We always enjoy getting feedback from our readers, especially when it comes from good friends like Judith and Paul Collins. I wrote about our visit to Paul and Judy’s wonderful Permaculture Farm called ‘The Keep‘ way back in our Newsletter from June last year. At the time I commented on the incredible job that the Collins’ had done transforming a neglected bit of property near Buxton into an astonishingly productive Food Forest in just five years. Judith and Paul are a delightful couple and I HIGHLY recommend a visit to The Keep for anyone interested in sustainability, organic food, natural medicine and good old-fashioned common sense.

Judith and Paul Collins, owners and creators of ‘The Keep’ in Buxton, NSW.

Over the last few months I’ve written a lot about alternative transportation options, electric vehicles and interesting new inventions for getting around. This recently drew following comment from Judith…

Solarquotes.com.au  is an excellent source of up-to-date information about solar power and home battery storage systems. They have put together a ‘Battery Storage Comparison Table’ which compiles a lot of useful data about the range of available (or soon to be so) battery systems on the Australian market.

Home Battery Comparison Table from solarquotes.com.au

This recent article from solarquotes describes how the actual installed cost of a Powerwall is proving to be double what was expected based on the initial press release from Tesla only eleven months ago. The conclusion from the article is that we need to consider the installed cost per warranted kilowatt-hour in order to realistically compare the many energy storage systems that are appearing in the market. They will be adding a row to their comparison chart to this effect which should greatly assist with the (increasingly complicated) decision of whether to install home batteries.

Homes with Electric Cars already have Battery Storage

An important thing to remember when considering home energy storage is that electric vehicles (EV’s) have big batteries.

Electric Vehicles have large storage batteries

As my good friend, Manuel Cilia of Cilectric Pty Ltd, likes to remind me, anyone that has an electric car already has a lot of energy storage potential. Our Mitsubishi Outlander PHEV came with a 12kWh battery and some EV’s have batteries as large as 60kWh. To put this in perspective, the Tesla Powerwall is rated at 6.4kWh so a big car battery might be 8 times bigger and have enough capacity for a 500km trip. Yet most people drive less than 50km a day. So there is plenty of capacity for car batteries to be able to store power during the day and send it to the home, or to the grid, during the evening peak. This is known globally as a Vehicle-To-Grid or V2G System. All new EV’s in Japan are required to be equipped with a CHAdeMo charging plug which can allow for fast charging as well as V2G discharging of the car battery. Ironically, and unfortunately, when the same vehicles are shipped for sale in Australia, the CHAdeMO plug is removed. My Outlander just came with a J1772 socket that allows for charging but not for V2G exchange of power. This is disappointing because it is looking increasingly likely that a three way exhange of power between houses, cars and electricity grids will be a key to reducing our dependence on fossil fuels.

ORNL Envisions the Future of Home and Vehicle Energy Exchange

Carbon-fibre, 3D-printed, power-sharing, vacuum-insulated house and car. (Source: Gizmag)

I’ve written about this project from the Oak Ridge National Laboratory before from the perspective of 3D printing but it’s worth revisiting it from the point of view of house and car energy generation, storage and exchange. In this vision of the future, both the house and car have batteries and both are capable of generating electricity, the house via solar panels and the car via an internal combustion engine which, in this situation, operates as a back-up generator. The two systems can exchange energy via a wireless energy transfer system. So the house can make energy with its solar system and store power in either the car batteries or the house batteries. If the car is at home and the house runs out of stored energy, it can draw from the car batteries or the car engine can start and act as the power generator for the house. In the medium term I think this will prove to be the future of our homes, cars and the way we use energy. The Greeny Flat is not far away from having this sort of capability. We have the home energy generation, we have the car batteries and petrol engine that can operate as a generator, all we are missing is a home battery system, a two-way connection and a smart controller to manage the flow of energy.

I envision a future in which every home and car has these capabilities and we are all connected to a smart grid in a way which allows us to exchange energy between our homes, cars and each other. This would allow us to maximise the efficiency of each component as well as the system as a whole. When demand is high there would be thousands of home and car batteries (as well as petrol generators) that could feed power into the grid (thereby reducing the peak loads) and when demand is low and renewable energy generation is high, thousands of batteries available to store the energy for later use.

Energy Conservation Comes First

The latest edition of Renew Magazine includes another good article by Lance Turner about the latest developments in Home Energy Storage. The article lists 22 different battery storage systems that are either available now or should be available to buy in 2016. The gist of the article is that the cost of energy storage is expected to drop rapidly over the coming years. So Lance’s conclusion is that, ‘with battery life expected to be around 10 years, it is generally not yet economically advantageous to a install battery system for most grid-connected homes.’  If your ‘primary motivation for considering a battery system… is to offset electricity cost by making better use of your solar-generated electricity, then you are best to wait until system prices have dropped’.

