Indispensible & Inevitable

Two big “I” words crop up as we span and scan the world to bring this Expressly to you, directly from the Green Cities event in Melbourne. The theme is distinctly about buildings and lifestyle, starting with a profile on ecospecifier’s David Baggs, a leader in sustainability for the built environment.

Carbon pricing gets plugged as an “indispensible pillar”;  the New Scientists looks beyond CO2 to other gases that contribute to global warming and dimming, while a Nasa scientist brings us down to earth to consider human impacts on climate.

Tim Flannery criticises his fellow scientists for not communicating effectively and challenges property developers to get real about climate change impacts, while geoscientist Michael Oppenheimer tells us to prepare for the inevitable.

The Green Building Council gives us a new framework for sustainable communities; ASBEC shows us what the city will be like in 2041 and Singapore gives us a vision for a green built future.

Blue collar jobs will become green jobs as plumbers rise to the top and one airline gets a set-back for its bio fuel take off. Queensland takes on one of the world’s biggest mining firms over lead leaks and  Giles Parkinson gives us The Deal on green investment. As the lucky last, The Age editorialises about the political contest involving “two bulls in a paddock”.  Intrigued?

Profile: David Baggs

David Baggs wants GreenTag to be globally recognised as a leading edge indicator of a products’ ability to contribute to a healthy future for the planet. His company ecospecifier global launched the new generation eco-label for building products at Green Cities in Melbourne this week.  He believes Green Tag will enable consumers and the building industry to easily identify products which are healthier for the planet and healthier for us. He was interviewed by Graham Readfearn for abc carbon express.

Certifying Sustainable Designs and Products with a GreenTag:

David Baggs continues to make his mark on green buildings

By Graham Readfearn for abc carbon express (23 February 2010):

ACCORDING to David Baggs each bit of wood in the door of his office has impacted the environment in 241 different ways.

“For example, you look at the energy it took to make the door. You ask how durable the timber is,’’ he says.

“Did the wood come from a sustainable source? How was it harvested and what was the waste and energy from that process.’’

Needless to say Baggs, the CEO of environmental certification company Ecospecifier, is a man who is big on what some might regard as minor details.

With a distinguished career in sustainable architecture and building consultancy, Baggs has been at the forefront of sustainability in the building industry during a career which has spanned four decades.

When many architects in the 1980s were working out how to build office blocks and domestic homes quickly and cheaply, Baggs was a leading expert on earth-covered houses and designs that harnessed renewable energy.

While the world was waiting for the 2000 Sydney Olympics, Baggs was working behind the scenes with developers to make sure the venues were built sustainably.

Now, the company he founded with business and life partner Mary-Lou Kelly is launching a new generation eco-label for building products called GreenTag which, he believes, will enable consumers and the building industry across the globe to easily identify products which are healthier for the planet and healthier for us.

 “We all live on a planet that’s under huge stress,’’ says the Brisbane-based father of two. “The longer that we ignore the problems of unmitigated and unqualified consumption, the faster we dig our own grave.”

If that sounds like the statement of a dyed-in-the-wool environmentalist, then it’s because that is just what Baggs is.

His affinity for the environment can be traced back to childhood holidays at Lake Conjola, south of Sydney, where the knee-high Baggs spent time at his grandparents’ holiday home.

“It was a beautiful unspoilt spot – it felt like a wilderness at the time – and we’d walk, catch fish and just have wonderful holidays,’’ he remembers.

But as a teenager taking part in nuclear disarmament marches and anti-Vietnam demonstrations, he got a growing sense that in terms of how civilisation was influencing the planet “we were getting things wrong’’.

Now Ecospecifier’s new GreenTag scheme could be the chance for his own industry to start getting things right.

After graduating from the NSW Institute of Technology, Baggs took a special interest in earth-covered and healthy homes, taking a cue from his “inspirational” late-father Dr Sydney Baggs, an architect, landscape architect and university lecturer who was a leading-light in the technology in Australia and the world.

“After you have finished building an earth-covered home, you put the nature back. They are part of the natural systems,’’ says Baggs.

“I remember doing manual calculations that would take four days, just to get an idea of the heat-loss in the buildings in different rooms at different times of the year. I researched, researched and researched.’’

Understanding how building materials affected the environment, led him to work directly with developers building venues for the Sydney Olympics.

During that time, he remembers one triumph in persuading the builder of the SuperDome (now the Acer Arena) to stick with a plan to use fibre from 250,000 recycled telephone directories as sound insulation.

It was a safer, simpler, more efficient, less toxic and faster way to insulate the building, but as the developers hadn’t used the material before, Baggs realised they would need some convincing.

“Builders are incredibly risk averse. Seeing it from their point of view, they need information before they can put a product in,’’ he says.

“I got the manufacturer to test it and give us the results. In the end, the builder used it and saved six weeks on construction and ended up with a more successful building – it added two hours daily to its noise licence.

“It was that experience that pointed out to me what kind of information the building industry really needed about materials.’’

After the Olympics, Baggs had gathered life-cycle assessments for hundreds of building products. But it was his partner Mary-Lou’s idea to use that information as a starting point for Ecospecifier.

Ecospecifier began verifying the quality of eco-building materials in 2002 and GreenTag, launching at the Asia-Pacific-wide Green Cities Conference in Melbourne (21 – 24 February) is now a prime focus for the business.

Even before the product has been launched, Baggs says there are at least 170 products which manufacturers have said they would like to be assessed.

GreenTag, he explains, has two elements. The first is a simple logo which manufacturers can apply to have placed on their environmentally friendlier building product, ranking eco-credentials bronze, silver, gold and platinum.

But the true strength of GreenTag is in the second element; the complex, detailed and globally accredited cradle-to-grave life-cycle assessments of the environmental impacts of those products. The GreenTag badge is the visual icing on the cake.

Under GreenTag, each door, window frame, light fitting, piece of timber, floor covering, paint product or any other building material can be assessed against six summary criteria – each including potentially hundreds of other indicators and thousands of individual assessments.

The six criteria cover issues such as greenhouse gas emissions, health risks of pollutants, impacts on biodiversity and the health and welfare of workers together with social benefits.

“We look at every single component that’s in the product and put that through an assessment process and look at the risks and benefits associated with each of those components.’’

For the consumer, the builder, the architect or the developer who wants to make the right environmental choice, GreenTag should make it both easy and environmentally sound.

“If you look at what’s happening in the industry and people’s purchasing decisions, the research is showing clearly that if you give people the information about the products they’re buying, then they will act on it,’’ says Baggs.

“What’s clear as well is that without that information, they can’t make those decisions. This kind of information is critical in empowering people to make their own decisions. We put power back into the hands of the people buying the products to make an informed choice quickly and simply.’’

Depending on the complexity of the product, Baggs says it should take between two and six months for Ecospecifier to award a GreenTag, with a standard cost for each product of $7,000.

“Our bronze GreenTag is the equivalent or better – in terms of what a product needs to gain it – than other labels in the market.

“For a product to get a Platinum rating, you are going to know that there’s nothing on the market that’s any healthier or more eco-friendly.”

