A  new project, Jem by Lend Lease, has become the first mixed-use development project in Singapore to achieve the Building Construction Authority (BCA) Green Mark Platinum Award rating for its eco-friendly features and for replacing lost landscape by 122%. The Jem shopping mall – due to open next month with 100% retail space occupied – is located adjacent to the Jurong East MRT station. Meanwhile,Mr Mann Young, Head of Sustainability, Asia, Lend Lease gets awarded the Green Advocate of the Year Award. Well deserved. Congratulations, Mann! Read more

New Singapore project first to replace more greenery than is lost

SAA Architects and the Jem project

A new project, Jem, in Singapore has become the first mixed-use development project to achieve the Singapore Building Construction Authority (BCA) Green Mark Platinum Award rating for its eco-friendly features and for replacing lost landscape by 122 per cent.

The mall and office tower, located at the Jurong Lake District, is a 19,124 square metres development designed by SAA Architects, one of the leading architectural firms in Southeast Asia with several Green Mark Awards in its belt.

The designers recognised the project’s sheer size and aimed to address its urban impact on the local community by applying a landscape replacement strategy.

It is also a policy promoted by Singapore’s Urban Redevelopment Authority (URA) with the following objectives: to enhance quality of life through greenery and spaces of relief; to create a distinctive image of the city in the tropics; and, to help bring environmental benefits like air quality improvement and urban island heat mitigation.

In the case of Jem, the greenery lost due to its development, as well as its carbon footprint, was replaced with abundant skyrise greenery and landscape areas within the complex.

The 17-storey project has four zones of greenery. The first is called Active Laneways, or Jem Street, which is situated between levels one to four complete with carefully selected plants that increase native species and promote biodiversity. This area accounts for 20 per cent of the total landscape replacement area.

Next is the Cascading Skypark or Jem Park, which occupies levels five to seven. This portion serves as the ecological and communal core of the building, with children’s play areas, meeting spaces, quiet reflection zones, a café, some educational spots and more landscaping for the community’s enjoyment.

The third zone, Sky Terraces, is located on the office side of the project, providing external shading, minimising heat gain and maximising the views of the surrounding environment. The effect of this zone is to add lushness to the Jurong scenery, thereby increasing the quality of life by making the new development a pleasing place to work and relax.

Sky Sanctuary, the fourth and last zone found at the top of the office tower, completes the landscape replacement by adding to this benefit, giving office workers another peaceful location to escape the corporate grind and a heightened appreciation for the environment.

As for the other eco-friendly features of Jem, the designers at SAA Architects included an efficient air-conditioning system, regenerative lifts and ample use of LED lighting. The project will also reduce water consumption to the volume of approximately 250,000 cubic metres (or around 100 Olympic-sized swimming pools) per year.

Being a Green Mark Platinum Awardee, Jem is expected to minimise energy consumption equivalent to the energy generated by about 2,400 HDB apartments annually.

Source: www.eco-business.com ,  www.lendlease.com and www.jem.sg

Singapore, 14 May 2013 – Lend Lease is honored to win two awards at the annual Building and Construction Authority (BCA) Awards 2013; Mr Mann Young, Head of Sustainability, Asia, Lend Lease will be awarded the Green Advocate of the Year Award while Jem®, a mixed-use development in Jurong Gateway, is one of the recipients of BCA’s coveted first Universal Design (UD) Mark Award for its exemplary UD features.

Mr Mann Young said: “At Lend Lease, the community is at the heart of everything we do. We want to kickstart a revolution in the building industry by focusing on innovative technology and programmes that ultimately produce an inclusive and greener built environment. This is in line with our vision of Creating the Best Places as we create designs that revolve around people to leave a positive legacy for generations to come.”

Congratulating Lend Lease, BCA CEO Dr. John Keung commented: “We are proud to work with partners like Lend Lease, who are renowned for placing sustainability at the top of their priorities. Their projects are an example of how one can optimise project outcomes that are not only sustainable but also take into consideration the commercial and business aspirations of all key stakeholders. This is the way forward, as we embark on our journey together to develop a truly sustainable and inclusive city.”

