Posts by ESR
March 2023
– ESR 2023 AGM
– Global Energy News
– First electric car with sodium ion battery
– Why Roman buildings have survived so long
– Study finds climate crisis worsened extreme weather
– Eight ways to attempt to stay within 1.5OC increase
– Global fresh water demand to outstrip supply by 40% by 2030
– Pollution leaves New Zealand wetlands badly damaged
– Cities looking to work with rather than against water
– Peak human population may not exceed 8.8 billion
– The origin of time?
Energy and Transport
This revised paper, which focuses on energy and transport, is intended to assist in identifying some of the actions which ESR considers New Zealanders, communities, cities, businesses and New Zealand as a nation should be implementing as a matter of high priority. Some actions refer specifically to Auckland, but that does not mean that they may not have relevance to other centres.
Read MoreTransport Policy – An Excessive Emphasis on Road Construction
National transport policy assumes that vehicular traffic growth is a given and that demand for vehicular travel will continue to increase for the foreseeable future. The available information does not support that position and indeed suggests that past growth may not be a good indicator of future change.
Read MoreWhite Roofs
The use of ‘white roofs’ is a simple low-cost way of reducing a building’s cooling costs, improving the comfort of its users, and mitigating global warming. ESR supports the principle of using of ‘white roofs’ where appropriate.
Read MoreNuclear Waste – Is It Still A Problem?
With concern over global warming on the increase, Nuclear Power is again being promoted in some quarters as a low carbon emission alternative to the continuing use of fossil fuels.
Read MoreHigh Expectations For The Climate Commission – Will Government’s Action Push Us Fast Enough?
Save the buildings and save the climate Save the climate and save the planet. The built environment is the main cause of climate change and offers the easiest opportunities for necessary change. The only truly sustainable building is the one you do not build. The next most sustainable building is the one you do not demolish. There is no point in recycling plastic bags and milk bottles if we are going to send our living buildings off to landfill.
Read MoreTamaki Campus
The built environment is the main cause of climate change. How we build determines not only how we use, or waste, resources. It also determines how we live, work, and need to travel. Even more importantly how we build determines our ability to make moral decisions. A disempowering built environment, in which everyone lives in someone else’s architecture, becomes a prison. The door is open, but the mortgage needs to be paid. An empowering built environment would allow owner‐builders to make moral choices about their own lives. The Auckland Unitary Plan is little more than a commitment to dramatically increasing climate change in the next thirty years. A consumer society consuming diminishing resources.
Read MoreRestoration of Electric Power Supply to Faseu Village
The Registered Trust “Friends of Faseu” seeks funding support for a rural electricity project in Papua New Guinea. The project involves the repair and restoration of a small hydro electric plant and the associated electrical distribution system supplying community facilities at Faseu, a village in the mountains of the Huon Peninsula in the Morobe Province. The system commenced operation in December 2005, but suffered major damage due to flood and landslip approximately two years later.
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Submission to the Auckland Council on Transport
In ESR’s opinion, the Auckland Plan discussion document does not provide a clear or convincing description of the city’s transport options, and it does not adequately address the linkage between the nature and location of future land use development and the transport option selected.
Read MoreGovernment Policy Statement on Land Transport Funding
ESR is concerned at Government intervention in the process of objective decision making on national land transport funding in favour of state highway construction.
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