Baggs hopes to release GreenTag internationally before the year is out. He is also applied to align a major component of GreenTag called ‘GreenRate’ with Australia’s Green Building Council methods of star-rating buildings.

Already, GreenTag has gained compliance with six different international standards (ISO) relating to the quality of the life-cycle assessments, greenhouse gas calculations and product labelling.

Baggs acknowledges that any accreditation scheme is only as good as the organisation which administers it (and the standards they adhere to), so he has invited risk management consultants Det Norske Veritas (DNV) to externally audit the GreenTag process.

Baggs adds: “I want GreenTag to be globally recognised as a leading edge indicator of a products’ ability to contribute to a healthy future for the planet.’’

Graham Readfearn is a Brisbane based independent multi-media journalist and award winning feature writer with 15 years experience in the United Kingdom and Australia in newspapers (Courier Mail and Yorkshire Post), magazines, radio (BBC) and online, most recently writing a provocative environment blog for News Limited across Australia.

Source: www.abccarbon.com and www.ecospecifier.org

Equitable, Effective & Economically Responsible

The emerging evidence from the EU, writes economist Oliver Sartor, the lessons from economic theory, not to mention the global policy trend, is that carbon pricing is an indispensable pillar of equitable, effective and economically responsible climate policy for the long term.

By Oliver Sartor in The Australian (23 February 2010):

RATIONAL climate change policy is essentially about finding the least economically disruptive and fairest possible way to ensure our way of life against the risks of climate change.

At the moment, the most accomplished scientists from the most accomplished scientific institutions are telling us that we need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions drastically during the next 10, 20, 40 years.

To achieve this, a significant restructuring of the way modern economies produce goods and services will be required. And this means providing sufficient incentives for businesses and consumers to change their behaviour in a way that can de-link economic growth from emissions levels, and in an acceptably fair way. But how to do that?

Across the world governments facing this question are developing a variety of policy measures, but there is an unmistakable trend that comes through the noise: mandatory carbon pricing is indispensable.

Most notably, 27 European Union member states began the EU emissions trading scheme for greenhouse gases in 2005, and New Zealand will start one in July this year. Japan, Taiwan, South Korea, 16 US states and four Canadian provinces, and even the US congress, are at various stages of legislating their own cap-and-trade schemes. Similarly, the Norwegians and Swedes have put in place (and the French, Irish and Spanish soon will) direct carbon taxes for certain economic sectors not covered by the EU’s ETS.

So if Australia is alone in wanting to price carbon emissions, why are so many other developed countries imposing “great big taxes on everything”, as Liberal leader Tony Abbott calls it?

The theory is no doubt appealing: that is, that carbon pricing harnesses market forces to internalise low-cost incentives to abate. Consider how emissions trading works.

First, the government sets an emissions budget or target for the year. Next, it limits the supply of emissions to the market by requiring firms to hold a permit to emit a tonne of CO2 and it allocates that number of tonnes’ worth of emissions permits to key industries.

Finally, since firms want to emit carbon to produce stuff, they need to decide how to allocate the permits among themselves, so they enter a market to start trading with others. They trade based on their relative costs of abatement. In particular, each actor will look at the carbon price in the permit market to decide whether it is cheaper to reduce emissions and sell excess permits or, if less costly, to simply pay the carbon price and buy a permit to emit.

In other words, global economic cost is minimised by letting firms choose, based on their own, privileged, private knowledge and investment strategies, the cost of abating v the price of emitting.

The sum of those decisions is confined to the global goal through the emissions cap. The idea is that the cap is then tightened gradually through time in line with medium and long-term national emissions goals.

The carbon price in an ETS is therefore the stick business needs to move the economy, through time, towards key investments in less carbon-intensive modes of production.

So the theory seems plausible enough, but what about the practice? In fact, a joint research project by France’s CDC Climate Research, Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the US and University College Dublin recently completed the first comprehensive ex-post analysis of the first three years of the EU ETS. The results, published this month under the title Pricing Carbon, suggest that despite some significant flaws in the way the ETS was initially designed, the evidence points to the following conclusions.

First, the trial phase did significantly reduce emissions. Using careful econometrics, the authors estimate that the ETS actually reduced emissions below business as usual by between 120 million tonnes and 300 million tonnes of CO2 during the three-year trial phase. That is to say, emissions were 2.5 per cent to 6 per cent below a (conservative) estimate of where they would have been without the scheme. This is an impressive result given that the EU started with very limited emissions data for some countries and so it accidentally set a cap that was above business-as-usual emissions for the period.

Second, the trial phase highlighted the importance of government initially auctioning emissions permits to industry. The study noted that where firms participating in imperfectly competitive markets received permits for free, they gained windfall profits. This is because these firms are able to pass on at least some of the market price of permits to consumers anyway and so they reap a reward for no abatement from the free allocation.

Free allocation also implies that the atmosphere belonged to the polluters in the first instance, when most people would argue it is a public good and they should pay the public through buying permits from government to use it. Europe is in the process of shifting to auctioning of permits for all but those industries exposed to international competition. The carbon reduction pollution scheme, by the way, proposes to start with full auctioning to all but trade-exposed industry and, less gloriously, some power generators.

Finally, it is worth noting that auctioning a high proportion of permits also allows government to realise a double dividend with the revenue. Other taxes can be removed; deficits reduced; workers in strongly affected industries can be compensated and retrained; and public investments in complimentary emissions reductions that are not suitable for carbon pricing can be made.

Thus, looking at the Australian debate on climate policy from Europe, it appears very strange indeed that the debate seems to be over whether to have carbon pricing, or so-called “direct action” measures instead.

The emerging evidence from the EU, the lessons from economic theory, not to mention the global policy trend, is that carbon pricing is an indispensable pillar of equitable, effective and economically responsible climate policy for the long term.

But you need to be flexible, prepared to learn from mistakes and get the policy design right to create incentives for those long-term structural changes.

Oliver Sartor is a research economist specialising in carbon policy at CDC Climate Research in Paris. Pricing Carbon: Lessons from the EU ETS, is published by Cambridge University Press and is the product of years of joint work between CDC Climate Research in France, MIT and University College Dublin.

Source: www.theaustralian.com.au

Global Dimming or Every Cloud has a Lead Lining

Since the industrial age got under way, we have been pumping ever more pollutants into the atmosphere; not just gases like CO2, but also substances that form fine particles, or aerosols. The result is often visible in the form of a brown haze covering cities or even entire countries. The quantity of pollution is so vast that the amount of sunshine reaching Earth’s surface has declined by as much as 10% in places, a phenomenon known as global dimming. New Scientist has the latest.

By Anil Ananthaswamy for New Scientist (19 February 2010):

IN JUNE 1783, lava and gases began pouring from the Laki fissure in Iceland in one of the biggest and most devastating eruptions in history. Poisonous gases and starvation killed a quarter of Iceland’s population. The effects of the eight-month-long eruption were felt further afield, too. In the rest of Europe, a scorching summer of strange fogs was followed by a series of devastating winters. In North America, the winter of 1784 was so cold the Mississippi froze at New Orleans.

