The World Sustainable Building Conference (or SB08 in the common vernacular) has seen regulators, researchers, architects, builders and developers come together to discuss and promote new ideas in how to make buildings more sustainable.
 
Across 4 days there have been over 200 presentations by individual experts examining various issues to energy efficiency, building material life cycle, design, regulation and the impact the built environment has on the global landscape.
 
They were all very fascinating, but I couldn't help thinking that the conference was an embodiment of the problem being identified by relevant departments and groups currently trying to determine Australia's emissions trading scheme and complementary policies: information paralysis.
 
On top of the 200+ presentations, SB08 also had a 'poster series' where research was presented through a poster. Between all the presentations and posters there was one clear problem: nothing was getting any cut through.
 
Success in any market is a product of many things, but most important, is cut through: having your message heard and remembered. Absorbing the information at SB08 it was obvious how 'sustainability' has become conflicted. In the early days, sustainability advocates spent significant time defining sustainability as a balance across the Triple Bottom Line: Environmental, Economic & Social.
 
Now, with the acceptance of climate change, the environmental line is all the rage; worse still, it is really only the carbon footprint and energy and water consumption that we are using as our key indicators. Many speakers noted this change and tried to bring the conversation about sustainability back to the triple bottom line.
 
Even the international collaboration of brick manufacturers were cheeky enough to pose a question at their stand about what is more important in a sustainable building: energy efficiency or the health, safety and security of the occupants?
 
I think the answer is energy efficiency.  Sure, health, safety and security of the building occupants are important, but a single focus on the individual (individual bedrooms & recreational spaces, individual TVs and individual cars) has arguably created this problem and now a more collective view is necessary.  At this stage I don’t think we have the time or liberty to holistically debate how we find the balance between these two answers.
 
Right now we need to produce less carbon: we either do that by changing the way we produce electricity, or we find ways to reduce the electricity we use.  Buildings represent about one quarter of Australia’s emissions and our most immediate concern should be how to produce energy efficiency buildings with low life cycle costs.
 
Besides, Australia already has building regulations that ensure the health, safety and security of the occupants and that won’t change: not reducing carbon dioxide, however, will cause dramatic change, not the least of which will be a reduction in the health, safety and security of people.