Conference - Topic Overview

MASTER GREX 07 confirmed Topics in order (updated Feb 6th)

Climate change is the greatest threat facing the planet today. We all need to make changes to our lifestyle so that we live more sustainably. But individual action alone will not make the deep cuts in greenhouse gas emissions in the critical ten years we have left to avoid catastrophic climate change. We need Governments to facilitate the nation-wide changes that are required and policies that will protect the ecosystems on which we all depend. To deliver greener homes, gardens and cities; more sustainable food production and transport systems, we need a new politics, politicians prepared to act and voters prepared to reconsider the priorities which underpin their vote.

A key element in the rapid expansion of green building in the USA has been the leadership role of national, state and local governments in promoting sustainability through their own capital works progammes. Public agencies are collectively the major US builders and also control much university, school and health expenditure. The Federal General Services Administration has endorsed and mandated the US Green Building Council's LEED standard, as has the Defence Department. States including California and Washington and many cities have adopted LEED silver (equivalent to about 4 Stars) for new projects and renovations. The recent US Mayors Conference adopted a detailed new policy. Chicago has a comprehensive programme starting its own buildings, promoting green roofs, providing assistance for commercial, private and community developments and issuing expedited permits for green buildings. A number of local governments now offer additional financial assistance, height and density for sustainable projects.

Despite the mounting cost of climate change and the peaking of oil, natural gas and uranium supplies well within this generation, the vast majority of cities and urban communities is managed, administered and planned as if such crises did not exist. Indeed, the transition from fossil fuel dominated cities to an urban future marked by an evolving renewable-energy based infrastructure requires entirely new tools and frames of planning and decision-making.

Drawing from his new book - see http://www.renewablecity.org   - Droege examines and outlines the architecture of an unprecedented urban transition, squarely focused on action. Where implemented swiftly, it consists of new design, planning and management decisions, profoundly challenging practitioners, academics and political leaders to take action in communities and cities. The inquiry draws hope from successful urban sustainability trends, emerging infrastructure directions, renewable energy applications and related new approaches to urban planning and the design of cities.

"Vortex cities" are places that draw in resources from other parts of the planet and are reliant on the waste assimilation capacity of areas outside of the city. The biggest vortex in the Australian urban system is Sydney. If we can make Sydney more sustainable as a city, there will be benefits in Sydney, in other cities that can learn from this experience and in other parts of the planet that are impacted by activities that support Sydney.

This presentation will focus on some key points to promote sustainability in Sydney. These include;
·    Exploring the difference between a sustainable city and a green city.
·    Emphasizing the measurement of our sustainability performance rather than competing on World City criteria.
·    Increasing, preserving and reproducing urban vegetation.
·    Promoting national and regional population and land use planning.
·    Adopting a systems approach to planning so that the performance of the urban system is optimized, not the performance of individual components within the system.

With the sometimes unpredictable and disturbing impacts we can expect with unprecedented amounts of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere we need to plan and build for a changing climate. This presentation looks at:
·    strategies for dealing with change
·    scenarios for building in an uncertain future
·    the idea of 'Ecopolis' and what it means for homebuilders and developers
·    projects that address climate change
·    architecture for sustainability - and beyond

I'm inspired by the vegetation breaking through cracks in the pavement, by the life force that reaches for the sun regardless of how much we try to smother it. The biosphere has been damaged by our carelessness, but the way I see it, even though a changing world challenges our imaginations and our spirit, we have the choice of making our buildings and cities as either lifeless, choking blankets of concrete, or celebrations of the powerful force of life.

Keywords
Urban principles for Ecologically Sustainable Development (ESD), energy consumption, global warming, density, solar orientation, eco-buildings, case study: Newcastle City Centre, renewable energy.

Abstract
This presentation reflects upon a wide range of strategies focused on increasing sustainability of urban design and architecture beyond and within the scope of individual buildings. By examining the case study of the Australian city of Newcastle, the paper provides a context for a general debate about the urban design of a sustainable city centre, and discusses how urban design is affected (and can be expected to be even more affected in future) by the new paradigms of ecology and renewable energy. The presentation deals with cross-cutting issues in architecture and urban design and addresses the question: How to best cohesively integrate all aspects of energy systems, transport systems, waste and water management, climatisation, etc., into contemporary urban design and the environmental performance of eco-buildings?

As we begin to fully understand the consequences of our dependency on fossil energy and the automobile, the cost of mobility, and ways to integrate sustainability systems into buildings, it becomes apparent that the conventional knowledge of aesthetics of urban composition and architecture is no longer sufficient.