At the time, French naturalist Mourgue de Montredon suggested the eruption might be to blame, but two centuries passed before scientists started to work out how gas and dust from volcanoes affect climate. The main culprit is sulphur dioxide, which has a cooling effect. Laki pumped an estimated 120 million tonnes of the stuff into the atmosphere, cooling the northern hemisphere by as much as 0.3 °C over the next few years.

Nowadays, we are pumping out amounts of sulphur dioxide each year comparable to Laki’s emissions. Human emissions rose rapidly over the 20th century, peaking at an estimated 70 million tonnes a year in the 1990s as developed countries cleaned up their act. Even such huge amounts, however, have not been enough to stop global warming: the cooling effect has been more than offset by the warming effect of carbon dioxide and other pollutants.

We are only now beginning to understand the effects of some of those other pollutants. One of the major players is black carbon, produced by the burning of everything from dung to diesel. Some recent studies suggest it is one of the biggest causes of warming after CO2 in the short term, contributing to the rapid warming in the Arctic and the melting of Himalayan glaciers.

These findings mean we face both a danger and an opportunity. When China and India reduce their sulphur dioxide emissions, the rate at which the planet is warming will rise dramatically. Satellite measurements show that China is already making headway, says Frank Raes of the European Commission Joint Research Centre in Ispra, Italy. As a result, the rate of warming could increase from the current 0.2 °C per decade to 0.3 or 0.4 °C per decade. “Locally, it might go to 0.8 °C per decade,” Raes says. Such rapid change would make it much harder for both people and wildlife to adapt (see “Too fast, too furious”).

On the plus side, we could head off this dramatic speed-up in warming over the next few years by tackling black carbon and some of the other short-lived pollutants that are helping to heat up the planet. This would buy us more time to reduce our dependence on fossil fuels.

Global dimming

Since the industrial age got under way, we have been pumping ever more pollutants into the atmosphere; not just gases like CO2, but also substances that form fine particles, or aerosols. The result is often visible in the form of a brown haze covering cities or even entire countries. The quantity of pollution is so vast that the amount of sunshine reaching Earth’s surface has declined by as much as 10 per cent in places, a phenomenon known as global dimming.

While scientists have suspected ever since the Laki eruption that natural and man-made aerosols can have a big effect on the climate, pinning down exactly what effect they have has been very tricky (see “Every cloud had a lead lining”). Fortunately, natural experiments like the eruption of El Chichon in Mexico in 1982 helped establish beyond any doubt that sulphur dioxide has a major cooling effect. We now know it forms sulphuric acid aerosols in the atmosphere that reflect sunlight back into space. It also has a cooling effect through making clouds more reflective.

From the 1940s onwards there was a slight decline in temperature in the northern hemisphere which was largely due to increasing sulphur dioxide emissions. The average temperature then began to rise fast after the late 1970s as sulphur pollution began to plateau. In the southern hemisphere, by contrast, where there was little sulphur pollution, temperatures increased gradually over the 20th century.

If sulphur dioxide is slowing the rate of warming, why cut emissions? The answer is that it is a killer. Recent studies have shown that sulphur dioxide pollution from the Laki eruption killed tens of thousands of people in the UK alone. It has been directly linked to various lung disorders, including bronchitis and asthma. It is also bad for the environment: sulphur dioxide is one of the main causes of acid rain, which can devastate fish populations and destroy forests. No one is suggesting we keep on pumping it out.

If sulphur dioxide is slowing warming, why cut emissions? Because it’s a killer.

Like sulphur dioxide, black carbon shades the Earth’s surface, so you might expect it to have a cooling effect, too. In fact it absorbs the sun’s energy rather than reflecting it, warming the atmosphere. Global dimming does not necessarily mean global cooling. Recent studies by Veerabhadran Ramanathan at the University of California, San Diego, and colleagues suggest carbon black contributes more to global warming than previously thought (Nature Geoscience, vol 1, p 221).

Because rapidly industrialising countries like India and China have become a major source of black carbon, its effects are particularly strong in this region. Ramanathan used unmanned aircraft to study the brown haze that hangs over much of Asia. The work revealed that the haze is mainly black carbon (Nature, vol 448, p 575). “My measurements show that black carbon concentrations at altitudes of 2 to 4 kilometres are as large as in downtown Los Angeles,” says Ramanathan. It comes mainly from the low-temperature burning of coal, firewood and cow dung.

Black carbon can interfere with the amount of rain and snowfall. Over the oceans, it absorbs some of the sun’s heat before it reaches the water surface, reducing evaporation. What’s more, if black carbon settles on ice or snow, it absorbs sunlight that would normally be reflected.

All of this means that the brown haze is affecting the Asian monsoon, reducing the amount of snowfall in the Himalayas. The black carbon is also settling on snow and glaciers. The result is a double whammy. “About half of the retreat of the Hindu Kush, Himalayan and Tibetan glaciers may be coming from the black carbon solar heating, as well as the slowing down of the monsoons,” Ramanathan says. It’s a controversial point, for it puts at least some of the onus for what’s happening in the Himalayas on regional pollution, and not just on the global warming induced by the industrialised west.

Further evidence comes from a study published in December by James Hansen of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) in New York and colleagues in China. The team (pictured, far left) took ice cores from five glaciers on the Tibetan plateau to find out how concentrations of black soot have changed over the decades.

They found a big peak in black carbon levels in four of the glaciers in the 1950s and 1960s. The source of this black carbon was almost certainly Europe, which has since cleaned up its act. The peak coincides with a dramatic retreat of many Tibetan glaciers during this time, most of which regained ice in the 1970s before starting to decline again more recently. The recent decline coincides with another rise in black carbon levels; this time the pollution is mostly from the Indian subcontinent.

The findings suggest that the shrinking of Himalayan glaciers could be slowed, and perhaps even reversed in some cases, if Asia were to slash its black carbon emissions. And that is vital, because the glaciers and the snowpack act as natural reservoirs, storing water in winter and releasing it in summer, when it is needed most.

The effects of black carbon are certainly not limited to Asia, however. The part of the world that is warming fastest is the Arctic, raising fears that it is nearing a tipping point. Aerosols are as much to blame as greenhouses gases, according to simulations by Drew Shindell of GISS, and colleagues. Since the 1980s, falling sulphur dioxide emissions combined with rising black carbon levels have helped drive the rapid warming, the team reported last year (Nature Geoscience, vol 2, p 294).

While black carbon is turning out to be a much more important contributor to global warming than previously thought, it is far from the only one (see “The climate changers”). For instance, carbon monoxide and the nitrogen oxides are all precursors to ozone, a greenhouse gas. Methane is another one, and requires immediate attention, says Gavin Schmidt of GISS. “Methane is the second-biggest problem after CO2,” he says.

There is a growing consensus about the need to tackle these pollutants. In October, for instance, Stacy Jackson of the University of California, Berkeley, argued for separate treaties for controlling their emissions in addition to whatever follows the Kyoto protocol (Science, vol 326, p 526).

You might wonder why this issue has so far attracted little attention. It’s partly because it is rather new, even to many scientists. There is also still a lot of uncertainty about how much warming or cooling various pollutants cause. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change did not address the issue of regulating non-CO2 emissions in its 2007 report. “The IPCC’s fifth assessment should pay more attention to it, and it will,” says Raes.