It was refreshing to read Lance’s advice that, ‘while you are waiting for prices to come down you can get to work on improving the efficiency of your home to minimise energy use and hence the amount of storage required’. This is a VERY important point that is often ignored or overlooked in discussions about Renewable Energy and Battery Storage. It is vital to REDUCE your energy requirements as much as possible BEFORE considering how much solar power and energy storage you need.

Making the Most of the Sun

On the subject of energy efficiency and reducing energy requirements, I’ve written a lot about the many benefits of Passive Solar Design.

The FlipFlic solar powered blind opener (source Gizmag)

Good Passive Solar Design works to keep a home warm in winter and cool in summer. It relies on the fact that the sun is high in the sky in summer and low in the sky in winter. If the home’s orientation is correct, the right amount of eave overhang on the roof will keep the summer sun out and allow the winter sun in to warm the home. This can be greatly assisted by the use of good insulating blinds which can help to keep summer sun out and winter warmth in. However blinds work best if someone is home during the day to open and close them at the right time. I have long lamented the lack of a simple, affordable system for automatically opening and closing blinds. Now there is hope on the horizon with a device called the FlipFlic which is currently seeking funding on Kickstarter. As described in this Gizmag article, the Flipflic is a solar-powered device for opening and closing venetian blinds and only costs US$60. While venetian blinds can be useful for keeping out summer sun, they are next to useless for keeping in winter warmth. So the FlipFlic is a step in the right direction but I will be holding out for future releases from the company. According to Gizmag, ‘a version for blinds that are controlled by cords or strings is said to be in the works’ and that will have the potential to really improve a home’s energy efficiency.

New Renewable Energy Surpasses New Fossil Fuel Energy Globally

According to this article from greenworldinvestor.com, for the first time ever ‘RE capacity addition was more than 53% of the total global capacity addition in 2015, and it was the first time that RE was more than half of the total capacity addition.’ Renewable Energy still only accounts for less than 10% of global energy capacity however it is heartening to note that the tide seems to be turning in favour of Renewables.

Daniel helping to insulate the Greeny Flat during construction in 2014.

Daniel Jones became a good friend during the building of the Greeny Flat. At the time Daniel had just completed a degree in engineering at the University of Wollongong and had recently been a member of UoW’s victorious 2013 Solar Decathlon winning ‘Illawarra Flame House‘ team. Daniel was keen to gain more on-site construction experience so he drove up from Wollongong once a week to help us build the Greeny Flat.

Two years later Daniel is completing a Masters Degree through the Sustainable Buildings Research Centre, working for Repower Shoalhaven and in his own words…

When they use the bathroom they leave the door open so air flow should be reasonable.

Mould in bathrooms can be a serious health and building durability problem (Source: fixmyroof.co.uk)

Mould in bathrooms (and elsewhere in homes) is such a common issue that I thought I would share with you my reply to Daniel. After spending a number of years performing energy audits on buildings in Montana I saw a LOT of mould problems and did a lot of study on the causes and possible solutions. So here’s what I suggested to Daniel which I hope some readers will find helpful…

In our climate, and most likely in this case, mould is the result of condensation forming on the surfaces of the bathroom. Condensation is a function of two factors, relative humidity and surface temperature. If the humidity is high enough and the surface temperature is low enough you’ll get condensation on the surface. If the condensation occurs often enough and hangs around long enough you’ll get mould growth. So dealing with the mould requires either or both of the following:

1. Reduce the relative humidity
2. Increase the surface temperatures

Reducing the relative humidity in this case would involve increasing the exhaust of moist air. The first thing to do would be to check that the existing fan is correctly ducted and that the ducting doesn’t have blockages or restrictions. Unless the attic is VERY well vented the fan should be ducted directly to the outdoors and not into the attic. The next thing to do would be to run the existing fan more, either by instructing the owners to leave it running or to replace the switch with a timer so that they could leave it running for an hour or so each time they used the bathroom. Either way it would be a good idea to put a simple temperature and humidity sensor in the bathroom so that they could keep an eye on it and make sure that the humidity is dropping low enough to prevent mould growth (I’d start by suggesting 50% RH but you’d have to monitor it to ensure that this was low enough and mould was not returning). Otherwise you could replace the existing fan with one that moves more air (once again you don’t want to put that humidity into the attic unless it is VERY well vented) and there are fans you can get that have built-in timers and/or humidity sensors. We just put one into a bathroom and it has a dial that allows us to adjust the humidity level. The fan will run any time the humidity is above the set point.