Australia has the biggest per capita emissions of greenhouse gases in the world, primarily because of its heavy use of coal. As explained in the author's new book, Australia could achieve deep cuts in greenhouse gas emissions by 2040-2060, by:

·    Reducing the demand for fossil fuels by means of efficient energy use, solar hot water, solar space heating, improved urban public transport and rail freight, and hybrid and electric vehicles.
·    Providing cleaner energy supply from wind power, bioenergy from crop residues and, as a transitional fuel, gas.
·    Further developing bioenergy from dedicated crops, hot dry rock geothermal power and solar electricity.

The very large economic savings from efficient energy use could pay for the additional costs of renewable energy and natural gas. To implement these substantial changes in technology, individual actions are necessary but not sufficient. Radical new policies, strategies and actions are needed at all levels of government.

Donovan Burton, B Env Plan (Hons) M.P.I.A PhD cand, will present on the
implications of climate change for Local Government and Developers at this
years GREX.

Donovan, Senior Associate, Climate Risk Pty Ltd, is a specialist advisor
to government and business on climate change risk and opportunities. With
experience as a planner in local government, he is currently a PhD
candidate at Griffith's Urban Research Project. Donovan is a recipient of
the 2007 Wentworth Scholarship and short listed for the Queensland
Planning Ministers 2007 Prize. He has published a number of papers on
local government, property and climate change.

Everyone knows that climate change is a problem. So what are we going to do about it?

With community concern reaching a tipping point on climate change our politicians are scrabbling to look like they’ve been in control of the issue all along. But they are also trying to convince us that some of the obvious solutions like rolling out energy efficiency and renewable energy are marginal, preferring instead to spruik nuclear-power or so-called ‘clean coal’.

This presentation will give a brief overview of where the politics are at, where they need to be, and how we can tell the real solutions from the distractions in the snowballing climate change debate.

Liquid Solar Array Power Generator - LSA
-A Synergy of Sun, Sand and Water-

·    The LSA is a simple but revolutionary solar technology that has the potential to produce electricity at costs comparable to fossil fuel generators.
·    It is a new way to combine several existing technologies, which is likely to reduce the cost of raw solar electricity in the short term by a factor of three (from the present US$4/W to US$1.30/W or A$5/W to A$1.70/W), and in the longer term by a factor of seven (in the best locations) to under US$0.60/W. This corresponds to about 3 US cents / kWhr.
·    The LSA system is based on floating solar collectors made mostly of plastic. Each has a very small area of silicon photovoltaic cells at the water surface with a large, thin plastic focussing lens rotating slowly above to track the sun. The water cools the silicon cells, and in bad weather the lens is protected by rotating it fully under the water to avoid damage in high winds.
·    The fundamental feature is that the energy is collected using a thin sheet of plastic rather than the large area of silicon and glass required in conventional photovoltaic systems.
·    The LSA achieves economical simplicity of structure, cooling and cleaning through an aquatic situation.
·    The estimated system embodied energy payback period is around 15 months.
·    The concepts are patented (AU2004243336).

The first known construction of using straw bales as a walling material was in Nebraska around 1886 a one roomed school building. Since that time there have many buildings constructed in the USA including houses and commercial premises. It wasn't until the 1930's that straw bale construction was substituted by the more popular modern construction methods of masonry and timber systems.

It was in the 1980's that the permaculture movement in Australia began to revive straw bale construction methods and since then the straw bale construction has increased dramatically.

It is a healthy and sustainable alternative to conventional construction methods such as brick veneer. Straw bale walls have many positive features that make it a desirable building material for both owner builders and contractor constructed structures.

This seminar will look at some of the history of straw bale construction, its revival in the USA and Australasia and a mosaic of completed buildings.

The photovoltaic industry has been increasing at the rate of about 23% over the last 15 years and 36% over the last 5 years. It is projected that global sales could reach over $70 billion by 2015 and over $180 billion by 2020. The market is enormous. SLIVER cells are the most exciting photovoltaic technology to emerge over the last 20 years and present a quantum shift in thinking to reduce the price of electricity from solar energy.

Key Pointers:
·    ANU and UNSW are the only Australian university based research centres with critical mass and status on a global scale
·    Combined Heat and Power Solar (CHAPS) systems provide dual outputs (electricity and heat) through a single infrastructure
·    Presently developing a domestic version of the CHAPS system
·    PV industry has increased at 36% over the last 5 years and will be worth over $180 billion by 2020
·    SLIVER cells tackle the high cost of crystalline silicon by reducing the amount of silicon used by an order of magnitude
·    Electricity from mature SLIVER technology has the potential to be lower in cost than that from coal fired power stations, nuclear, clean coal and the equal to that from wind farms
·    Applications of SLIVER technology will be limited by little more than one's imagination; particularly due to their heat and shade tolerance, flexibility and transparency

The University of New South Wales has been at the forefront of silicon solar cell research since the mid 1980s, when it achieved world recognition for making the most efficient solar cell from a silicon wafer. The solar cell research group has led international commercialisations of important solar cell technologies. The Centre's device research currently has four main strands: "first generation" silicon wafer cells, "second generation" thin-film silicon cells, "third generation" super-efficiency concepts and characterisation tools.