However, the difficulty of pinning down the precise effects of each pollutant and the partly regional nature of their effects could make getting international agreement even trickier than with CO2. Some countries might argue, for instance, that their black carbon emissions matter less than other countries because the prevailing winds ensure they never land on snow or ice.

There is one low-hanging fruit, though: the black carbon pumped out by diesel engines, mainly from vehicles in Europe and North America. All that needs to be done is to filter out the particulate emissions from the exhaust fumes of diesel vehicles. “For black carbon reduction, our first focus should be to go after diesel, because the technology is there,” says Ramanathan. It would have big health benefits. too.

Other changes will be harder to achieve. The fires used by people in rural areas for cooking and heating generate a lot of soot, which contains both black carbon and cooling aerosols. The net effect remains unclear. What’s more, villagers cannot afford to switch to solar cookers and clean-burning biogas even if they wanted to. There would have to be some incentive, such as payment via carbon credits, say Ramanathan. “That will overnight transform what’s happening in villages.”

To cut methane emissions, policy-makers will have to target a whole host of sources, says Schmidt, including oilfields, landfills and the sewage plants and manure pits used in industrial agriculture. It will even mean changing the way rice is grown. Flooding paddy fields generates a lot of methane. Using drip irrigation instead would both reduce emissions and save water. But persuading companies to install methane-capture technologies, and farmers to change traditional growing practices, won’t be easy.

One of the reasons why the focus has always been on CO2 is because most non-CO2 pollutants are short-lived. Methane hangs around in the atmosphere for only a decade or two. Aerosols last only days or weeks before being washed out. CO2, by contrast, has an effective lifetime of about a century, so it is the big problem in the long term. There is a danger, however, that any international agreement on non-CO2 pollutants will be seen as a reason to avoid doing anything about CO2.

That is no idle concern, as Hansen knows. His calls for cuts in non-CO2 pollutants back in 2000, among other measures, led to an invitation in 2001 to some meetings of the White House’s climate change task force, whose members included the then vice-president Dick Cheney. Hansen says it became clear to him that Cheney saw tackling non-CO2 pollutants as a way to sidestep CO2 cuts.

The damaging effects of aerosols on our health could yet persuade more governments to go ahead and cut emissions regardless of any international treaties. If countries don’t cut the pollutants that cause warming at the same time as the ones that cause cooling, however, we could soon see temperatures rising fast enough to convince even the most hardened climate-change sceptics.

Too fast, too furious

It’s not so much global warming that threatens ecosystems as the rate at which the temperature rises.

Cleaning up the air by removing the sulphate aerosols whose cooling effect is partly counteracting global warming would uncork the temperature rise that’s already in store for our planet (see graph). It could lead to a rise of as much as 0.3 °C to 0.4 °C per decade (Atmospheric Environment, vol 43, p 5132).

We should be seriously concerned about such rapid climate change, say Rik Leemans of Wageningen University in the Netherlands and Bas Eickhout of the Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency. Their work suggests that nearly 70 per cent of all ecosystems and 83 per cent of all forest ecosystems would struggle to cope with temperature increases of more than 0.3 °C per decade (Global Environmental Change, vol 14, p 219).

Some ecologists are looking at ways to minimise the effect on ecosystems. Nancy-Anne Rose and Philip Burton at the University of Northern British Columbia in Prince George, Canada, have started identifying regions of British Columbia where the climate will remain within acceptable limits for the existing plant and animal life, despite warming elsewhere.

They argue that focusing on these “temporal corridors” will allow conservation agencies to maximise their impact. The Nature Conservancy of Canada aims to use the work to establish conservation plans for British Columbia (Forest Ecology and Management, vol 258, p S64).

Every cloud had a lead lining

Pinning down the effect of small particles, or aerosols, on the climate is extremely difficult, and recent studies have thrown up a few surprises. Just last year, for instance, Daniel Cziczo of the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in Richland, Washington, and colleagues, showed that lead particles are extremely efficient at seeding the formation of ice crystals in the atmosphere, which cool the planet by reflecting sunshine (Nature Geoscience, vol 2, p 333).

So while the lead added to petrol from the 1920s onwards was bad for our brains, clouds containing lead helped offset the warming effect of CO2. When lead levels peaked in the 1970s, lead may have had an average cooling effect of up to 0.8 watts per square metre. “According to our simulations there has probably already been a warming due to the reduction in lead emissions,” says Cziczo.

Another surprise finding is that global dimming boosts plant growth. Aerosol pollution has cut the amount of sunshine reaching Earth’s surface by around 10 per cent in places, which you would think would limit photosynthesis. However, the pollution also scatters what light does reach the surface, meaning plants receive light from more directions. Fewer leaves are left in the shade, boosting photosynthesis, say Lina Mercado of the Centre for Ecology and Hydrology in Wallingford, UK, and colleagues (Nature, vol 458, p 1014). As the air gets cleaner, plant growth will fall and so will the amount of carbon those plants sequester.

Anil Ananthaswamy is a consultant for New Scientist based in London

Source: www.newscientist.com

NASA Watches What Earthlings are Up to

A recent NASA study which analysed how different human activities impact on climate has led the Goddard Institute of Space Studies to come down to earth to partner with environmental economists to determine the damage costs of emissions from all the sectors due to both climate and air quality impacts, results that can be used to develop alternative mitigation scenarios. Nadine Unger is the climatologist on the job.

Nadine Unger, a climatologist with NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York City, spoke with NASA’s Earth Science News Team about her recent study that analyzed how different human activities impact climate. The study appeared in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in February.

NASA’s Earth Science News Team: Your research suggests that the climate science community ought to shift its focus from looking at the impacts of individual chemicals to economic sectors. Why?

Nadine Unger: There’s nothing “wrong” with dividing climate impacts up by chemical species, but it’s not particularly useful for policy makers. They need to know which human activities are impacting the climate and what the effect will be if they attempt to curb emissions from a particular sector. Also, there’s a great deal of complexity in our emissions that they need to be mindful of if we want to mitigate climate change efficiently.

NASA: What sort of complexity?

Nadine Unger: Some sectors of the economy produce a mixture of pollutants — particularly aerosols — that cause cooling rather than warming in the short term. Since warming can accelerate as we remove aerosols, we’ve been inadvertently geoengineering for decades with aerosol emissions.

Take the heavy industry and shipping sectors, for example. These sectors burn a great deal of coal and bunker fuel, which releases carbon dioxide, which causes greenhouse warming. But they also release sulfates, which cause cooling by blocking incoming radiation from the sun and by changing clouds to make them brighter and longer-lived. In the short term, the cooling from sulfates actually outweighs the warming from carbon dioxide, meaning the net impact of the shipping and heavy industry sectors today is to cool climate.

Compare that to cars and trucks, which emit almost no sulfates but a great deal of carbon dioxide, black carbon, and ozone — all of which cause warming and happen to be very bad for human health. Cutting transportation emissions would be unambiguously good for the climate in the short term, while cutting heavy industry emissions would have less of an impact right now.

NASA: You keep mentioning “short-term” impacts. Could the climate impacts of some sectors of the economy change over longer time periods?