Mr Mann Young will be conferred the Green Advocate of the Year at this year’s BCA awards ceremony on 16 May 2013 in recognition of his commitment and passion for environmental sustainability. Responsible for driving Lend Lease’s sustainability philosophy of “Every Action Adds Up”, he constantly introduces innovative technology to the building sector hoping to see a positive revolution in the industry. Lend Lease’s Jem®, 313@somerset and Parkway Parade are leading projects amongst his notable project contributions in Singapore, with all three projects awarded the BCA Green Mark Platinum status. He also contributed to help Setia City Mall be the first mall in Malaysia to win the BCA Green Mark Gold Award. His other industry advocacy roles in the sustainability arena include the Chairperson of Asia Pacific Real Estate Association (APREA) Sustainability Committee, a committee member of United Nations Environment Program Finance Initiative (UNEP-FI) Property Working Group and the World Green Building Council Regional Manager of the Asia Pacific Green Building Council Network.

Jem® will be among the first recipients of the coveted Universal Design (UD) Mark Award voluntary certification scheme at the ceremony this year, winning the GoldPlus (design) award. The UD Mark accords recognition to developments and projects that pursue a design philosophy that enables everyone – the young, the old and persons with different abilities – to enjoy inclusive living in familiar surroundings with their loved ones. Some of the notable measures adopted by the highly anticipated retail and commercial development include conducting consumer focus group studies to understand their needs and requirements, adopting a guide dog friendly policy in the mall and a comprehensive network of shelters and connecting walkways are all evidence of Jem® catering to the varying needs of diverse user groups in its community. The designed facilities will continue to be maintained with the original purpose in mind as Lend Lease continues to manage the mall. Lend Lease is involved as owner, development manager, constructor and asset and property manager, ensuring the universal design is upkept through the entire property spectrum. (For more information on the UD measures in Jem®, please refer to Annex A)

In addition to these accolades, Lend Lease is honored to be the Project and Construction Manager of the Singapore Pools Building at Middle Road that received the BCA Green Mark GoldPlus award. Working closely with Singapore Pools and CPG Consultants, Lend Lease played an instrumental role in bringing the building and infrastructure up to current standards of energy-saving excellence.

These industry recognitions on both an individual and project-wide level are strong testaments to Lend Lease’s continual strong commitment to sustainability and alignment to BCA’s vision to have the best built environment for Singapore, our distinctive global city.

Singapore has joined the Arctic Council at a time when there was growing international interest in the melting of polar ice and the impact this would have on countries like Singapore, where coastal flooding is a real problem for the island nation. And Singapore doesn’t hesitate to identify with important global issues and opportunities like this. In a Straits Times editorial this week, headed “World gone cold on global warming”, it states conclusively: “The world is by now convinced of the need to reduce the use of fossil fuels in favour of cleaner alternatives”. Read More

World gone cold on global warming

Editorial Desk of The Straits Times (21 May 2013):

People on Earth learnt the other week that the heat-trapping carbon dioxide in the air they breathe had crossed the 400 parts per million (ppm) mark, which could possibly be a life-changing level. Scientists have warned that a tipping point could be reached at the existing rate of gas increase caused by industry, agriculture and applications of technology, like vehicle use and air travel.

Projections are that there will be a doubling, to about 1,000 ppm, towards the end of the century. But well before this level is reached, by around mid-century, extreme weather patterns of drought and heavy rainfall causing floods will begin to disrupt world food production. The heat expansion of ocean waters and the loss of polar ice sheets and glaciers will raise sea levels that will threaten low-lying land masses. Singapore is one such candidate. It also has to worry about its port status if an Arctic cargo route, that will reduce traversal between North Asia and Europe appreciably, is made possible in relatively ice-free summer months.

The world is by now convinced of the need to reduce the use of fossil fuels in favour of cleaner alternatives. Pressure is strongest on the United States, Western Europe and China, but the mix of historical and present-day culpability has proved impossible to reconcile, beginning with the Kyoto Protocol. Governments understand also the risks of deforestation, as has occurred in lumber-rich Brazil and South-east Asia. The lure of profit with little attention being paid to forest regeneration – the much-abused notion of carbon sinks and tradable credits – is another intractable issue.

Successive rounds of United Nations climate talks have reinforced the view that industrially advanced nations and rivals aiming for parity are shifting around the responsibility to reduce carbon emissions so as to preserve their permanent interests. If such thinking persists, the global community must ask itself whether modern human progress and sustainable planetary conditions are compatible. If not, what are the options? Changing patterns of increased aridity and storms, unusual seasonal changes and the thinning of aeons of trapped ice have been acknowledged by governments as warnings. When will they show the will to act?