The School also has a leadership role in the education of renewable energy engineers. In 2000 the specialist engineering bachelor degree program in Photovoltaics and Solar Energy Engineering began at UNSW and a second, broader degree program in Renewable Energy Engineering was introduced in 2003. The School offers one postgraduate coursework program, a Master of Engineering Science, and three research programs:- a Master of Philosophy, Masters by Research and a Doctor of Philosophy.

The School applied during 2006 for scholarship funding from the Australian Government under the Asia-Pacific Partnership on Clean Development and Climate programme to bring students from the Asia-Pacific region, specifically China, India, South Korea, Japan and USA, to study photovoltaics engineering at UNSW. In January 2007, AP6 Programme investment of $5.2m was approved by the AP6 Ministers for this project.

More information: www.pv.unsw.edu.au 

The talk will address common greywater reuse issues:
·   Should I use greywater only during water restrictions or all the time?
·    How do I ensure the greywater is safe?
·    What do I need to know about household chemicals?
·    Do I have to do anything to the garden to avoid greywater problems?
·    What happens when the restrictions are lifted?

The Al Gore slide show brings the reality of climate change into our lives. How can we as architects/designers make the work we do more responsive to finding solutions in such a future? We will look at 10 steps we can take to enhance our work practices and outcomes. I will illustrate with what I have done in my own practice and work we have been involved with.

98% of houses already exist in any given year, yet nearly 20% of these have some renovation work done on them in any year. How do we make them sustainable without tearing them down? And how do you make the decision to bring in the bulldozer? Having made that decision, how do you deconstruct, not demolish?? But most houses are okay to renovate, which can reduce the ecological impact of the building work enormously. So can you renovate so well it never needs doing again? Can you renovate a brick veneer bungalow in every town, and achieve zero emissions zero depletions?? What is a zero energy building anyway? How do we achieve sustainable water use in Australia? What are the next big learning curves after energy (in the 90s) and water issues .All glimpses of what's next: embodied energy, material sustainability and toxicity, building longevity

There are many enjoyable ways to live comfortably on earth.
One of them is to live in a space that uses the natural warmth of the sun to keep us warm in winter and keep us cool in summer.
With over 30 years experience as an eco architect, Gareth Cole has designed and built over 850 solar and eco buildings mainly along the east coast of Australia. His proven expertise as an ecological sustainable architect has produced only 5 star designed homes, that are naturally comfortable and sustainable architecture for clients who want to live an 'eco lifestyle'. Gareth will show how the 5 basic principles of energy efficiency are applied to building design.

He will explain how any home can be more comfortable to live in if these principles are considered when a building design is being considered. Appling the system from the ground up Gareth will explore specific building materials and products to achieve ' thermal' comfort inside the house to produce temperatures between 18 - 22 degrees in summer, winter, day and night with out the need to air condition.
Gareth will show you samples of totally autonomous buildings to illustrate the possibility of building a house that requires no heating, no cooling, no power bills ,water bills or sewer bills.

He will outline strategies and protocols so all home owners can experience a 'lifestyle' building that is healthy, comfortable to live in and doesn't cost the earth

Topic Descriptions Coming Soon

Greenhouse gas generation by buildings is not limited to direct energy consumed in services, but has a number of 'hidden' high carb(on) generating energy flows that are often not considered in material specification:
·    Embodied Energy
·    Transport Energy
·    Maintenance and Cleaning
·    Quality and Durability
·    Removal and Recycling
This paper looks at some of these hidden flows, their impacts and looks at the best ways to put your buildings on 'low carb' diets.

When materials are wasted, through the construction process and or demolition, there is a hidden 'knock on' effect which impacts the raw material resources we use; the energy, water and other materials we use to turn these into products; and the waste created when they are disposed of.

Thinking about the impacts of materials waste at the design stage of a project can greatly reduce the environmental impacts of the construction process, and in some cases save money.

This presentation will explore solutions to minimising waste in the building industry as opportunities for creative change not problems of waste disposal.