Nadine Unger: Yes. Greenhouse gases have a much longer lifespan — or residence time — in the atmosphere than aerosols, which typically rain out after a few days or weeks. This means that the impact of greenhouse gases can accumulate and intensify over time, while the aerosol effects become comparatively less important on longer time scales due to the accumulation of carbon dioxide.

NASA: You’ve mentioned industry, shipping and on-road transportation. What other sectors of the economy did you analyze?

Nadine Unger: Aviation, household fossil fuels, railroads, household biofuels (mainly wood and dung used for home cooking and heating), animal husbandry, the electric power sector, waste and landfills, agriculture, biomass burning…

NASA: What is biomass burning?

Nadine Unger: Mainly tropical forest fires, deforestation and savannah and shrub fires. We also looked at agricultural waste burning, which relates to seasonal clearing of the fields common in many countries in Africa and South America.

NASA: So, does this mean that pollution from industry and biomass burning is good for the climate?

Nadine Unger: No, not at all. Both of those sectors contribute to warming over the long term, so we’ll have no choice but to reduce our emissions over time. But these sectors do mask warming from greenhouses gases in the short term. Just because an activity causes cooling in the short-term does not mean that it is ‘good’ for the climate. The emissions might disturb other aspects of the climate system including the amount of rainfall in a region and therefore the water supply to humans.

NASA: Where did you get all the information about emissions?

Nadine Unger: We used emission inventories assembled by colleagues. For instance, a colleague from the University of Illinois — Tami Bond — has some of the best information on some types of aerosols, such as black carbon.

NASA: But how can you estimate the impacts of emissions that haven’t happened yet?

Nadine Unger: We used a computer model at GISS to look at future at climate impacts if we continued emitting pollutants at today’s rate. Using this approach, we looked specifically at two snapshots in time: 2020 and 2100.

NASA: What can we do if we want to minimize climate change in the near term?

Nadine Unger: Well, our analysis suggests that on-the-road transportation and household biofuels are very attractive sectors to target. We can reduce human warming impacts most rapidly by tackling emissions from these sectors. In order to protect climate in the longer term, emissions from power and industry must be reduced.

NASA: Are there any uncertainties in your results?

Nadine Unger: There are. There’s a large amount of uncertainty about how aerosols affect climate, especially through the indirect effects on clouds. Hopefully, NASA’s Glory mission will help reduce the uncertainties associated with aerosols.

NASA: What direction do you see your research going next?

Nadine Unger: Our focus has been on global climate so far, but in future work we’ll assess regional climate impacts, as well as other disturbances to the climate system, such as effects on the water supply and land ecosystems.

In addition, we plan to investigate many of the sectors in greater detail. In the power sector, for example, we might look specifically at power stations that operate with coal or natural gas. And in the on-road transportation sector, we might break out heavy- from light-duty vehicles.

Finally, we’re planning to partner with environmental economists to determine the damage costs of emissions from all the sectors due to both climate and air quality impacts, results that we can use to develop alternative mitigation scenarios.

Related Links

Road Transportation Emerges as Key Driver of Warming in New Analysis from NASA

http://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/features/road-transportation.html

Attribution of Climate Forcing to Economic Sectors

http://pnas.org/content/early/2010/02/02/0906548107.abstract

Nadine Unger Bio

http://giss.nasa.gov/staff/nunger.html

Other Research by Nadine Unger

http://pubs.giss.nasa.gov/authors/nunger.html

Clean the Air, Heat the Planet

http://sciencemag.org/cgi/content/short/326/5953/672

Source: www.nasa.gov

Property Developers & Scientists in Flannery’s Sights

Scientists needed to get back into the community and explain the link between greenhouse gas emissions and climate change, says Professor Tim Flannery, as a lack of simple communication means sceptics had been able to fill the void with misinformation. He also targeted property developers for seeking to influence coastal planning decisions and build homes that would be threatened by rising sea levels.

Tom Arup and Peter Ker in The Age (20 February 2010):

Environmentalist Tim Flannery has blamed scientists for a rise in climate scepticism, saying they had not clearly explained the science to a ”confused Australian public”.

Professor Flannery, a long-time climate campaigner, told The Age that scientists needed to get back into the community and explain the link between greenhouse gas emissions and climate change.

He said a lack of simple communication to the public about the science of climate change meant sceptics had been able to fill the void with misinformation.

Professor Flannery also supported comments by Climate Change Minister Penny Wong that there was a concerted world effort by sceptics to stop action on global warming.

”We’ve got a big problem with the gap between scientific information and a very confused public here in Australia,” Professor Flannery said.

”The only way to solve that is to listen to the Australian people’s questions and talk to them about it, and they [the scientists] have been rather poor at doing that.”

Professor Flannery yesterday spoke at the Coastal Forum in Adelaide, which is discussing the effects of sea level rises on coastal areas.

He chairs the government’s Coasts and Climate Change Council, which is working on recommendations for the best ways for coastal communities to adapt to sea-level rises.

The council yesterday released a preliminary report warning that some sensitive coastal areas in Australia are already seeing the effects of climate change, through higher king tides, erosion and flood damage.

It also said that coastal policies, which broadly assume that sea levels will remain at current levels, need to be reviewed.

In October, the council will hand its final report to the federal government, which is working on a national coastal policy with state governments.

At the conference, Senator Wong released a government position paper on climate change adaptation, which highlights the need for consistent policies around Australia to prepare for future impacts that are ”already built into the system”.

Source: www.theage.com.au

Pia Akerman in The Australian (20 February 2010):

ENVIRONMENTALIST and author Tim Flannery has called for a ban on property developers making political donations, saying some were seeking to influence coastal planning decisions and build homes that would be threatened by rising sea levels.

Addressing a forum on how Australia’s coastal communities needed to adapt to climate change, Professor Flannery said the nation’s governments needed to look at reining in development.

“Where property developers have undue influence on council, it’s going to be that much more difficult for us to deal with this problem,” he said.

“There are some property developers who would seek to benefit themselves but then have impacts which would be paid for by future generations or the community as a whole.”

Climate Change Minister Penny Wong, who raised the prospect of Australia’s beaches being eroded away or receding hundreds of metres over the next century in her opening address to the National Climate Change forum on Thursday, declined to say what she thought of Professor Flannery’s proposal.

But the former Australian of the Year admitted the idea would not be popular in political circles.

Professor Flannery has backed models predicting a sea level rise of between three and five metres over the next 300 years but conceded scientists were working “in the absence of certainty”.

Responding to a story in The Australian yesterday in which an environmental scientist questioned the science behind Senator Wong’s dire predictions and Bondi Beach veterans said they hadn’t discerned any change in sea levels over several decades, Professor Flannery said those attitudes invited catastrophe.

“There is a real need for us to just step back and say, `Yes, I can’t see any evidence of climate change in my little neck of the woods, but that doesn’t mean it’s not happening’,” he said. “Do we want to give away the heritage of the world’s coastal cities? Because in just three centuries that is likely to be the outcome.”

Professor Flannery said the only way to find out what the future held was to wait, but “if we do that, we know catastrophe will befall us . . . By the time the outcome is evident, it’s too late to act.”