The last big leap in public concern about climate change came in the wake of the devastation wrought by Hurricane Katrina in the United States. While no one could show a causal link, the extreme weather and the terror it unleashed was enough to put global warming on the world’s agenda. Now, the political temperature has cooled as the world grapples with more immediate concerns. Hopefully it will not take another Katrina-scale catastrophe to focus minds again on the challenge at hand.

Source: www.asianewsnet.net

SINGAPORE’S ARCTIC COUNCIL MEMBERSHIP

By M. Nirmala, Senior Correspondent, Straits Times, (21 May 2013):

LAST week, news broke that Singapore had gained admission into an exclusive club in the cold North, the Arctic Council.

At first glance, it may seem odd for a tiny Republic on the equator to be joining a council whose members ring around the North Pole and focus on issues facing their territories.

But in fact, the move makes strategic sense for Singapore. It was also the culmination of four years of diplomacy.

Singapore’s plan to join the Arctic Council as a permanent observer started in 2010. Foreign Affairs officials learnt that there was growing international interest in the melting of polar ice and the impact this would have on countries.

The melting ice could cause coastal flooding, a real problem for the island nation.

More importantly, the receding polar ice would also open up a Northern sea route through Arctic waters. This would severely threaten Singapore which is one of the world’s busiest ports.

The new route via the North Pole can cut the time taken by ships from Europe to reach the East by half. It has the potential to divert shipping that has gone via the Suez Canal and the Malacca and Singapore straits.

The green light was given to Ministry of Foreign Affairs officers to try and gain entry into the Arctic Council.

Founded in 1996, the Arctic Council has eight permanent members: the United States, Russia, Canada, Iceland, Norway, Finland, Sweden and Denmark. It is a policymaking body that produces binding international agreements among Arctic countries on areas such as pollution and marine conservation.

There is growing interest from others to join this council as the Arctic region has rich deposits of oil, gas and other minerals, which will become more accessible as the ice caps melt.

Singapore’s efforts bore fruit last week when the country was admitted as a permanent observer in the council. It joins five other countries as new permanent observers to the council: China, Japan, South Korea, India and Italy. There are 26 other permanent observers, who can watch meeting proceedings and contribute to the council’s working groups.

Former foreign minister George Yeo, in Australia when he read the news of Singapore’s entry into the Arctic Council, told The Straits Times that becoming an observer on the council is of strategic importance to Singapore’s long-term future.

“I’m sure we will play an active role and try to make a positive contribution to global sea transport in all its aspects,” he said.

Singapore’s formal application to join the council was praised by one permanent member as “first class”. Applicants who sought the council’s advice on how to gain admission were advised to consult the Singapore team.

From the word “go”, Singapore officials worked like ubiquitous ants, engaging the permanent members and the Arctic indigenous communities.

It helped that Singapore’s Ambassador to Norway, Mr Ng Ser Miang, had been in the post since 2001.

Veteran diplomat Kemal Siddique was also made Singapore’s Special Envoy for Arctic Affairs. He had served as Singapore’s Non-Resident Ambassador in four of the Arctic Council member countries – Denmark, Norway, Sweden and Finland. These countries knew him well.

This led to his invitation by the Norwegian government to remote Svalbard, situated between Norway and the North Pole, last August when the Arctic members visited the islands there.

Mr Siddique met key officials of all eight member countries. He also visited the lands of the indigenous peoples of Alaska, the Nunavut in Canada, the Rovaniemi of Finland, among others.

Back in Singapore, officials began chiselling away at the Republic’s emergent Arctic policy.

At the World Oceans Summit held in Singapore last year, it “articulated an intention to play a role in Arctic governance”, wrote Stewart Watters and Aki Tonami, researchers at the Nordic Institute of Asian Studies in Denmark.

They noted that “Singapore’s Arctic diplomacy is driven primarily by an ambition to exploit an emerging market niche in which it sees itself as a technological and expertise leader”.

Singapore, they wrote, has played a role in the International Maritime Organisation that is disproportionate to the size of the country. The Republic is also home to global leaders in offshore and marine engineering.

These areas are relevant to the Arctic Council’s work as Singapore has strong knowledge of international ocean law and ways of developing global shipping.

