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Australia's CleanTech Index outperformed the ASX in September and in Q1 of the financial year – just as it has over the last three years.

Living in a single-storey unit can lead to much higher air conditioning costs. Author provided

With rising temperatures, surging power prices and an ageing population, there are challenging times ahead in terms of looking after our most vulnerable elderly citizens.

But my research suggests that residential aged care facilities are not well regulated in terms of providing safe indoor temperatures, especially during hot summer months.

Heatwaves have caused more deaths in Australia over the past 200 years than floods or cyclones. People over 75 are more at risk of temperature-related health issues, and some are even more at risk than others. The most vulnerable groups include women, people living alone, people on low incomes, and people with existing health or mobility issues.

Vulnerable subgroups of elderly population. Wendy Miller

By mid-century, more than 2 million Australians will be aged 85 or over, and more than a quarter of these are likely to find themselves living in residential aged care facilities. These communities, often resembling retirement villages, cater to the needs of older people with varying levels of care needs in terms of their health, mobility and independence.

Aged care homes are strongly regulated by national laws governing their terms of occupancy, fees, fire safety procedures, and service costs such as electricity bills. But this regulation does not seem to extend to thermal comfort.

Population distribution of older people. Derived from Australian Demographic Statistics June 2014, ABS Comfortable buildings

My research team has been investigating how buildings at an aged care community in southeast Queensland impact on internal temperatures and occupant electricity bills. Residents in this community are aged 80 or older and most live alone. We measured inside and outside temperatures in 11 apartments and evaluated the electricity bills of all 110 apartments. We also inspected the design and construction of the buildings.

On average, residents used only 80% of the monthly electricity assumed by the Queensland government for low-energy-consumption households. Actual monthly electricity bills (excluding metering and connection charges) ranged between 1% and 6% of the 2015 aged care pension rate.

Read more: How to keep your house cool in a heatwave

Next, we examined the 20 apartments with the highest electricity bills. Eighteen of them were directly exposed to the roof – that is, they were either in a single-storey apartment building or on the upper floor of a two-storey building.

Electricity bills also seemed to be linked to the weather. In some units, winter and summer bills were 60-70% higher than the corresponding bills in autumn and spring. In the most extreme cases, summer electricity bills were four to five times higher than at other times of year. Some units required winter heating, while others did not.

This huge variation in electricity bills suggests that building quality plays a part in determining how much residents have to spend to stay cool in summer. To find out, we next compared the temperatures inside two identical, unoccupied units – one on the ground floor and one directly above – during a run of hot summer weather.

The ground floor unit had a more consistent internal temperature and a lower maximum temperature in every room (bedroom, bathroom and kitchen/living room). What’s more, all rooms in the ground floor unit had a greater proportion of time in the comfort zone of 20℃ and 26℃, and never got hotter than 28℃.

Temperature comparison of lower floor (left) and upper floor (right) apartments. Wendy Miller

This doesn’t mean that air conditioning wouldn’t be required, but it does mean that cooling costs for the ground floor unit would be significantly cheaper than for the unit directly upstairs.

Building quality – the absence of ceiling insulation in this case – is impacting on the internal temperatures of these apartments and on the occupants’ electricity bills. It’s an important issue considering that air conditioning is typically the biggest factor in these communities’ energy costs.

Impact of heat and housing on elderly people and society. What do we need to do about this?

This is not an accusation of wrongdoing by the developers and managers of aged care communities. But our results do highlight a serious issue in our approach to energy, buildings and health, especially the increasing heatwave risk to our growing elderly population.

With that in mind, a few questions need answering:

• Are building regulations really protecting the health and safety of older people?

• Why isn’t building quality considered as part of the healthcare plan of older Australians?

• Why do we rely so much on air conditioners to pump heat out of the building, instead of first doing what we can to limit the heat getting into our buildings in the first place.

• Why do governments try to control electricity prices but virtually ignore energy efficiency?

• Why aren’t buildings included in the current discussion about the electricity network, reliability and security?

• Why do we continue to focus on subsidising pensioners’ electricity bills, instead of tackling the problem at source by improving the buildings they live in?

• Are the buildings constructed now going to be fit for purpose in the changing climate?

• Will poor-quality buildings end up being stranded assets in the future?

We have a disconnect between our building quality, energy system, electricity costs and the well-being of our elderly citizens. This does not make Australians safe and secure – something that anyone in aged care would surely wish to be.