The Rudd government’s Coasts and Climate Change Council released its preliminary findings yesterday, calling for urgent national action to address threats to the coast caused by climate change.

“Our planning systems will need to change, how we assess and share risks will need to change,” its report said.

“There will be consequences for all coastal decision-makers from households to major businesses.”

Professor Flannery, the council’s chairman, called for scientists to speak with a united voice to convince the public their claims on climate change were credible.

“The issue we face is a very frightening one,” Professor Flannery said. “One of the first things people do when they’re in that position is go into denial.”

Source: www.theaustralian.com.au

Cities of the Future: More Sustainable or More Congestion?

A new national framework for sustainable communities was released by the Green Building Council at the opening of the Green Cities 2010 conference, providing an independent, national language to guide the development of sustainable communities and precincts, while a warning came in the “Cities for the Future” report that by 2041 Australia’s cities will experience significant increases in traffic congestion, people will spend more time travelling and cars will generate more greenhouse gas emissions.

Green Cities (21 February 2010):  

The Green Building Council of Australia (GBCA) has released a new national framework for sustainable communities at the opening of the Green Cities 2010 conference.

Launching the new Green Star – Communities framework, GBCA Chair Tony Arnel said that the framework would establish an independent, national language to guide the development of sustainability communities and precincts.

“The framework – and its guiding principles – provides a dual purpose. It is a national resource for those creating sustainable communities and it establishes the context for the GBCA’s Green Star – Communities tool, which will commence development in June.”

The national framework has been developed by the GBCA and its partner VicUrban, in collaboration with industry and government, and outlines five national principles for sustainable communities:

1. Create liveable communities

2. Provide opportunities for economic prosperity

3. Enhance environmental quality

4. Design great places

5. Promote good urban governance.

According to the GBCA’s Chief Executive, Romilly Madew, launching the framework at Green Cities 2010 reflects the evolution in the GBCA’s focus – from individual buildings to communities, precincts and cities themselves.

“The GBCA is confident that the construction and property industry now has sufficient momentum and interest to keep driving forward on both an individual building and community basis. While the GBCA expands its influence beyond the building envelope, Green Star continues to advance to ensure we have the right tools – and the right skills – to push the boundaries of best practice sustainability

benchmarks,” Ms Madew said.

The new framework complements the Australian Government’s new reforms which will require states and territories to develop capital city strategic plans by 2012 that meet national criteria for transport, housing, urban development and sustainability.

“This framework will provide valuable support for, and complement, the federal government’s sustainable cities agenda, and we expect everyone from planners and designers, through to builders and community neighbourhood groups will find the framework useful,” Mr Arnel concluded.

The GBCA’s Framework for Sustainable Communities has been developed with the support of principal project sponsor, Rock Development Group, together with other sponsors Brisbane City Council, Grocon, Lend Lease, Sydney Harbour Foreshore Authority, Barangaroo Delivery Authority and Stockland

About the Green Building Council of Australia

The Green Building Council of Australia (GBCA) is Australia’s leading authority on

green building. The GBCA was established in 2002 to develop a sustainable

property industry in Australia and drive the adoption of green building practices.

The GBCA has more than 785 member companies who work together to support

the Council and its activities. The GBCA promotes green building programs,

technologies, design practices and processes, and operates Australia’s only

national voluntary comprehensive environmental rating system for buildings -

Green Star.

Source: www.gbcaus.org

From Greener Cities (22 February 2010):

Prepare for more time in the car, new report finds

By 2041, Australia’s cities will experience significant increases in traffic congestion, people will spend more time travelling and cars will generate more greenhouse gas emissions, a new study has found.

Cities for the future: Baseline report and key issues, commissioned by the Australian Sustainable Built Environment Council (ASBEC), has been released today at Green Cities 2010 in Melbourne.

The report points to a bleak future where transport-related greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) increase by almost 50 per cent and travel times increase by quarter.

“Under a business as usual approach, our urban centres will become more transport intensive and less transport efficient. Congestion will worsen, travel times become longer and transport-related GHG increase,” says ASBEC President, Tom Roper.

“The report is a clarion call to our federal, state and local governments that swift, decisive action is required to deliver better transport systems in Australia’s cities,” Mr Roper says.

According to Romilly Madew, Chief Executive of the Green Building Council Australia and task group chair, the analysis “clearly shows that, without action to change the way people live, work and play in our cities, our transport challenges will only get worse.”

Cities for the future is the first part of a four stage project which aims to explore and measure the links between greenhouse gas emissions from urban transport and land use within our cities.

“This report has found that the shape of our cities and the distribution of land uses can influence transport and therefore emissions. However, in raising sustainability and reducing emissions, we are likely to realise other tangible benefits, such as healthier communities, more accessible services, appropriate responses to demographic change, and more efficient use of land and infrastructure,” Ms Madew explains.

The study examined two cities, Greater Melbourne and South East Queensland, with key findings including:

 Urban centres will become more transport intensive and less transport efficient: The total amount of passenger travel and time spent travelling in cities is forecast to grow more than proportionally to population and employment.

 Transport is forecast to be slower: Average trip speed (kilometres per hour) is projected to decrease in both regions studied in the report by around 10 to 13 per cent by 2041.

 Transport outcomes are likely to deteriorate: people in both cities are projected to spend more time travelling per day and to travel longer distances. People in South East Queensland and Greater Melbourne will see their travel time increase by approximately 26 and 23 per cent, respectively, by 2041.Transport GHG emissions are projected to rise in the studied urban centres: Emissions in South East Queensland are projected to have the largest increase, rising by 75 per cent between 2006 and 2041.

 Land transport GHG emissions from within urban Australia are projected to rise substantially under the baseline scenario: Without additional policy interventions these emissions are projected to rise from an estimated 41 megatonnes per annum in 2006 to 60 megatonnes in 2041 – an increase of 46 per cent.

 The need for mobility and its costs will increase: Overall, the analysis shows that the need for mobility and its costs in terms of time and harmful impacts upon the environment will increase. These adverse changes are expected to outpace the growth in underlying population and represent a challenge for future transport networks.

Stage two of ASBEC’s study will bring together key experts and stakeholders in Australia to discuss the initial findings and develop alternative frameworks for land use, transport, environmental outcomes and community planning.

“From this, we will determine which alternative scenarios provide the best outcomes for Australia’s cities and the people who live in them,” Ms Madew explains.

“The challenge is to recast our vision for Australia’s cities and deliver sustainable, liveable places that service a diverse and growing population,” says Tom Roper.

“While the model is still being debated, the principles of the sustainable city of the future are clear: well planned, built and operated places that are sensitive to their environment, meet the diverse needs of existing and future residents, and contribute to a high quality of life.”

About ASBEC

The Australian Sustainable Built Environment Council (ASBEC) is the peak body of key organisations committed to a sustainable built environment in Australia. ASBEC members are industry and professional associations, non-government organisations and government observers who are involved in the planning, design, delivery and operation of our built environment, and are concerned with the sector’s social and environmental impacts.

