Jobs news: Ashley Reed has been snapped up by Rory Hunter’s MODEL, which promises a strong sustainability build-to-rent development rollout.
Reed was previously a chief financial officer of Cbus Property and has also served as the chief executive of the Spotlight Property Group, now known as the Spotlight Retail Group, for five years. His career began as a valuer for JLL in 1989 and has included multiple roles at real estate agencies.
Also joining Reed at the company are new advisory board members Jennifer Horrigan, chairman of Dexus Asset Management and Yarra Capital Management; Phill Andrew, director of Generate Property Group; Sangeeta Venkatesan, chair of Airwallex Australia and RSL LifeCare and non executive director of Mercer Investments Australia and Chief Executive Women. It’s understood that all three board members have a financial investment in the company.
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Clean Energy Council
Australian head of Spanish renewable tech giant Acciona has appointed Brett Wickham as interim CEO of the Clean Energy Council. Wickham will take over from Kane Thornton, who resigned from his position after10 years in his role.
Also joining Thornton is chief policy officer and former Melbourne deputy mayor Arron Wood, as well as chief operating officer Ashleigh Dalmau, who recently said she will be joining the Master Plumbers Association as CEO.
The organisation’s head of market operations, Christiaan Zuur, will also be leaving to join big four consultant KPMG as an energy specialist director.
Renew Economy noted that the company’s direction is “quickly evident, after former Sydney radio shock jock and at times CEC critic, Chris O’Keefe, was hired to spread the message about renewables to people the industry body had not been able to reach.”
It also noted Thornton had said during his resignation that the organisation needs to focus on its social licence and combating misinformation.
However, instead, the organisation wrote a letter to its members, obtained by The AFR, stating that the industry needs to be “pragmatic about the role of gas in shoring up renewables” to be “credible” with regional communities.
“We must therefore accelerate our efforts to promote the adoption of industry practices that are designed to maximise the benefits of the transition and minimise the adverse impacts.”
The organisation goes on to say it needs to be more active in winning over support for renewables in regional areas and in Queensland “where the new Liberal government has undone years of work.”
Energy Star under threat in the US
The Energy Star rating in the US, which saves homeowners billions of dollars in energy costs in the US every year, also offers features to help commercial real estate owners gauge energy use in buildings. However, property owners and advocates fear the program is under threat as Trump’s federal budget no longer mentions the software program by name, possibly eliminating funding for it to the Environmental Protection Agency.
In this Bloomberg article: Lee Zeldin, head of the EPA, in congressional testimony in May suggested his agency or the administration could privatise the program, which costs the government tens of millions of dollars a year.
“I have actually had multiple entities reach out to EPA throughout the last few weeks because they want to take over Energy Star, which is a program that requires a big staff, a big taxpayer-funded staff, and a whole lot of tax dollars,” he said.
Advocates working to save the software say stakeholders value it because it’s free, public and used across the whole industry.
“It’s really important to have a single source of truth that is trusted, third-party, government-backed…”
Because it’s objective and “science-based,” “no one has ever perceived it as biased,” says Dana Robbins Schneider, director of energy and sustainability at Empire State Realty Trust.
New Yorker deep dive on tragic Texas flood
In a recent New Yorker deep dive on the tragic Texas flood, which took the life of 130 people, Kevin Geiger, a land-use planner with the Two Rivers-Ottauquechee Regional Commission, in Woodstock, Vermont, said that he first step in designing a sustainable flood-prevention program is “believing that the flood will come”.
He went on, “Until you do that, nothing else follows. Why would we tell a person they can’t build there? Why would a town need to have a rescue boat? Why would we put in a system with sirens, unless you believe in the flood?” He added, “But believing in the flood means being constantly worried. And that’s not a good condition. People don’t want to live that way.”