Making Affordable, Sustainable housing a viable option in Australia takes SMART thinking and the SMARTEST of homes. In this talk we investigate:

Sustainable - Homes have been designed to be more sustainable than conventional homes.
Measurable - Homes are designed so that the occupant can easily monitor their water and energy usage over time
Affordable - Homes range in price from $60 000 - $185 000 in order to accommodate the rising cost of land.
Resource Efficient - Homes use low embodied energy, low energy use, low water use
Tested - Homes have been under development for over 5 years and have had people living in them. They are tried and tested and tried and tested again.
Energy Efficient - Homes are highly energy efficient and make use of energy efficient design, materials and systems.
Socially Responsible - Homes make use of universal design principles, are welcoming and community focused
Triple Bottom Line - Homes reflect characteristics that take into account environmental, economic and social factors. Example is the stool, without the three legs in balance it will fall over, we design our homes to be an example of balance between these three factors of Triple Bottom Line.

"10 ways to reduce your carbon footprint"

The Gaia Engineering Geo-Photosynthetic Tececology embraces a number of new technical paradigms and processes designed to solve global warming and waste problems by changing the underlying moleconomic flows involved.

·    It will work because combined correctly these new processes will allow people to make money using them.
If adopted on a large scale the Gaia Engineering tececology would
·    Sequester significant amounts of atmospheric CO2
·    Convert significant volumes of waste to resource.
Gaia Engineering is an agglomeration of new technologies including
·    TecEco's Tec-Kiln technology and cements,
·    Bioreactor technologies
·    Carbon dioxide scrubbing technologies
·    A seawater separation technology from Greensols Pty. Ltd.
·    The Gaia engineering tececology is like a giant ecological pump
Outputs include
·    Salts - gypsum, sodium bicarbonate and various other salts
·    Calcium and magnesium carbonate building composites that also utilise wastes.

The Gaia Engineering tececology starts with the Greensols process which uses carbon dioxide from for example power stations and waste acid to extract calcium and magnesium carbonates which can be cast as panels, blocks or in some other building component shape. As by products it produces valuable salts from seawater or suitable brines as well as fresh water.

The calcium and magnesium carbonates produced are then calcined in the TecEco Tec-Kiln which removes and captures the gas for incorporation into cellulose, fuel or other compounds and produces magnesium oxide the main ingredient of Eco-Cement and input for the hydroxide-carbonate Tec-Reactor process. Eco-Cements utilise other wastes and absorb more atmospheric CO2 as they harden and are used to bind together building blocks produced in the Greensols process.

What motivates the consumer to demand a sustainable house? South West Regional College of TAFE's multi award winning Bunbury ecoHOME exhibits unique leadership in the investigation and demonstration of innovative and sustainable land development and construction practices to all stakeholders with quantified data outcomes.

Students designed a financially viable 'live in model' sustainable home, which reduces energy and water use and encourages household recycling by the occupant.

The home was constructed on an award winning research and demonstration model "Clean Site" and provided best practice "hand-on" training to trade students studying at the college.

The extended project, Bunbury ecoHOME "Results" further demonstrates the benefits of environmentally friendly housing with the completion of a cost benefit and greenhouse gas reduction analysis of the tenanted home.

The extended project has resulted in further research to answer questions such as:
·    Which elements of sustainable design are most important to the consumer?
·    Social behavioural aspects of sustainable housing - linking the design and use.
·    What would the consumer like readily available to the broader market including the project home market?
·    How do we market sustainable housing?

The housing industry has undertaken unprecedented levels of change towards more sustainable practices in recent years. Chris asks:

· what outcomes are we expecting from sustainable change?
· is our progress to date sufficient to ensure them?
· if not, how might we accelerate the change process to ensure real outcomes within useful (to future generations) timeframes.

Charlie Hargroves will deliver the keynote lecture ‘Climate Change, Natural Selection and the Market Economy’, to open the seminar by briefly exploring the interactions of the ideas from four of our civilisations
leading thinkers, Tim Flannery - Climate Change, Charles Darwin - Natural Selection, Janine Benyus - Biomimicry, and Adam Smith - Market Economy, in an attempt to understand how best to prepare for and capture the opportunities that a carbon constrained world will offer. The keynote will include: a brief overview of the consensus on the science of climate change and how this is predicted to effect our biosphere and built environment; an overview of how nature has adapted and innovated and specifically how this can inform the development of the built environment at the product and systems level (known as ‘Biomimicry’); and an exploration of the overlap between the concept of natural selection and the market economy in order to better understand the role of the market, its weaknesses, strengths and opportunities.

