News

Saw this on Boing-Boing. I love the quote by Gregg Segal (the photographer) … “We’ve made our bed and in it we lie.”

Check out more of his work at … http://www.greggsegal.com

10 minutes to spare? An animated Australian sustainability video, from the City of Canning, WA sent in by Cameron Love from a green light*.

Sustainable Business Consulting (SBC) director Barbara Albert, Lismore City Council Environmental Strategies Officer Sharyn Hunnisett, Lismore Mayor Jenny Dowell and SBC technical expert Patrick Denvir.

Starfish’s Farming the Sun community solar energy collaboration has passed a major milestone ~ with the successful completion of the Feasibility Study for a Lismore Community Solarfarm.

Lismore City Council is developing a 100% Renewable Energy Master Plan (REMP) and aims to meet all of it’s electricity needs from renewable energy sources by 2023. Council has already achieved significant energy efficiency savings ~ the first priority for energy sustainability ~ with total energy usage declining for the last three years at the same time as growing Council’s infrastructure services.

The Lismore Community Solarfarm will now form one of a series of options to be incorporated into the REMP.

This achievement comes on the back of Embark Australia’s recent announcement of the first fully committed community solarfarm in Australia ~ Sydney Community Solar ~ which will form part of the forthcoming Sydney International Convention, Exhibition and Entertainment Precinct at Darling Harbour. Embark is a partner in the Farming the Sun collaboration.

The Farming the Sun Collaboration has invested some $50-60,000 in the Feasibility Study ~ with significant contributions by Juno Energy, Starfish, Embark, Lismore City Council and seed funding from NSW Office of Environment and Heritage as well as The Earth Welfare Foundation.

Community solarfarms are a relatively new concept and have been made possible particulalry due to the dramatic decline in the cost of solar Pv. This model of community energy builds on the international community windfarm movement.

Read More
Lismore City Council Renewable Energy Master Plan
Lismore City Council aims for 100 per cent renewables by 2023 | REnew Economy
Lismore set to ‘farm’ its own electricity | Echo net daily
Community solar for Darling Harbour
The rise of solar co-ops | Business Spectator

Starfish has been engaged to facilitate the community engagement process for the Ballina Major Regional Centre Strategy.

Ballina has been identified through the NSW Government’s Far North Coast Regional Strategy as an emerging regional centre, indicating that Ballina can expect significant growth and change over the next 20 years ~ with its population anticipated to double during this period of time.

The Ballina Major Regional Centre Strategy is being prepared to guide the developing of Ballina through this period of significant growth and change.

The Strategy will be founded on engagement with the community, consistent with the intent associated with community involvement in strategic planning evident in the NSW planning reform process.

Starfish’s work will involve two key parts of the Strategy development, namely:

• Design and facilitation of a major Futures Forum involving a diverse cross-section of the community
• Convening a Civic Panel comprising around a dozen community members who will contribute to the ongoing development of the Strategy

 
Read more about this initiative here.

Global greenhouse gas emissions have been increasing by at least 1.3 per cent every year since 1970. From 2000 to 2010, those emissions were even greater, increasing by 2.2 per cent annually.

Current efforts to reduce greenhouse gases through demand management, energy efficiency and switching to renewable energy and low-carbon energy have not been enough.

Energy supply contributed the most emissions (35%) followed by agriculture, forestry and other land use changes (24%).

At the very same time, a new study conducted by Drexel University’s environmental sociologist Robert J. Brulle, PhD, exposes the organisational underpinnings and funding behind the powerful climate change countermovement. This study marks the first peer-reviewed, comprehensive analysis ever conducted of the sources of funding that maintain the denial effort. Brulle found that, while the largest and most consistent funders behind the countermovement are a number of well-known conservative foundations, the majority of donations are “dark money,” or concealed funding.

Re-post of The IPCC’s terrible three from Business Spectator.

Yolo County has become the first government in California to become grid positive from renewable energy.

Yolo has a population of 200,000 and now produces 152 percent more energy from solar panels than it uses!

Their work began by working with SunPower and the installation of a 1-megawatt solar power system at the Yolo County Justice Campus. The system produced $162,000 the first year of operation, and is predicted to earn the County $10 million over the first 25 years.

With the success of that project in place, the County installed three arrays totaling 5.8 MW of power as part of its County Wide Solar Project.

All of these projects all installed with no upfront capital investment. In partnership with the Yolo County Office of Education, the county secured $23 million in qualified zone academy bonds (QZAB).

The projects not only eliminated the County’s electric bill, but also earned just under $500,000 the first year. The County sells electricity to PG&E for 10-cents/kilowatt hour.

The County conservatively predicts it will generate $60 million over the next 35 years and avoid 12,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions each year.

Re-post of How a small county in California went grid positive from REnewEconomy.

This is a very powerful yet simple perspective on the entwined relationship of human health with nature. It’s well worth the nine minutes, to learn from some ancient Indian American wisdom. This is wisdom which remains very relevant to our contemporary context.

1. Efficiency
Over the life of a building the operational energy used to run it generally exceeds the embodied energy used to build it (save the likes of a passive house). This explains part of why there has been such a push for efficiency in recent years.

2. Energy Production
As the cost of residential solar has fallen it has become more and more fashionable (and economic) to have solar panels on the roof. It’s fast becoming a badge of honor and far more trendy than solar hot water ever was. Australia has now installed more than 2 million small scale renewable energy systems – reaching the target just eight months after the country achieved its first one million rooftop solar systems.

3. House Size
This is where it often starts to go a bit wrong with ‘sustainable homes’. There is little doubt that as countries get wealthier they want bigger homes. But big and sustainable are unhappy bedfellows. A bigger home needs more energy to build (embodied energy), more energy to run (use energy), more stuff to fill it (more embodied energy) and is often further from things you need, due to the nature of population density and development.

4. Location
Where your home is in relation to your work, shopping, friends, schools and other amenities has a huge effect on your whole carbon footprint, not just the energy you use at home. Being able to walk, cycle or take public transport on a daily basis can slash your footprint.

5. Embodied Carbon
The embodied carbon of a product is the carbon footprint of making that product. Each building material used in the construction of a home has its own carbon footprint. If you tally up all the embodied carbon in each material used to build a home, plus that of any energy used in the process you can estimate the embodied carbon of a building. For a new home in the UK that figure might be in the 40-50 t CO2e range. But UK homes are small. The average suburban home in Australia could easily be over 100 t CO2e.

Re-post of Beyond efficiency: 5 key ingredients for a sustainable home | REnewEconomy