Diplomatic efforts were supported by Singapore’s expertise in areas relevant to council members.

In 2008, Keppel Singmarine broke new ground when it completed Asia’s first two ice breakers for a subsidiary of Russian Lukoil. These ice breakers carve out shipping passages by breaking through huge blocks of Arctic ice.

Singapore is now developing the next generation of oil rigs and ships, including Arctic life boats for Arctic oil companies. Faster responses to emergencies in the Arctic are needed as the area opens up for more development.

Singapore is doing several Arctic research projects. Oceanic research – on topics like oil explorations in the harsh Arctic climate – is being done at the Centre for Offshore Research and Engineering at the National University of Singapore and the Agency for Science, Technology and Research.

Singaporeans too are leaving their prints on the Arctic ice.

Philanthropist Lee Seng Tee has donated funds to the International Arctic Research Centre to establish a “Lecture in Arctic Studies” series. Ms Michelle Goh, a young Singapore biologist, is studying birds in the cold Arctic.

But Norwegian Foreign Affairs Minister Espen Barth Eide has warned the new observer members of the work that lies ahead: “To the new observers of the Arctic Council, there is no such thing as a free lunch.”

For Singapore, entry into the council is just the beginning. The hard work continues.

Source: www.straitstimes.com

There remains little doubt to the human causes of global warming. A study has shown that less than 2-3% of all peer-reviewed studies attribute climate change to a non-human cause. Unable to argue the science, climate change deniers have brought their claims and argument to the media, giving the general public the impression that the cause of climate change is still in dispute. Such misleading claims are not just hard to kill, but will ultimately prove disruptive to efforts aimed at mitigating the effects of climate change. Read more

By Graham Readfearn inThe Guardian (17 May 2013):

Zombie climate sceptic theories survive only in newspapers and on TV

Study finds overwhelming scientific consensus that humans have caused global warming, but media still hasn’t caught up

According to an email obtained by Media Matters, Bill Sammon imposed an order on Fox News journalists to cast doubt on climate change.

Here’s the news from 1991 – a vanishingly small number of peer-reviewed studies in science journals argue that humans aren’t the cause of global warming.

Here’s the news from 2013 – since 1991, less than two per cent of all peer-reviewed studies say climate change is caused by something other than human activities (that’s burning fossil fuels and digging up forests, to you and me).

Both the news from 2013 and the news from 1991 come from new research published this week in the journal Environmental Research Letters.

The study, widely reported, was led by Australian John Cook, of the University of Queensland’s Global Change Institute and the founder of the Skeptical Science website.

The study looked at 12,000 peer-reviewed papers in science journals since 1991 to find out just how many studies agree that humans cause global warming – known as anthropogenic global warming (AGW).

What’s really striking about the research is the red line on the graph showing the number of papers that claim something is to blame, such as the sun or natural cycles.

The numbers of scientific papers rejecting anthropogenic global warming remains miniscule for 20 years

Like a cardiac monitor warning of a soon-to-be lifeless patient, for more than 20 years the red line hovers around zero showing barely a flicker of life. Cook says they expected to see a rising number of papers which had “no position” and didn’t feel the need to state the obvious “just as geographers find no reason to remind readers that the earth is round”.

In other words, the alternative arguments about the causes of global warming were already dead or dying 20 years ago.

Yet since then, climate science contrarians/deniers/sceptics have continually applied the defibrillator paddles to these failing theories in an attempt to bring them back to life.

Despite what you might have seen on TV hospitable dramas, when the heart goes all asystolic no amount of defibrillator action is going to chase away the reaper.

So after giving up on the peer-reviewed literature, the climate science contrarians – often bolstered by support from the fossil fuel industry and free-market idealogues – took their talking points somewhere else.

That is, out into the public domain, the mainstream media and the blogosphere and far away from the less forgiving operating theatre of peer-reviewed science journals.

To this day, these dead theories hang around like slack-jawed zombies in the graveyards of global media outlets.

Take a recent column published in the Wall Street Journal, for example, which tried to claim that global warming was down to natural cycles and changes in the sun’s output. Carbon dioxide was just food for plants, wrote the authors.

Or how about London Mayor Boris Johnson’s column earlier this year in The Daily Telegraph, where he also claimed climate change was driven by the sun. Johnson often quotes his “old chum” Piers Corbyn, a long-range weather “forecaster” who claims CO2 has no effect on global temperature.

