Ok, like you the idea of a sustainable development company sounds like a very large bucket load of green washing, but they have an impressive website and they seem to be saying all of the right things, even challenging the government’s poor efforts. Apparently their Efficient Building Scheme provides an incentive for developers to care about the impact the buildings they build have on the environment. If this is true it is important. This has been a big problem in building green buildings. Developers usually just sell the building on so they don’t care what the electricity usage is going to be because they are not paying the bill.
As far as I can tell the only way to get involved is to talk about their ideas. So that it what I am doing. Do they really see the commercial benefit in being green? I hope so. I believe it is the direction of things to come and he who hits the market first has the best chance. The Efficient Building Scheme is supposed to have the potential to reduce a cities emissions by 50+% – that’s worth talking about. They are saying cities world wide. There is so much info on the site that I won’t waste your time trying to repeat any of it here. I suggest checking out this page first and scrolling to the bottom to watch the short videos: Lend Lease Sustainability Direction Detail Continued.
Could Lend Lease be one of my heroes one day? Why not?
Maybe with this downturn, people will stop constructing new buildings (with questionable green benefits overall) and refurbish existing buildings to be more efficient. With the the 2 aims of saving money through efficiency and ideally reducing a carbon footprint.
(Worried about the Rebound Effect though..). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waste_homeostasis
Although it does appear to be a cap & trade proposal which would be a good approach.
http://ckmurray.blogspot.com/2008/12/carbon-tax-v-cap-and-trade.html
On reading more thoroughly, their proposal appears to address parts of the rebound effect I was worried about in my first reply. (I would think it will still come down to the detail)
I think it’s a very interesting idea. But always sceptic…
Thanks for the remarks Dan!