Say what you like about the forces of climate evil but in some parts of the world the Earth is moving to the rhythm of light. And nature. And science. Imagine bio-based materials fashioned into 3D printed houses, using ultra-fast growing grasses or plants. Shaped by brilliant engineering and 3D printing. And driving it all calm, rational and evidenced based science.
As we neared the end of the first month of this mad year (8.33 per cent already gone), we called around our industry contacts to tap the mood.
It reminded us of the opening sequence to The Good Fight, a television series about a supposedly ethical American legal firm and the moral contradictions its talented people face on a daily basis. The show starts with a series of beautiful objects that each explode in slow motion – a crystal vase, an elegant shoe, a table, chair, and flowers. Each shatters into even smaller fragments of their former selves until they’re just shimmers of light.
It’s like that out in sustainability land right now.
Exploding Thing of Beauty 1 – Building regulations and fit for purpose consumer products
Building standards are blowing up around the country – South Australia, classically first with so many good things, has now gone dark, in cahoots with the Master Builders Australia and Housing Industry Association to dumb down quality so we can beat the housing crisis with “faster cheaper” products.
Leaping onto the bandwagon has been the coalition, sniffing a Trump-led “Napalm in the morning” opportunity. Tassie falling like its old growth timbers to the same. New South Wales as usual, obfuscating behind its semi “independent” detachments such as the Productivity and Equality Commission to scope out the ground for a similar thread. Now Queensland. Of course. All those people moving north. It’s a problem. See Bevin Liu’s story here
Building regulations are not an optional extra, a luxury item that we can trade off for a $35,000 kitchen. Or are they? How about getting rid of the rumpus and media room instead, or the triple car garage or third bathroom?
Exploding Thing of Beauty 2 – environment and protection for nature
From Western Australia has come the big bazookas. First the long range missiles capable of flying all the way across the Nullarbor, to land a perfect mark on the PM’s parliamentary desk, collecting on the way an increasingly dismal Environment Minister Tanya Plibersek.
WA premier Roger Cook has then dug deep and deployed multiple drones to ram home the message – no nature positive laws for his state. No environmental protection agency for Australia.
Who voted him in as PM? Anyone?
His argument is that we have a cost of living crisis so we must ask nature to wait politely at the door until we’ve dealt with that issue.
Poor PM Albanese, he roiled up his own political storm, first by trying to do the decent thing with the Voice referendum. It worked until opposition leader Peter Dutton, who previously supported it, realised Trump had the popular vote in the US and could win if he mimicked it.
Exploding Thing of Beauty 3 – independent media
Another disintegrating exploding thing of beauty is independent media – the last bastion of democracy when kleptocrats own the channels of social communications and even News Corp is under threat from the advancing Daleks of dumbness and addiction.
Witness this charming headline in The AFR as the paper takes on the role of showing Dutton is not Trump:
Peter Dutton is not Donald Trump. He can’t afford to be
Gee, we thought that was the idea – that Dutton closely mimics the growing antics of Trump, picks up the voting rage and wins the federal election with a back to the Stone Age economic and public policy agenda.
Here’s our whisper in Anthony Albanese’s ear – go as late to the federal election as possible so we can all see how successfully Trump’s policies are panning out.
Reminding our readers of course that The Fifth Estate is totally apolitical and if Attila the Hun was resurrected as a Greenie we’d back him too. (Minus the carnage).
The nano particles of destruction have a way of rearranging themselves
Clear in our chats with our contacts is that though most people forecasted a year of challenges, all saw opportunities opening up to those who stay the course as weaker folk fall by the wayside.
Investment in particular.
As Ben Thomas pointed out, with insights gleaned from the consulting work that he’s embarked on after leaving GPT, patient capital tends to be the winner. We agree. Green patient capital has already proved it can outstay and outperform fossil fuels. And there are so many more goodies to come.
And there’s science. Beautiful, indefatigable, unarguable science is getting on with business, because just like its nasty corollaries – fear and greed – it can’t help but want to grow and prosper, in its case striving to do ever better with less.
Hence China bamboozles the world with a new AI it says is cheaper – way cheaper – and uses far less energy than the Rolls Royce model the US is still in love with.
In fact other news flagged during the week( in that part of the media that is still fighting for truth etc.) said
Uranium stocks fell 11 per cent on Monday since the vast expansion of data centres may not be needed, and nor will the nuclear plants to power them.”