Then there’s The Australian newspaper which earlier this month concocted a story of a fake debate between scientists about a coming ice age.

The newspaper quoted a Russian physicist who is a member of Principia Scientific International – a group of contrarian scientists led by a man who claims CO2 isn’t a greenhouse gas.

A 2011 study of opinion columns appearing in The Australian found that climate change contrarians outnumbered four-to-one those authors calling for firm action to reduce fossil fuel emissions.

In the US, the Union of Concerned Scientists has looked at climate change coverage in the Wall Street Journal and on Fox News over a six-month period.  In the case of Fox, UCS classified 37 out of 40 segments as “misleading” on climate change science. In almost a year of Wall Street Journal articles, just nine out of 48 articles were deemed to accurately reflect the state of the science.

Then there is the near omnipresence of free market conservative think-tanks – funded variously through secretive channels or the largesse of fossil fuel interests – who write books, columns and are asked to be “expert” commentators on climate change.

In Australia, one study has found how the free-market think tank the Institute of Public Affairs had been the source of a range of climate sceptic talking points echoed in mainstream media.

The current issue of the journal American Behavioral Scientist (ABS) is devoted to the phenomenon of climate change scepticism and denial and brings together studies and essays looking at the role of the media in trying to keep alive those climate change theories which have been under permanent cardiac arrest for the last two decades or more.

One self-explanatory study is titled “Leading Voices in the Denier Choir : Conservative Columnists’ Dismissal of Global Warming and Denigration of Climate Science”.

The authors, Professor Riley Dunlap and Shaun Elsasser, both of Oklahoma State University, looked at 203 columns written by more than 80 conservative writers published between 2007 and 2010. The authors conclude:

The overall results reveal a highly dismissive view of climate change and critical stance toward climate science among these influential conservative pundits. They play a crucial role in amplifying the denial machine’s messages to a broad segment of the American public.

Similarly self-explanatory were some of the titles of the columns they investigated. There was “The Global Warmists’ Deceit”, “It’s Got to Suck to Be a Climavangelist”, “Hoax of the Century” and “Four Colossal Holes in the Theory of Man-Made Global Warming.”

Dunlap and Elsassser also tally-up and categorise the arguments used to dismiss the science or dismiss the need to act. And the most common climate science denial argument used? “There is no consensus”.

In an essay in the same issue of ABS, Maxwell Boykoff, an assistant professor at the University of Colorado, notes how accurate media coverage alone won’t be the panacea for genuine policy action to cut emissions.  He adds:

But improvements in reporting on claims and claims makers will help. The fossils of climate science and policy decision-making as well as communications may choose to continue along with the status quo. But to more effectively inform and engage – rather than confuse and bewilder – the public, 21st-century journalists and editors, as well as researchers, scientists, policy actors, and other non-nation-state actors, need to acknowledge the disproportionate influence of these outlier voices in mass media and communicate climate change with greater specificity and context.

While some media outlets have given their consumers the impression that climate scientists are split on the causes of climate change, the pulse of actual scientific debate on this issue faded long ago.

At least now, readers can be more certain that when they hear that climate change might not be caused by humans, it’s probably just a zombie theory.

And kids, zombies aren’t real.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/

AJ Bush & Sons Manufactures Pty Ltd

Status: in progress Support: $6,184,589 Total project value: $12,369,179

The rendering plant of AJ Bush & Sons located at Bromelton will cover anaerobic ponds to capture biogas, currently emitted to the atmosphere as methane, for use as renewable fuel to power a new biogas boiler to raise process steam. Inefficient coal-fired boilers will be upgraded or replaced with high efficiency boilers to reduce black coal combusted in the steam raising process. Together these measures will improve energy efficiency and reduce emissions in the energy intensive rendering process essential to the meat processing industry. The project is expected to reduce the carbon emissions intensity of AJ Bush & Sons’ site-wide steam raising production process by 64 per cent and will reduce their energy costs by 46 per cent.

Program: Clean Technology Food and Foundries Investment Program

Industry: Meat, poultry and small goods manufacturing

For more information: AJ Bush & Sons’ Website, AJ Bush and Sons’ Customer Story

See more at: http://www.cleanenergymap.gov.au/switching-biogas-0#sthash.I2DQI5r3.dpuf