you have to cut spending overall.
It’s much braver to use sustainability principles to guide where to make cuts, and to use the same thinking to find efficiency gains, new ways of working, and deliver greater public value.
Call for Rooftop Agricultural Greenhouses: New York
Posted in Movements by Kate Archdeacon on March 24th, 2010
Source: Bright Farm Systems
From Call for Rooftop Agricultural Greenhouses:
On February 17, 2010, Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer published his second report on the future of New York City’s food system – FoodNYC: A Blueprint for a Sustainable Food System. This groundbreaking report outlines a wide range of initiatives and policy changes which, if implemented, Stringer suggests will dramatically improve the quality and environmental sustainability of New York City’s food system. At the top of the list of recommendations is a call for the development of rooftop agricultural greenhouses. The report argues that, New York City should “establish food production as a priority … for personal, community, or commercial use by the year 2030.” To achieve this, the report recommends, among other production approaches, “the development of rooftop agricultural greenhouses.” BrightFarm Systems welcomes the report’s recommendations, and thanks the Borough President for his support of sustainable food policy. We are particularly pleased to endorse the call for changes to be made, or exceptions granted, to zoning and building regulations which currently inhibit the development of New York’s rooftop farming industry. Greenhouses installed on a roof currently count towards a building’s FAR (the rules dictating the height or volume a building can be built to). BrightFarm Systems has long argued that classifying greenhouses along with commercial and residential space in this manner is counter-productive and unnecessary. We welcome the Borough President’s call to address this and similar policy barriers, and to create a simple mechanism for the consideration of worthy rooftop greenhouse projects.
UK Solar Feed-In Tariff (FiT): Ongoing Debate
Posted in Opinion by Kate Archdeacon on March 17th, 2010
Source: Environmental Research Web
FiT for purpose? by Dave Elliott:
The debate on the UK’s new Feed-In Tariff (FiT) has been quite lively, with the Guardian’s George Monbiot arguing that, with solar PV being still very expensive, the way the FiT provided the support needed was economically regressive.
It does look that way at first glance – those that could afford to invest say £10,000 in PV might get £1000 p.a. back for the electricity they generated and used, paid for by all the other consumers, who would be charged extra via their electricity bills. It’s been suggested that this would lead to a £11 p.a. surcharge on bills by 2020. However, in a rebuttal to Monbiot’s analysis, Jeremy Leggett from Solar Century said “the average household levy in 2013, when tariff rates are all up for review, is likely to be less than £3” and he added “this is far less than the average saving from the government’s various domestic energy efficiency measures over the same period. So there is no net subsidy. The levy is not ‘regressive’ at all”.
The extra cost is certainly small, since the expected size of the FiT scheme is small, only maybe leading to 2% of UK electricity by 2020, so maybe this is not a major issue. But it is good to see that the government has now announced a “green-energy loan” scheme (part of its new “Warm Homes, Green Homes” strategy) under which energy-supply companies and others (e.g. the Co-op) may offer consumers zero or low interest loans for installing new energy systems, to be paid back out of the resultant energy savings. Details have yet to be agreed, but up to £7 bn may be made available over the next decade in this way – although it seems it will start off slowly, from 2012 onwards.
City Farms in Cuba: Periurban agriculture
Posted in Movements by Kate Archdeacon on February 19th, 2010
Source: guardian.co.uk
Image: tardigrade via flickr CC
From “Cuba plans city farms to ease economy woes“, by Marc Frank
Project launched to ring urban areas with thousands of small farms in bid to reverse agricultural decline
Cuba has launched an ambitious project to ring urban areas with thousands of small farms in a bid to reverse the country’s agricultural decline and ease its chronic economic woes. The five-year plan calls for growing fruits and vegetables and raising livestock in four mile-wide rings around 150 of Cuba’s cities and towns, with the exception of the capital Havana. The island’s authorities hope suburban farming will make food cheaper and more abundant, cut transportation costs and encourage urban dwellers to leave bureaucratic jobs for more productive labour. But the government will continue to hold a monopoly on most aspects of food production and distribution, including its control of most of the land in the communist-run nation.
The pilot programme for the project is being conducted in the central city of Camaguey, which the Cuban agriculture ministry has said eventually will have 1,400 small farms covering 52,000 hectares (128,490 acres), just minutes outside the town. The farms, mostly in private hands but also including some cooperatives and state-owned enterprises, must grow everything organically, and the ministry expects they will produce 75% of the food for the city of 320,000 people, with big state-owned farms providing the rest.
On a recent day, dozens of people were hard at work plowing fields, hoeing earth, posting protective covering for crops and putting up fencing as the sun came up. “This land they gave to us, the private farmers. I have four hectares (10 acres) and now they have leased me eight (20 acres) more,” one of the farmers, Camilo Mendoza, told Reuters. “Look, on this side and the other side are other plots, and over there another. Here they have given quite a bit of land and support to private farmers,” he said.
Climate-change affordability: Economic study
Posted in Research by Kate Archdeacon on November 19th, 2009
Source: Environmental Research Web
Image: D Sharon Pruitt via flickr CC
From “Climate-change policy is affordable after all” by Liz Kalaugher
Climate policy is cheaper than most economic studies have suggested. Indeed it is affordable without causing any disastrous effects on our economies. That’s according to Jeroen van den Bergh of the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Spain, and Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam, the Netherlands. “I wasn’t satisfied with the dominant economic approaches, notably cost-benefit analysis of climate policy,” van den Bergh told environmentalresearchweb. “In addition, I had the feeling that many important arguments, including very down-to-earth ones, were being left out of the debate on climate policy. I decided therefore to list all the relevant alternative perspectives on the cost of climate policy I could come up with in a single paper.”
Writing in Climatic Change, van den Bergh details twelve new angles on climate policy cost that haven’t received any attention so far. He believes that cost-benefit analysis isn’t appropriate for climate change policies as it’s hard to be certain about the costs of climate damage, to put a cost on the value of a human life, or to handle scenarios that have a small probability of taking place but would have a high impact, including irreversible changes such as a slow-down of the global thermohaline circulation, or the collapse of the Greenland and West Antarctic ice sheets. The studies tend also to neglect the impact of climate change on human conflict, biodiversity, economic development and human populations. Cost-benefit analyses carried out to date have come up with a wide range of estimates for climate costs. Instead van den Bergh prefers to assess the cost of a reasonably safe climate policy.