Carbon neutrality is the next challenge for property groups and the Initial Report of the 2020 Summit says: “Through a National Sustainable Cities Program the Federal Government could lead a nationally consistent approach to urban and regional planning which drives water efficiency and reductions in emissions.

“This could be supported by the implementation of tax and other policies that encourage the use of public transport relative to other modes of transport.”

Another idea to come out of the summit was an initiative to require carbon neutrality for all new buildings constructed after 2020. The major question is what will be the definition of what makes a building carbon neutral. The Green Building Council of Australia (GBCA) reported lots of questions about this and commented that “Buildings need to have zero emissions in their construction, operation and embodied energy to be truly carbon neutral.”

It is possible to achieve zero net operational carbon emissions from buildings but truly carbon neutral buildings, including their embodied energy are a significant challenge, unless carbon offsetting is used. Personally, I feel that people should regard offsetting as a last resource AFTER exhausting other avenues.

This entry was posted on Monday, April 28th, 2008 at 7:58 am and is filed under Global Warming, Climate Change & Energy. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.