BIZ NEWS: Global sustainability benchmark organisation GRESB has launched REAL Solutions – a suite of tools designed to empower asset managers and investors with “actionable insights” into sustainability, resilience, and efficiency.
The tool will be powered by aggregated asset level data derived from GRESB’s annual real estate assessment to generate actionable information on targets, operational performance, building certifications, energy ratings and efficiency measures, allowing investors and managers to understand how to improve asset performance, the organisation said.
The benchmark tool is due for release in April.
Burning money in Western Sydney
In a catchy name, the Committee for Sydney managed to get a reasonable level of attention this week with its report that found that the hottest parts of Sydney will be “burning money” as the real economic cost of heatwaves is projected to jump 400 per cent by 2070.
Sydney is projected to experience twice as many days over 35 degrees Celsius than current, sending costs soaring from $1.4 billion today to more than $6.8 b by 2070.
That’s the bill for the cost of cooling plus the costs of detrimental health due to heat stress and productivity losses in industries.
The cost of negative health impacts will also increase from $14 million today to more than 100 million by 2070, with vulnerable communities experiencing 23 per cent of total negative impacts.
Engineers
Winners in the Consult Australia Awards last Thursday championed digital transformation, sustainability, and diversity to solve Australia’s most complex design and engineering challenges awarded.
Held at International Convention Centre Sydney, 15 awards were presented for projects and programs undertaken in 2023. Notable winners included:
- Stuart Manley, former Consult Australia co-vice president and board member, awarded the president’s award
- Dr Michael Vinod, a senior geotechnical engineer with EIC Activities, was awarded the future leader award for groundbreaking technical skills in integrating specialist radar technology into a number of projects
- Geotron, an emerging structural engineering consultancy, was awarded small firm of the year award for the second consecutive year, as well as the planning for digital future award for enabling sustainable and efficient designs
- Tonkin, an engineering and environmental professional services firm, was awarded medium firm of the year for its work in constructing temporary levees during the Murray River floods
- SMEC, developers of the pacemaker lighting solution on Melbourne’s Burnley Tunnel that regulates speed, reshapes road safety, modifies driver behaviour, and enhances energy efficiency, was awarded large firm of the year
Green finance and hotels
The Aareal Bank AG has announced that the Pro-invest Group will become the recipient of the bank’s largest green hotel portfolio loan in the Asia-Pacific region.
The bank’s history with the company dates back to July 2021, when the bank’s first ever green loan set out by its green finance framework was taken up by Pro-invest’s Holiday Inn Express in Macquarie Park in Sydney.
Following the bank’s updated green finance framework in 2023, it has announced that Pro-invest has met the strict criteria required, which saw five Australian hotels meet the criteria of the green loan funding – meeting a minimum of 4.5-star rating under the NABERS energy rating scheme.
The group’s Fund I portfolio has now been strategically refinanced to include all five hotels within the green loan funding.
Renewables and farmers
Rok Solid, a renewable energy land acquisition, claimed to be a first of its kind, has secured 5 gigawatts of energy storage projects and 800 megawatts of solar projects over 30 individual land deals across NSW, Queensland, Victoria, and South Australia.
Farmers who sign up earn about $100,000 a year in passive income due to the high demand for land for renewable energy projects as more companies strive for net zero.
The organisation said demand is also coming from states to prevent blackouts.
The organisation’s brokering has helped a number of major companies, such as Atlas Renewables, Valent Energy, RWE, and Ratch, secure land for large scale projects. The latest Clean Energy Australia 2024 Report found that renewables make up 40 per cent of the nation’s energy supply.
Baker McKenzie has announced that it will advise the renewable energy platform Metis Energy Limited to achieve financial closure on the 111 MW Gunsynd Solar Farm, which is due to commence construction in Goondiwindi, southwest Queensland. The site is also the company’s first renewable project in Australia.
Once built, the site is expected to power up to 32,000 Queensland households annually.
What we are reading:
On ABC Science, a reporter noted that as he struggled to keep his pregnant partner out of Western Australia’s hottest summer on record in early February – climate change and heat related health problems barely made news headlines.
“For 24 hours in mid-February, the 15 hottest places in the world were in WA.
“We read scary studies showing the impact of extreme heat on pregnant women and unborn babies.
“We read that extreme heat kills more people in Australia than all the other natural disasters combined.
Despite this, data suggested that “stories more likely to mention cricket than climate change.”
Richard Yin, a Perth GP and deputy chair of Doctors for the Environment, told the ABC that the lack of acknowledgement in the media about the impact of heat and climate change was “vaguely terrifying”.
“Everything is being normalised, as though it’s just another heatwave … What we see now is a harbinger of what’s to come.
“This is not even the new norm, it’s the lowest level of the new norm. What we’re expecting is much, much worse.”
Climate Superfund global laws on trend
Some US states are considering a “climate superfund” law to hold fossil fuel companies accountable and make them pay for climate damages.
The US state of Vermont is now holding fossil fuel companies criminally liable for causing climate damage, and New York, Maryland and Massachusetts show signs of following suit – as states that face a lot of climate damage, according to The Crucial Years newsletter.
The new “climate superfund” laws would treat disasters such as the Vermont summer flooding as if it were “a toxic dump whose cleanup can be charged to the corporation that caused them”.
The repairs to the flooding, which would normally cost taxpayers US$2.5 billion , will now bill the remediation to the chemical company that pollutes the site. The oil industry had retaliated, saying paying for these damages could raise prices for consumers.
The newsletter points out that the price of oil is set on a world market.
NSW bans oil and gas in coastal waters
The Wilderness Society celebrated this week after the moved to ban seabed petroleum and mineral exploration and mining off the NSW coast. The new Environmental Planning and Assessment Amendment (Seabed Mining and Exploration) Bill 2024 mends the Environmental Planning and Assessment Act 1979.
The act prohibits new and further developments relating to seabed petroleum and mineral exploration and recovery within the state. The government said it recognised the “devastating effect on our marine wildlife by releasing toxic materials, destroying habitat and creating harmful sediment levels” in a statement.
The society said the legislation was a turning tide for Australia’s fossil fuel industry but noted that new oil and gas projects are on the table for Tasmania, Victoria, Western Australia, and the Northern Territory.
Biodiversity
Rainbow lorikeets are the most common bird Australians encounter. That’s the result of the most recent Aussie bird count from BirdLife Australia in its tenth such survey. that taps more than 60,000 Australians, tallying 3.6 million birds. The organisation said the program was Australia’s largest citizen science initiative.
According to findings, the dominance of rainbow lorikeet sightings is a trend that’s held since the first bird count in 2014. This year, the second most counted bird was the noisy miner, a native honeyeater found in eastern Australia, followed by the Australian magpie and the sulphur-crested cockatoo.
The organisation noted that the top 10 bird counted had remained mostly the same over the last decade – with only the Australian white ibis (known as the “bin chicken”) pushing out the introduced common myna.