Increasing the surface temperatures can be as simple as insulating the ceiling above the bathroom. It depends where the mould is growing. Is it on the ceiling? The floor? The walls? Or just the walls that are adjacent to air-conditioned spaces? If the room next to the bathroom is air-conditioned and there is no insulation in the walls, the surface temperature of the bathroom wall will be lower, leading to more potential for condensation and mould. If the mould is all over the bathroom then I would suspect that the problem is more to do with air flow and humidity. However one thing to check is whether there is air-leakage within the wall cavities around the bathroom. Sometimes there are electrical cables or pipes or ducts that run from under the house up to the attic via the wall cavities. If the holes around these penetrations are not sealed, air can flow readily between sub-floor and attic. This can make the wall surfaces cold, leading to more condensation and mould. You can check by looking under the house and in the attic to see if there are unsealed penetrations. If so, seal them up and look to see whether the location of the mould corresponds with the location of the air leakage.

Most likely improving the ventilation of the bathroom will solve the mould problem but it comes with an energy penalty. Unless you are using heat-recovery ventilation, exhausting more air from the bathroom will cause outside air to be sucked into the house which will raise the inside temperature in summer and lower it in winter. This is why, in order to create an indoor environment that is not only comfortable but also healthy, safe, durable and energy efficient, you have to ‘Build Tight, Vent Right‘. ‘Build Tight’ means proper insulation and air sealing and ‘Vent Right’ ideally means Heat Recovery Ventilation along with correct venting of combustion appliances.

Minor Correction and Apology

In last week’s Newsletter I mistakenly described Mary Bowe as an Architect. Mary is in fact a Building Designer with a Degree in Environmental Design and is a member of Building Designers Australia and the Australian Passive House Association. Sorry about that.

More on Lithium Battery Recycling

Also in last week’s Newsletter I asked if any readers knew more about the recyclability of Lithium Ion batteries. A reader named Mark provided the following assessment of the situation…

In terms of lithium battery recycling I do believe this is just a matter of critical mass. Lead acid batteries have been around for a century and in this time the infrastructure has developed around them. Lithium is, as far as I know, highly recyclable in terms of recovery rates (even if the packs might be difficult to work with). It’s also reasonably scarce, and reasonably expensive (although prices are dropping). The fact it’s also often used in much larger systems (much bigger than a starter battery) means you tend to have a lot of it in one spot. It should be easier to get 16+kwh of batteries in one pack to a recycling plant, than to do so across hundreds of units in different locations.

At this point I just think we aren’t seeing a lot of batteries reach end of life. I believe at this stage nearly every failed EV battery has been taken back by the manufacturer for analysis and testing – people are actually keen to get a hold of them and are often unable to. There is great possibility for secondary stationary reuse of these battery packs before they are recycled (I have heard the Nissan LEAF factory uses old LEAF packs for power storage).

I understand large format Nickel-Metal-Hydride batteries are now generally recovered for recycling – but it took about ten years.

Thanks Mark, that all seems very reasonable to me.

Things That Caught My Eye This Week

Roll-up Solar

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This Energy Matters article describes a new type of solar installation that involves up to 100kW of flexible panels that can be unrolled and deployed in minutes. ‘Renovagen says from go to whoa,  the system can be fully deployed to the point of plugging in appliances in less than 5 minutes after arriving at a site’... Sounds amazing!

Designing for Trust

In this fascinating TED talk, Joe Gebbia describes the birth of AirBnB and how they have learned to get people to welcome complete strangers into their most private spaces.

Global Greenhouse Gas Emissions De-couple from Economic Growth

This article from The Guardian states that, for the first time in the forty years we have been monitoring them, greenhouse gas emissions leveled off at the same time as the global economy has grown. There have been a few other brief periods where emissions slowed but they occurred during economic recessions.  ‘Preliminary data for 2015 from the International Energy Agency (IEA) showed that carbon dioxide emissions from the energy sector have levelled off at 32.1bn tonnes even as the global economy grew over 3% .’

The bad news is that we are still at record high levels of GHG emissions but the good news is they haven’t increased. This may well indicate that the tide is finally turning away from fossil-fuel-derived energy and towards renewables and energy conservation.

‘The figures are significant because they prove to traditionally sceptical treasuries that it is possible to grow economies without increasing climate emissions… The new figures confirm last year’s surprising but welcome news: we now have seen two straight years of greenhouse gas emissions decoupling from economic growth’.