Wendy Miller receives funding from the Australian Research Council to examine housing innovation and sustainability. No funding was received from the management of the aged care community that was the subject of this research. This community, however, does provide our research team with access to their buildings and energy data.

AFR's Chanticleer column writes article about battery storage so absurd and stupid it beggars belief that it was published. Such is the state of the energy debate in Australia. It's not just politicians and vested interests that are letting consumers down, it's the media.

Coalition had sought to dodge CET because renewables were too costly, now it is arguing they are too cheap. But Frydenberg says renewables without storage are a "costly burden."

If a CET is abandoned, it will be NSW that will be thrown under a bus. Victoria and QLD have renewable share policies that incentivise new generation. NSW has no policy and despite being an energy importer is not getting its share of new generation investment.

The Turnbull Government today launched the National Carbon Offset Standard for buildings and precincts

The World Solar Challenge begins this weekend when more than 40 solar cars brave the Australian Outback on a 3000-kilometre journey from Darwin to Adelaide.

CHOICE is certified carbon neutral for its Australian business operations from July 2015.

CHOICE is certified carbon neutral for its Australian business operations from July 2015.

S.A. gets 60 proposals for batteries, bioenergy, pumped hydro, thermal, compressed air and flywheel technologies in response to its tender for next-gen renewables and storage.

A short film shot by  Heath Patterson captures photographer Vaughan Brookfield and Tom Lynch's journey to a New Zealand glacier equipped with hundreds of kilograms of gear and a light projector. Their plan was to project images on to the rapidly receding Tasman Glacier. Brookfield says: 'We want to remind people of the effects humans are having on the environment' 

 

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AAP/David Mariuz

This time last year, Australia was getting over a media storm about renewables, energy policy and climate change. The media storm was caused by a physical storm: a mid-latitude cyclone that hit South Australia on September 29 and set in train a series of events that is still playing itself out.

The events include:

• an extraordinary attack on renewables by federal government ministers;

• a steadfast pushback by the South Australian government to continue its renewables roll-out;

• the offer of tech entrepreneur Elon Musk to build the largest battery storage facility in the world in South Australia and;

• the Finkel Review.

In one sense, the Finkel Review was a response to the government’s concerns about “energy security”. But it also managed to successfully respond to the way energy policy had become a political plaything, as exemplified by the attacks on South Australia.

New research on the media coverage that framed the energy debate that has ensued over the past year reveals some interesting turning points in how Australia’s media report on climate change.

While extreme weather events are the best time to communicate climate change – the additional energy people are adding to the climate is on full display – the South Australian event was used to attack renewables rather than the carbonisation of the atmosphere. Federal MPs hijacked people’s need to understand the reason for the blackout “by simply swapping climate change with renewables”.

However, the research shows that, ironically, MPs who invited us to “look over here” at the recalcitrant renewables – and not at climate-change-fuelled super-storms – managed to make climate change reappear.

The study searched for all Australian newspaper articles that mentioned either a storm or a cyclone in relation to South Australia that had been published in the ten days either side of the event. This returned 591 articles. Most of the relevant articles were published after the storm, with warnings of the cyclone beforehand.

Some of the standout findings include:

• 51% of articles were about the power outage and 38% were about renewables, but 12% of all articles connected these two.

• 20% of articles focused on the event being politicised by politicians.

• 9% of articles raised climate change as a force in the event and the blackouts.

• 10% of articles blamed the blackouts on renewables.

• Of all of the articles linking power outages to renewables 46% were published in News Corp and 14% were published in Fairfax.

• Narratives that typically substituted any possibility of a link to climate change, included the “unstoppable power of nature” (18%), failure of planning (5.25%), and triumph of humanity (5.6%).

Only 9% of articles discussed climate change. Of these, 73% presented climate change positively, 21% were neutral, and 6% negative. But, for the most part, climate change was linked to the conversation around renewables: there was a 74% overlap. 36% of articles discussing climate change linked it to the intensification of extreme weather events.

There was also a strong correlation between the positive and negative discussion of climate change and the ownership of newspapers.

The starkest contrast was between the two largest Australian newspaper groups. Of all the sampled articles that mentioned climate change, News Corp was the only group to has a negative stance on climate change (at 50% of articles), but still with 38% positive. Fairfax was 90% positive and 10% neutral about climate change.

Positive/negative stance of articles covering climate change by percentage.