Seven years ago in 2000 the CEOs surveyed by the World Economic Forum in Davos, stated that for them, ‘The greatest challenge facing the world at the beginning of the 21st Century – and the issue where business could most effectively adopt a leadership role - is climate change,’ and the 2005 Forum agreed. In January 2005 the scientific community spoke with a clear unified voice when Dr. Rajendra Pachauri, the chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), told an international conference in Mauritius, attended by 114 governments, that the world has ‘already reached the level of dangerous concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere,’ and called for immediate and ‘very deep’ cuts in emissions. Leaders already capturing the sustainability advantage often start because they realise that acting now is actually a ‘no regrets’ strategy: If climate change turns out to be real, they will already be in a leadership position and dealing responsibly with it: but even if the scientists are wrong and there is no threat to the climate, these are actions they want to take anyway, because doing so is profitable. Fortunately, it is now easier than ever for a company to reduce its emissions of greenhouse gases technically, socially and economically across all industries, especially the buildings and energy sectors.

Seminar Session:

The team from The Natural Edge Project will lead the launch of their latest publication ‘Chimera – A Design Charrette Primer (Volume 1: Built Environment)’. The publication is focused on assisting the building industry in the formulation, facilitation and follow-up of multi-stakeholder design processes in the early stages of the design of engineering projects in order to improve their sustainability and profitability.

Developed with mentors such as Alan Pears, Janis Birkeland, Greg Bruce and Mick Pearce and containing detailed cases studies such as the CH2 Building in Melbourne, and the results of trials of the material with Townsville City Council, the publication will seek to respond to the recent and rapid emergence of design concepts such as ‘green development’, ‘design for environment’, ‘high performance buildings’ and ‘water sensitive urban design’. These design concepts are currently being explored and tested by architects, engineers, urban planners and landscape architects, and provide a tool to better understand how to deliver sustainable built environments.

The design charrette method has been well accepted for decades, and there is therefore an abundance of information and resources on the topic that is readily available (see bibliography). There is however, a lack of resources for the formulation, facilitation and follow-up of a design charrette process specifically tailored to support green development projects incorporating sustainable development goals. This Primer aims to fill this gap, by providing a tool for planning a green design charrette which is supported by an extensive annotated bibliography.

This Seminar will review – the need for carbon sequestration, The Ocean Nourishment technology, environmental and social benefits of Ocean Nourishment

Professor Jones and his Ocean Nourishment team’s technology mimics the natural process of macro-nutrient upwelling from deep ocean sites . This upwelling occurs naturally in about 70 per cent of the world’s oceans, which means the Ocean Nourishment process is potentially far more reaching than any other solution yet proposed. The technology is therefore capable of removing significant amounts of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere via photosynthesis and storing carbon in plant matter which falls to the ocean floor..

The Ocean Nourishment team assembled to take part in Sir Richard Branson’s Virgin Earth Challenge represents a “who’s who” of climate change, engineering, environmental and scientific expertise. The team aims to complete its submission to the Virgin Earth Challenge within the next year

Key members of the Ocean Nourishment team (and their respective contributions) include:

Professor Ian S F Jones (Champion)

Ocean Nourishment Corporation (Commercialisation)

Earth Ocean and Space (Inventors of Ocean Nourishment technology)

Ocean Technology Group, University of Sydney

Note: In response to intense media attention following the recent screening of the BBC2 documentary “Five Ways To Save The World”, Professor Ian S F Jones and Mr John Ridley provide more details on the Ocean Nourishment technology featured. A team led by Professor Jones will use this technology in its proposed entry in Sir Richard Branson’s Virgin Earth Challenge. The Ocean Nourishment team welcomes enquiries from corporate sponsor organisations interested in becoming partners in the Challenge. The Challenge represents an opportunity to demonstrate leadership on the earth’s most challenging issue and to work in collaboration with leading thinkers on stabilisation of dangerous levels of climate change.

The Climate Project is a global movement started by former US Vice-President, Al Gore, to educate and challenge citizens, and governments into action against the growing crisis of global warming. The Australian Conservation Foundation recently selected 75 'climate messengers' from a field of 1800 to present the information delivered in the documentary An Inconvenient Truth to audiences across Australia. In November 2006, Mr. Gore came to Sydney with a team of climate change scientists and educators to outfit Australia's 'climate messengers' with the information and skills they need to present their version of his slide show which formed the basis of the documentary. Randall Pearce was one of those selected.

As a social researcher and political pollster, Randall believes that Climate Change is really about social change, "After all, there is tremendous consensus among leading scientists on this subject; the only argument is about what we need to do as a community to change our values, attitudes and beliefs."

Randall presents Mr. Gore's material with a definite Australian slant; the presentation highlights some of the impacts climate change is already having in Australia and the region.