At the risk of sounding like a broken record, I firmly believe that we won’t find a true solution until we move away from the current economic model that requires perpetual growth at all costs. Only when we work within a system that strives for balance in all things will we truly be on track to nurture the environment that nurtures us.

Arch Criminals

A friend in the States just sent me this shocking article from the Sightline Institute which describes how the executives of the huge Arch Coal Company paid themselves an 8 Million dollar bonus ONE BUSINESS DAY before the company filed for bankruptcy. Apparently they paid themselves more than $29 Million in bonuses in the year leading up to the bankruptcy. Unfortunately this sort of unbridled greed and corruption seems to be rife in the upper management of corporations and governments around the world. I’ll be amazed if anyone is ever brought to justice over it but the backlash might take America in an even scarier direction. Donald Trump’s popularity is largely due to ordinary Americans being sick to death of Wall Street cronies making insane fortunes while everyone else struggles to keep their head above water. How this mad Billionaire has managed to convince America that he is somehow different from all the other super-rich blood suckers is beyond me. Meanwhile I try not to image what it could mean for the world if he actually became President and Commander-in-Chief.

The silver lining to this cloud is the news that nearly fifty of the major American coal companies have gone into liquidation (as reported in the Sightline Article). Hopefully this marks the beginning of the end for Big Coal and hopefully it won’t take too long before Australia’s politicians realise that coal is not the answer to all their prayers and they’ll stop given Korean companies permission to open new coal mines near historic villages like Berrima or loading docks near the Great Barrier Reef.

For the last nine months or so I’ve been helping a friend who is trying to get her dream home built not far from the Greeny Flat. She started with a vacant lot and I’ve been consulting to her on the design, permitting, choosing a builder and attempting to ensure that the project gets completed to a high standard of energy efficiency. This is proving to be an interesting challenge and I’m discovering that builders here are generally not used to insulating and air-sealing homes very well. In fact, after twenty years of designing, building and testing homes in America, I’m finding that the ‘Standard Practices’ for Australian home builders leave a great deal to be desired in terms of energy efficiency.

Insulation left out behind the electrical outlets and switches.

To his credit, the builder on this project has been open to suggestions on how the air-sealing and insulation could be done better, but I’m finding that I have to watch things very closely or they just get done the way they have always been done. For example, as you can see in the photo above, I found that the insulation had been left out behind all of the electrical powerpoints and switches. When I asked the builder why, the answer was that ‘this is the way we always do it’. Apparently the electrician is concerned that, if there was a spark from an electrical connection, it could catch the insulation on fire. I pointed out that fibreglass insulation doesn’t burn but was told that it was a ‘code issue’.

So I sent emails to some code officials I know and asked whether there was anything written in the building code or Australian standards that requires you to not insulate behind electrical outlets. The answer was a resounding ‘No!’. in fact it is a legal requirement that the insulation be installed to the proper standard to meet BASIX in NSW. This means that the insulation has to be continuous without holes, gaps or folds. Unfortunately there is no requirement for building certifiers to inspect the insulation. It is up to the builder to sign an affidavit saying that the insulation was installed correctly, which is not very satisfactory if builders don’t know how it should be done properly.

All this makes me wonder how many homes in Australia are built with shoddy insulation. If you read the installation instructions for Knauf ‘Earthwool’ batts you’ll find the following; ‘Make sure all areas are insulated, behind electrical outlets, plumbing and services’. It also says, ‘When installing insulation between framing members, ensure that you achieve a snug fit avoiding any gaps, tucks and folds’. Clearly the builder on this project didn’t read those instructions (he has used some Knauf batts and some from another company) and simply followed ‘Standard Practices’ which clearly leave a lot to be desired as shown in the photo below.

Gaps, folds and holes in the insulation.

The really sad thing is that this builder actually did a much better job of insulating than many I have seen. After spending some time pointing out the deficiencies in the job, he has assured me that they will be corrected before the gyprock goes up. I expect it won’t be perfect but it will be a lot better insulated and air-sealed than most Australian homes.

Another insulation issue that we ran into last week relates to the SIPS panels on the roof. Like the Greeny Flat, this project is roofed with Structural Insulated Panels (SIPS) which comprise a foam core clad with corrugated Colourbond on the top surface and smooth Colourbond steel on the underside. Unlike the Greeny Flat however, these panels (which are from a different company than ours) have gaps between the foam cores when they are installed. On the Greeny Flat, when the panels were snapped together the foam cores ended up tight against each other so that no air, heat or cold could move through the panel joints. On my friend’s project, as you can see from the photos below, even though these panels are snapped together as tightly as possible there is still a gap of almost 20mm between the foam cores and this was the same for all of the panels.