Oops, to the big data centre builders thinking about constructing a little adjacent nuclear power plant. Oops to the Peter Dutton nukes-led Silver Bullet strategy.
Science-led, evidenced based housing and construction
Someone who’s deeply immersed in sustainability frontiers is Brendan Condon of Australian Ecosystems who’s behind The Cape eco-focused development in Victoria.
Condon described the momentum for clean energy and electrification as a “juggernaut”. No turning back. While the US clears the road for rampant fossil fuels, China is “knocking out clean fuel and it’s going to have this incredible advantage”.
“Trump is letting the billionaire class take over the US and it’s the old billionaire class, trying to prolong fossil fuels, and they are absolutely going to be left behind now.
“It’s really sad for the US,” he says.
He expects the progressive powerhouse states and cities in the USA l to step up and carry the leadership baton for the next four years.
But regardless there are huge advances under way in technology based in the US and elsewhere.
And Condon is feeling particularly optimistic about the advances in construction, not just methods but the materials being trialled and looking promising.
“Construction is a sector that is ripe for innovation and positive disruption. We have the convergence of a few technologies that place us on the cusp of breakthroughs that will allow us build houses much faster and cheaper and with vastly available bio based materials,” he says.
We’re on the cusp of an “incredible breakthrough” to build houses much cheaper and with bio based materials, he says.
He points to the University of Maine, which has a giant 3D printing machine that can churn out houses at a rapid rate, not with the usual concrete feedstock, but with plant based materials instead.
It’s already printed a 600-square-foot (60 sq m), single-family home made of wood fibre and a corn starch. The materials utilise the lignin polymers in rapid growth plants such as bamboo, switch grass and hemp. Wikipedia says:
Lignin is a class of complex organic polymers that form key structural materials in the support tissues of most plants.[1] Lignins are particularly important in the formation of cell walls, especially in wood and bark, because they lend rigidity and do not rot easily. Chemically, lignins are polymers made by cross-linking phenolic precursors.
Condon loves these materials for their contrast to cement used in concrete; they sequester carbon instead of adding it to the atmosphere.
Timber also sequesters carbon but what happens if you’ve got a plantation that takes 20 years to grow and not long before harvest you get an extreme heat wave and fire?
“The incidence of wildfire damage to plantations is increasing worldwide and this is driving increased insurance costs and price spikes in timber supply chains. In contrast, rapid growing biomass such as hemp can produce materials in a one year cycle, and is more resilient and less vulnerable to disruption.
“In future we will design homes and print them offsite in a controlled environment, in components that can be transported to and assembled on site. And using biobased materials means that at end of life the home can be ground up and re-used to print a new home, pulling the construction sector into the circular economy.”
With rapid growth plants you can rebuild your house – ideally off site with a set of component parts that can be assembled on site – and the old partly damaged or redundant house can be re-used.
There’s so much (important) focus on decarbonising energy and transport, Condon says, but we’ve got sectors of the economy that are loaded with difficult to shift carbon – construction, manufacturing and agriculture.
Bio-based materials have the capacity to radically change the equation for all three industries.
In fact Condon tips the growth of the bioeconomy is perhaps the frontier for tackling climate change after renewable energy.
“It can allow us to 3D print homes and structures out of bio-based materials, reducing costs, speeding up construction, improving design and house performance, sequestering carbon and helping solve our housing crisis.
“It’s an area that needs strategic support from government and Australia is very well placed to participate and lead with our research expertise in this area.”
It can also become helpful ballast for this sustainability ship we need to help navigate through the wild year ahead.
Speaking of navigation, check out our new series of great ideas that we plan for our Navigating Sustainability 2025 series of monthly Leaders Forums – all held at Greenhouse, in the Salesforce Tower in Sydney.
Starting 4 March with the fantastic Matt Kean, chair of the Climate Change Authority and the inspiring Martijn Wilder founder of Pollination.
All becomes helpful ballast for this wildly tossing sustainability ship we need to help navigate through the year ahead.
Speaking of navigation, check out our new series of great ideas that we plan for our Navigating Sustainability 2025 series of monthly Leaders Forums – all held at Greenhouse, in the Salesforce Tower in Sydney.
Starting 4 March with the fantastic Matt Kean, chair of the Climate Change Authority and the inspiring Martijn Wilder founder of Pollination.
We call the series, “An open forum to challenge your thinking, open new possibilities and connect with leaders”