ASBEC’s Cities for the Future task group comprises representatives from the Green Building Council Australia, Australian Institute of Architects, Australian Conservation Foundation, Property Council of Australia, the Planning Institute of Australia and the Association of Consulting Engineers Australia. Cities for the future: Baseline report and key issues was funded by task group members, the Built Environment Industry Innovation Council (co-funded by the Australian Government Department of Innovation, Industry, Science and Research), the ACT Planning and Land Authority and the Victorian Employers’ Chamber of Commerce and Industry.

Source: www.asbec.asn.au

More Warming Before We Get Our Act Together. 

Action to reduce greenhouse emissions is lagging so far behind what the science tells us is necessary that some degree of warming is now inevitable. Cities such as Sydney should take pragmatic measures to prepare for an inevitable degree of warming, by planning to lift port infrastructure as sea levels rise, building new water supply systems and devising plans to minimise heatwave-related deaths. So says Michael Oppenheimer, a geoscientist at Princeton University visiting Australia this week. 

Akelsey Munro in Sydney Morning Herald (23 February 2010): 

ACTION to reduce greenhouse emissions is lagging so far behind what the science tells us is necessary that some degree of warming is now inevitable, an expert warned yesterday. 

Cities such as Sydney should take pragmatic measures to prepare for an inevitable degree of warming, for example by planning to lift port infrastructure as sea levels rise, building new water supply systems and devising plans to minimise heatwave-related deaths, said Michael Oppenheimer, a geoscientist at Princeton University and a lead author of the third and fourth assessment reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. 

”The solution isn’t just about reducing emissions,” he said. ”It’s important for individuals and communities to be prepared for a warmer climate, because there’s going to be more warming before we get our act together. 

”We’re heading in a direction which if not averted will eventually give us a much higher sea level and drown much of the coastal zone as we know it today,” he said. 

Professor Oppenheimer received a lot of public attention recently following the news that volume two of the IPCC’s Fourth Assessment report contained a glaring error: a claim that 80 per cent of the Himalayan glaciers would disappear by 2035. 

It had been missed by the report’s three-layered peer review process, and caused serious embarrassment to the IPCC, despite the in-depth projection on glacier decline being correctly covered elsewhere in the report. 

He said the mistake was ”embarrassing, because … it’s the kind of question that the IPCC ought to be working very hard to address correctly”. 

He hoped the humiliation would improve IPCC processes, but said that there was only ”one actual cold error” in a three-volume report with 2500 expert authors ”really is a testament to the fact the IPCC has worked very hard to avoid making mistakes”. 

In his view, there is no arguing with the science; but the politics of what to do about it is fair game. 

”There’s been confusion on both sides about the distinction between scientific facts and political judgments,” he said. ”Anybody is entitled to political judgments, but the scientific facts are what they are. 

”Global warming is happening whether my president wants to do something about it or not. 

”Just because I’m a scientist and have a big mouth, doesn’t mean you should listen to me on the politics.” 

Professor Oppenheimer has a two-decade association with the IPCC, overlapping his long service as chief scientist at the Environmental Defence Fund, a US non-governmental organisation. 

He describes himself as ”congenital” optimist. ”I have the expectation that humans and even governments are rational and will act on this problem. Perhaps not as expeditiously as I hoped, but they’ll act to stem the worst possible outcomes.” 

Michael Oppenheimer will speak tonight (23 Febraury) at the University of Sydney’s Seymour Centre, for the Institute for Sustainable Solutions. 

Source: www.smh.com.au 

Warming Before We Get Our Act Together

Action to reduce greenhouse emissions is lagging so far behind what the science tells us is necessary that some degree of warming is now inevitable. Cities such as Sydney should take pragmatic measures to prepare for an inevitable degree of warming, by planning to lift port infrastructure as sea levels rise, building new water supply systems and devising plans to minimise heatwave-related deaths. So says Michael Oppenheimer, a geoscientist at Princeton University visiting Australia this week.

Akelsey Munro in Sydney Morning Herald (23 February 2010):

ACTION to reduce greenhouse emissions is lagging so far behind what the science tells us is necessary that some degree of warming is now inevitable, an expert warned yesterday.

Cities such as Sydney should take pragmatic measures to prepare for an inevitable degree of warming, for example by planning to lift port infrastructure as sea levels rise, building new water supply systems and devising plans to minimise heatwave-related deaths, said Michael Oppenheimer, a geoscientist at Princeton University and a lead author of the third and fourth assessment reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

”The solution isn’t just about reducing emissions,” he said. ”It’s important for individuals and communities to be prepared for a warmer climate, because there’s going to be more warming before we get our act together.

”We’re heading in a direction which if not averted will eventually give us a much higher sea level and drown much of the coastal zone as we know it today,” he said.

Professor Oppenheimer received a lot of public attention recently following the news that volume two of the IPCC’s Fourth Assessment report contained a glaring error: a claim that 80 per cent of the Himalayan glaciers would disappear by 2035.

It had been missed by the report’s three-layered peer review process, and caused serious embarrassment to the IPCC, despite the in-depth projection on glacier decline being correctly covered elsewhere in the report.

He said the mistake was ”embarrassing, because … it’s the kind of question that the IPCC ought to be working very hard to address correctly”.

He hoped the humiliation would improve IPCC processes, but said that there was only ”one actual cold error” in a three-volume report with 2500 expert authors ”really is a testament to the fact the IPCC has worked very hard to avoid making mistakes”.

In his view, there is no arguing with the science; but the politics of what to do about it is fair game.

”There’s been confusion on both sides about the distinction between scientific facts and political judgments,” he said. ”Anybody is entitled to political judgments, but the scientific facts are what they are.

”Global warming is happening whether my president wants to do something about it or not.

”Just because I’m a scientist and have a big mouth, doesn’t mean you should listen to me on the politics.”

Professor Oppenheimer has a two-decade association with the IPCC, overlapping his long service as chief scientist at the Environmental Defence Fund, a US non-governmental organisation.

He describes himself as ”congenital” optimist. ”I have the expectation that humans and even governments are rational and will act on this problem. Perhaps not as expeditiously as I hoped, but they’ll act to stem the worst possible outcomes.”

Michael Oppenheimer will speak tonight (23 Febraury) at the University of Sydney’s Seymour Centre, for the Institute for Sustainable Solutions.

Source: www.smh.com.au

City State Sets 80% Target for Green Buildings & Gas Switch

Singapore, which hosts the World Green Building Congress in September, is committed to have 80% of its buildings green by 2030, while a Singapore study shows that a fuel switch from electric storage heaters to gas continuous flow heaters may result in carbon emission reductions of up to 86% at the national level. Head of the Singapore Green Building Council Tan Tian Chong spoke at the Green Cities event in Melbourne.

Singapore only officially set up its Green Building Council late last year and it is committed to speed up the development of ‘green’ buildings in Singapore.

Here’s a report of its founding and action plans:

The new unit, the Singapore Green Building Council, is expected to increase collaboration between the private and public sectors in Singapore and push the building and construction industries towards environmental sustainability.

The council was set up with seed funding from Building and Construction Authority (BCA), but has also raised more than 10 times that amount from its private sector sponsors and members. The council has 141 founding members, including ‘diamond’ sponsors City Developments, CapitaLand and Keppel Land.

