The Green World Cup

In just a few weeks, Melbourne will be welcoming green building leaders to our own Green World Cup as a session at Green Cities 2010. And I'll be moderating a session with leaders from green building councils around the world which will explore those green building solutions that can be applied to Australia.

Australia can learn a lot from Germany, for instance. Christian Donath, Chief Executive Officer of the German Sustainable Building Council, will be discussing the challenges of green building in a nation where 80 per cent of its building stock was constructed before 1980. Germans are grappling with the question: is it more sustainable to modernise or reconstruct?

On the other side of the world, the Hong Kong Green Building Council is faced with a different set of challenges. According to Kevin Edmunds from the Hong Kong Green Building Council, a pressing issue is the effect that a high density built environment has on the quality of life of residents.

"While we've maximised the use of our limited land, the price in some urban areas has been closely packed high rise buildings which inhibit natural daylighting, urban air ventilation and roadside pollution dispersion, and exacerbate solar gains within our buildings and the urban heat island effect outside of them," Kevin says.

Moves are afoot to enhance the design of Hong Kong's buildings and urban areas by the integration of more urban greenery, greater separation between buildings and set-back from streets to provide a higher quality and more sustainable built environment, and Kevin will be exploring these ideas at Green Cities.

Green building has taken off in New Zealand and South Africa, too, largely due to the introduction of green rating tools. Both New Zealand and South Africa have adopted Australia's Green Star environmental rating tool for buildings in the last three years - and our trans-Tasman neighbours have report that 50 per cent of new and major refurbishments are now going through the Green Star NZ process.

CEO of the NZGBC, Jane Henley, says: "New Zealand does not invest as much in its building stock as Australia. Without Green Star NZ there is no way both the investment and design community would have the measurement framework to change this supply demand dynamic."

Finally, South Africa is focused on how green building can both mitigate climate change and improve social outcomes. "Africa is likely to be hardest hit by the effects of climate change," the CEO of the South Africa GBC, Nicola Douglas, says. "With very high carbon emissions per capita and a severe energy crisis, the shift to green has to be balanced with the need to address the major socio-economic issues of widespread poverty, unemployment and a massive housing backlog."

Green Cities 2010 will explore all these issues - and more - from 21-24 February in Melbourne.

We have a spectacular line-up of speakers attending Green Cities 2010, including sustainability expert Jerry Yudelson (USA), architect Christoph Ingenhoven (Germany) and Arup UK's Malcolm Smith. Visit www.greencities.org.au for more information and to register.