The Minister for Climate Change, Energy Efficiency and Water, Penny Wong, told a packed house at Australia’s biggest ever clean energy conference that the federal government will negotiate with major parties on the passage of amendments to the Renewable Energy Target (RET) legislation.

Ecospecifier has been recognised under the Green Building Council of Australia’s (GBCA’s) Assessment Framework for Product Certification Schemes.

The NSW Minister for Water, Phil Costa, has congratulated Sydney Water for winning the 2010 Public Water Agency of the Year Award at the Global Water Intelligence Conference in Paris.

Taupo firm Ross Construction has been awarded the contract to build the New Zealand Clean Energy Centre. Stage one of the facility, costing in excess of $2m, will be built on land leased from Taupo District Council near the intersection of Napier Highway and the new ETA.

Syngenta has launched its first Connections program aimed at helping rice growers in North India farm more sustainably by providing skills and tools to use water more efficiently.

Victoria’s peak building industry body, the Master Builders Association, says the state government’s Jobs for the Future Economy package will help boost building workforce productivity and reduce housing costs for future Victorian homebuyers.

The Green Building Council of Australia (GBCA) has established a new task group to encourage local councils to accelerate the green building agenda.

Australia’s small and medium businesses are set to receive a helping hand to ‘green up’, thanks to a free business book launched by Sensis called Small Business, Big Opportunity: Sustainable Growth.

Westpac is cutting through the green tape surrounding emissions trading and offering practical solutions to help New Zealand transition to a low carbon economy.

Adelaide is hosting the biggest renewable energy conference in Australia’s history as more than 700 delegates gather to prepare for a multi-billion dollar expansion of the clean energy industry over the next decade.

An important step towards developing a relatively cheap, efficient and carbon-neutral means of producing hydrogen has been taken by a team of researchers with the US Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and the University of California, Berkeley.

Dunedin is to be the first city in New Zealand to launch a community biodiesel initiative that will make biodiesel available to anyone who joins the consortium.

North Sydney’s skyline has a new iconic landmark addition following the practical completion of Investa’s Ark development. The development, with an estimated end value of AU$240 million, began on the site of the old North Sydney Telephone Exchange in 2006 and was designed by Rice Daubney Architects.

Alcatel-Lucent CEO Ben Verwaayen, Australia’s Victorian state Treasurer John Lenders and University of Melbourne Professor Rod Tucker have announced that Alcatel-Lucent’s research arm, Bell Labs, the University of Melbourne and the Victorian state government are partnering to establish a research centre in Melbourne that will be devoted to innovation in energy-efficient networks and technologies.

Prime Minister Kevin Rudd confirmed yesterday that the implementation of the federal government's carbon pollution reduction scheme (CPRS) will be delayed until the end of 2012 when the current Kyoto commitment period ends. If there had been “sufficient international action” an ETS would have been legislated by 2013.