Live-tweeted from the franc.sydney conference | March 2022
Every year there are conferences around the world discussing how to deal with stormwater.
And more and more, about how to turn this problem into an opportunity.
Read More5 insights from Spark Conference 2018
Spent the day at the Spark Conference 2018 today. Great line up of renewable energy, climate and innovators from across the country. Five things I picked up today were:
Victoria Solar incentive program will deliver 2GW of capacity (that is huge). More details here https://www.solar.vic.gov.au/
Yes this a '“climate crisis/emergency”. ACF CEO Kelly O’Shanassy talked about the issues in using these terms, but more importantly it is about moving people to take action.
Your super can change things. Superannuation is boring, but actually important. We heard that super is actually a larger volume of $ than sits in the ASX. You can choose to change your super funds to funds that are explicitly investing in better climate and renewable technologies.
Plethora of models for tenants and community energy structures. Great to hear how Pingala, Allume and Sun Tenants are doing new things. Always interesting to hear how things work - i.e. who owns what and who pays for what. These companies are helping more people take action and generate and use more renewable power.
Scaling from one house to precincts is key. Josh Bryne had a nice update on how the White Gum Valley project was going - lots of good stuff with water and energy. And also interesting mention of energy and water links - a favourite of ours!
This day has been great in inspiring us to continue to work towards more community solar and microgrid projects - so stay tuned for updates on these ideas and projects.
I tweeted a few facts and thoughts throughout the day. See below.
What next for green buildings?
I attended the Green Building Council’s “Shaping the Future State” conference yesterday. It was a mix of long form presentations and panels, and was hosted at ANZ’s 6 star building – but to be honest it was just another auditorium and we didn’t see any of the good green stuff.
This blog has a few thoughts on what was discussed and where the green building industry is going.
1. There is hope!
There is a lot of good stuff happening – across a range of sectors and scales, and I got the impression that there is real hope that we can transform our approach to building and cities and we can tackle climate change.
We heard from Stefan Hajkowicz (CSIRO) on global megatrends (i.e. the future of tech, artificial intelligence, managing disease, food production etc). I heard a lot of good news stories related to the way different industries are adapting and innovating. And your coffee barista is unlikely to be replaced by a robot!
Also we heard how there are some amazing projects in design and build right now. I heard about Monash Uni microgrids, City of Greater Dandenong’s Springfield redevelopment, Broofield's innovative stadium designs and flexible buildings, and Younghusband development – which hey I like as Wave is working on it!
2. Carbon, carbon, carbon – what about everything else?
There is a huge focus on carbon and emissions. That is good and bad. Other issues were mentioned – biofuels for transport and green infrastructure – but there remains a huge focus on the carbon story. In simple terms – a Green Star building has credits spread across 9 different categories – of which only one is about energy. So green buildings and sustainable design are about a lot more than just energy. Personally, I’d like to see more integration with water, landscapes, and increased awareness that waste is a huge part of an ecological footprint.
This broader perspective is partly why at Wave we are in the middle of designing and building some small physical models which test and explore this interaction between green infrastructure, water and energy.
3. New policy and codes
There are two new discussion papers, on the way or out now, from GBCA: Carbon Positive Roadmap and ‘Building with Nature’. GBCA have also worked with Smart Cities Council Australia and NZ to release a Code for Smart Communities. They all look pretty worthwhile and worthy reading.
See https://new.gbca.org.au/advocacy/thought-Leadership/ and https://anz.smartcitiescouncil.com/smart-cities-information-center/code-for-smart-communities
I look forward to next year's conference.
Sustainable Development Goals - what, why, how, what next
I was at the Australian SDG Summit in March 2018, to participate in a discussion on what Australia is doing, not doing, and should be doing, with the Sustainable Development Goals. The summit had 200+ delegates across the community development, social, government, academic, and utility sectors, and speeches from Federal Minister Hon Concetta Fierravanti-Wells and Shadow Minister Mark Dreyfus.
Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), are a set of goals developed through the UN process that all countries have signed up to, to provide a specific set of goals to be achieved by 2030. They specify 17 goals across aclean energy, wellbeing, sustainable cities, poverty, water, gender equality, to name a few. See the each goal below.
Two things that stood out for me in this summit were:
For Australia the key across so many of the goals is ‘don’t leave anyone behind’. For a developed country we expect that we have access to and meet a high standard of delivery for various services. E.g. good waste management and drinking water supply services. Sometimes it is > 99% of the population in the ‘well off’ category, but not everyone. So, really our focus instead is to use these goals to drive change in improving the quality of life with the most needy. ACOSS has lots of good data on the inequalities and economic divide in our society. At Wave with some recent work we did, we found some good data on the nature of water quality in remote communities – but not comprehensive - and again noting that more needs to be done to improve water quality for these remote communities.
Integration. The goals don’t sit in silo, and to improve any of the goals usually requires several government departments and business to work together. The integration issue was also relevant in that there is tension or trade offs between achieving them. What if improving land and biodiversity means less agricultural production?
Wave recently supported Monash Sustainability Development Institute to collate and interrogate the specific water datasets across multiple indicators that Australia is intending to use to report on SDG Goal 6. Interestingly it was actually hard to get good data for all 11 indicators within this goal, especially that had a good temporal pattern and covered all of the population.
Further work on SDGs can found through MSDI, Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, and the Global Compact Network Australia.