It aims to promote green building design as well as green practices and technologies, said its president Lee Chuan Seng.

Targets set out in the Singapore Sustainable Blueprint, which was released earlier this year, call for 80 per cent of all buildings in Singapore to achieve at least the basic Green Mark Certification by 2030. This is expected to reduce energy intensity by more than 30 per cent.

Buildings in Singapore are the second largest users of electricity after the industrial sector

‘The ‘greening’ of buildings will require concerted effort,’ said Singapore’s Deputy Prime Minister & Minister for Defence Teo Chee Hean yesterday. Mr Teo announced the formation of the Singapore Green Building Council at the launch of a green building conference and exhibition.

He added that the government will work in partnership with building owners to raise awareness on the energy efficiency of their buildings, and achieve savings in their electricity bills.

On its part, the Singapore Green Building Council will help lead and co-ordinate the industry’s efforts, in collaboration with the government, to accelerate the development of green buildings and improve energy efficiency in Singapore’s built environment.

It will also tap into an international community of green building experts through the World Green Building Council. The World Council has granted ‘emerging member’ status to the new Singapore Council.

The Green Building Council also aims to become a leader in exploring how tropical countries can embrace sustainable development. Mr Lee told reporters that most of the designs today have been developed for temperate climates.

But for a start, the Council plans to set up a system for certification within the next six to 12 months.

‘One of the things that hold back the development of green buildings in Singapore is that we don’t have certification; we have some green labelling system for products but it is not comprehensive,’ said Mr Lee. ‘So what we are trying to do now is start up some product directory. That will then move into certification.’

Gas Heaters, Clean Energy For a Greener Singapore By Associate Professor Lee Siew Eang

This independent study quantifies the positive effects of using Gas Water Heaters and provides a cost analysis (based on retail price) for reference.

Some of the key findings of the study are as follows:
• The fuel switch from electric storage heaters to gas continuous flow heaters may result in carbon emission reductions of up to 86% at the national level. This is equivalent to 0.5 million tons of carbon emissions annually;
• In terms of energy saving, the study shows that there is a potential savings of up to 64% in energy use with respect to total energy use for hot water generation in Singapore, when all households switch from electric storage heaters to gas continuous flow heaters. This saving translate to 700,000 MWh or S$149 million per year at the national level;
• The estimated carbon emission reduction as stated above is equivalent to the planting of up to 500,000 trees per annum to provide the carbon sink for the absorption of the same amount of carbon; or equivalent to the removal of 72,780 cars from the road;

• At individual level, a switch from electric instantaneous heaters to gas continuous flow heaters may result in savings ranging from 14% to 44% of the total hot water energy use. Similarly, a switch from electric storage heaters to the gas continuous flow heaters may result in a saving of up to 91%, in terms of energy cost, depending on the level of usage and temperature settings.

• A cost study has shown that for new developments, the increase in installation cost for a gas continuous flow heater may be recovered from energy saving within a period of 9 months for a small private apartment, and a maximum of 2.1 years for a large private apartment. For apartments the existing electric storage heaters have been retrofitted to gas continuous flow water heater, the payback period ranges from 1.5 years to 3.2 years for small private apartments and large private apartments respectively.

Source: www.sgbc.sg

Green Plumbing The Depths & Biofueling The Heights

Australia’s blue collar construction workers are going green and at the forefront of change will be plumbers who deliver the majority of energy consumed in buildings, according to The Fifth Estate reporting from Green Cities, while Air New Zealand says it may take longer than first thought to reach its goal of replacing 10% of the jet fuel it uses for its aircraft with biofuel.

Steve Creedy in The Australian February 19, 2010

AIR New Zealand plans to convert its domestic ground handling equipment to use either electricity or biodiesel, but says it may take longer than first thought to reach its goal of replacing 10 per cent of the jet fuel it uses for its aircraft with biofuel.

The airline took part in a biofuel test flight at the end of 2008 and spent much of last year focusing on how to introduce the greener energy option to its operations.

The carbon penalty involved in moving fuel long distances meant the carrier spent much of last year looking at New Zealand options for feedstocks before settling on cellulose and algae as the two main contenders.

Air NZ chief executive Rob Fyfe said the algae developments looked promising in the longer term, with a potential rollout in five to 10 years.

He said the benefit of algae was that, under the right conditions, it could double its mass in 24 hours, but there were challenges around how to feed it, how to harvest it and how to extract oil from it in a way that was economically viable and did not consume more energy than it created.

“A lot of people will tell you that they can generate a very high quality biofuel out of algae, and they can, but it’s the scalability and commercialisation of the process that presents major challenges,” he said.

Mr Fyfe said cellulose feedstock basically involved wood pulp and there were a number of initiatives under way around the world that looked feasible in the next one to two years.

He said Air New Zealand expected to use biofuel initially on its domestic network, where a 70-80 per cent market share justified installing the necessary infrastructure, Mr Fyfe said.

“Our goal originally was that we were hopeful we could get to that stage by 2013,” he said.

“It’s clear now that the development of the feedstock is not going to move at that speed. So it will be the development of the feedstock that will be the constraining factor.

“Until we’ve chosen the feedstock and we’ve determined what the scalability of that feedstock is, then it’s hard to lock down a specific target. But I’m still looking at that three to five-year horizon. You’ve got to keep this stuff in the near term.”

The use of biofuels on international routes would depend on the dominant players in various areas but was likely to involve a 10-year, rather than a five-year, horizon, Mr Fyfe said.

Source: www.theaustralian.com.au

The Fifth Estate reports from Green Cities(21 February 2010):

While architects, engineers and developers are learning the “green” game, so too are Australia’s blue collar construction workers. And at the forefront of change will be plumbers who deliver the majority of energy consumed in buildings, according to The Fifth Estate reporting from Green Cities.

According to the Green Building Council of Australia major re-training is under way in a variety of trades delivering buildings in the commercial and residential sphere.

“Plumbers are considering ways to save water, bricklayers are recycling whatever they can and electricians are laying cables in buildings without ceilings in a revolution which is changing building sites right across Australia,” the GBCA’s executive director of education and marketing, Tania Crosbie said.

Blue collar building jobs, estimated to be around 1 million Australia-wide, now feature a wide range of jobs considered “green” Ms Crosbie said.

“The green economy in Australia is believed to be worth about $17 billion and forecasts indicate that another 850,000 green collar jobs will be created over the next 20 years,” she said.

“In the past five years, the GBCA has trained over 14,500 people working in property and construction in the use of the green building environmental rating system, Green Star.”

Plumbers could well be leading the way.

Vin Ebejer, general manager of the Plumbing Industry Climate Action Centre, which opened in Melbourne’s inner suburb of Brunswick last year, more than 70 per cent of the energy consumed in a house was delivered by the plumbing system.

“The importance of having plumbers well trained and well versed in sustainability issues cannot be overstated,” he said.

“Most plumbers were trained before the invention of green technologies. Significant amounts of training
must occur to upskill these plumbers so that they can meet consumer demand for their services.”

The Green Cities 2010 will discuss these issues in a special sitting of the conference under way 21-23 February in Melbourne.

21 February, 2010

Source: www.thefifthestate.com.au