Given that more than half of all articles discussed power outages, the cyclone in a sense competed with renewables as a news item. Both have a bearing on power supply and distribution. But, ironically, it was renewables that put climate change on the news agenda – not the cyclone.

Of the articles discussing renewables, 67% were positive about renewables with only 33% “negative” and blaming them for the power outages.

In this way, the negative frame that politicians put on renewable energy may have sparked debate that was used to highlight the positives of renewable energy and what’s driving it: reduced emissions.

But perhaps the most interesting finding is the backlash by news media against MPs’ attempts to politicise renewables.

19.63% of all articles in the sample had called out (mainly federal) MPs for politicising the issue and using South Australians’ misfortune as a political opportunity. This in turn was related to the fact that, of all the articles discussing renewables, 67% were positive about renewables with only 33% supporting MPs’ attempts to blame them for the power outages.

In this way, while many MPs had put renewables on the agenda by denigrating them, most journalists were eager to cover the positive side of renewables.

Nevertheless, the way MPs sought to dominate the news agenda over the storm did take away from discussion of climate science and the causes of the cyclone. Less than 4% of articles referred to extreme weather intensifying as a trend.

This is problematic. It means that, with a few exceptions, Australia’s climate scientists are not able to engage with the public in key periods after extreme weather events.

When MPs, with co-ordinated media campaigns, enjoy monopoly holdings in the attention economy of news cycles, science communication and the stories of climate that could be told are often relegated to other media.

With thanks to Tahnee Burgess for research assistance on this article.

Disclosure

David Holmes received funding from Monash University to conduct this research.

It’s been a bit of a free-for-all up till now, but the regulatory regime seems to be developing in a way that should benefit consumers and renewables in the long run.

Almost two thirds of mussels in the sea around Kent are contaminated with plastic particles, research has shown.

Buddy Platform and Edge Electrons have agreed to integrate PowerSave into the Buddy Ohm product suite; delivering PowerSave customers a Buddy Ohm dashboard.

British scientists played a key role in developing radar, which has helped deliver safer skies.

With pressure to boost recycling and cut costs, landfill waste in England is collected less frequently – with six councils collecting it once in three weeks

More than three quarters of English councils now pick up household rubbish which cannot be recycled or composted just once a fortnight, a survey reveals.

With councils under pressure to boost recycling and cut costs, some have gone further, with six local authorities picking up residual household waste only once every three weeks.

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Storage capacity could triple by 2030 if current renewable energy capacity doubles, with battery prices potentially driven down by 66% from current levels.

Originally published in the Manchester Guardian on 13 October 1917

Surrey, October 11
This morning was chill. Wild duck were on a broad stretch of backwater which has come from the river overflow in the low marsh; they floated like toy birds in the early haze. After a while they flew, skimming the ripples closely enough to make scattered particles shimmer in the rising sun, their green-grey and chestnut plumage throwing out a show of different colours in the flight. They settled among the tall reeds along the river bank, with lapwing playing overhead, then came out to rest for a long time on the water again. Mist was still white along the hedgerow, frosting haws and the now crimson “winter pears” on wild rose bushes, which are rich in yellow leaf. Up in the spinney a greenfinch went from bough to bough of a thorn, high and low, his feathers now dull in shade, now almost the colour of young lime leaves where the sun struck through. Alighting on a branch, the sound of a long, sweet note satisfied the ear, then, as his wings just opened, a faint twitter was hardly heard. Flying off a little, he always came back to the spreading thorn again.

Related: How to access the Guardian and Observer digital archive

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It is no surprise the mayor of London wants to ban wood burning: even new stoves are much more polluting than the exhaust of a heavy goods vehicle

Browse through the home style magazines in your newsagent’s or watch Channel 4’s Grand Designs and you will see beautifully decorated living rooms complete with a roaring fire. Wood burning has become very fashionable and, let’s face it, a log fire is cosy.

Natural gas central heating largely banished solid fuel and brought huge improvements in our urban air. For two decades the UK’s official energy statistics said that home wood burning was too small to be quantified, but under the radar it has been making a return. A 2016 government survey found that 7.5% of UK homes burned wood making up 30% of UK particle emissions. In London, one home in 12 burns wood, but this accounts for more than a quarter of the particle pollution produced in the capital. It is no surprise that the mayor of London, Sadiq Kahn, has called for powers to address this problem.

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