Gap between the foam cores of the SIPS roof panels

Close up of showing the size of the gaps in the roof panels

These gaps run all the way from the eave up to the ridge and constitute a major flaw in the insulation of the roof. In fact a quick calculation reveals that, added together, they total an area of at least one square meter that is completely uninsulated. The tricky thing is going to be figuring out how to insulate and air seal these gaps. We’re hoping that it will be possible to insert a hose into the gaps and fill them from top to bottom with spray foam but we’re yet to discover if anyone nearby has the equipment to do that or how much it might cost.

Sadly, if the builder had been more aware of good insulation and air-sealing practices, he could have quite easily solved the problem by inserting a strip of insulation into the gaps as the panels for snapped together. But clearly we have a long way to go before a high standard of energy efficiency becomes ‘Standard Practice’ in Australia. Meanwhile it seems like it would be a very good idea to have someone other than the builder inspect and certify that the insulation meets the requirements of the building codes and standards.

In last week’s Newsletter we featured a couple of small, affordable, relocatable homes. This week we look at

• Moss Vale Community Garden‘s new Off-grid Power System
• Southern Highlands Grow, Cook, Eat Festival, March 20th, and
• A Small, Hydrogen-powered EV from Wales of all places.

Moss Vale Community Garden‘s New Off-grid Power System

The Community Garden at Moss Vale

Moss Vale Community Garden is located on Railway St between the tennis courts and the old bowling club. It has been in operation for over ten years providing food growing opportunities, skills training, education and delicious produce to the Moss Vale community. Soon it will be getting a big boost in the form of an off-grid solar power and battery storage system. The 3.7kW PV system has been made possible by the great generosity of Manuel Cilla of Cilectric Pty Ltd along with a grant from the Corena Fund.

Manuel Cilla of Cilectric finds shade under the new solar power system.

Manuel, through his company Cilectric, specialises in off-grid and large scale commercial solar power systems. He has very kindly donated a great deal of time along with a lot of materials and equipment to provide the gardens with an uninterruptible power system for pumping water and running lights, stoves, etc in their straw-bale kitchen.

The inner workings of the soon-to-be-operational off-grid renewable energy system.

The photo above shows the battery storage and control boxes for the off-grid power system. The box on the top left houses the main switches and circuit breaker board. The yellow box top right is the SMA “Sunny Island” controller. This is the brains of the system and decides when and where power is sent to the loads or stored in the battery. The silver box below it is the battery, a 6.4kWh LG unit that offers more storage and a higher peak output for the same price as the Tesla Powerwall (and in a smaller unit). And the red box next to it is the SMA “Sunny Boy” inverter which changes the solar power from DC to 240V AC.

On the subject of solar power, anyone who is currently enjoying the 60c/kWh Feed In Tariff will want to read this article from Roof Juice. It explains why it is completely unnecessary for people who are on the 60c FIT scheme and using gross metering to have to pay $600 to $1000 to replace their meters when the scheme runs out. Net metering can easily be done with the meters you already have and their is talk of a class action suit to protect home owners from being forced to pay for unnecessary equipment.

Meanwhile, local readers who are interested in community gardening, organic food, cooking, eating, off-grid renewable energy or electric vehicles might want to come along to the Grow, Cook, Eat Festival in Moss Vale on March 20th (see below for more details). I will be displaying the PHEV which will be charging from the solar power system which Manuel will be on hand to explain, and the Community Garden will be open for viewing as well. I hope to see you there.

Grow, Cook, Eat Festival – March 20th – Moss Vale

Image source: https://www.southern-highlands.com.au/events/whats-on/grow-cook-eat-festival-2016-

Sunday March 20th marks the date for the annual Southern Highlands ‘Grow, Cook, Eat Festival‘. This year the event will be held at the old Moss Vale Bowling Club on Railway St (right next to the Community Garden). The event is billed as

‘A community event providing delicious local food, market stalls, talks and demonstrations, children’s activities, wood fired pizza, live music and local arts.’

As mentioned above, I will be helping with one of the talks and demonstrations about off-grid power and electric vehicles. I haven’t been to one of these festivals before so I’m not sure what else will be on show apart from lots of yummy food, local wine, arts and music. It sounds like a lot of fun. For those readers who can’t make it I will let you know how it goes after the event.

The Latest in Welsh Hydrogen/Electric Vehicles

The Rasa hydrogen fuel-cell electric vehicle during road testing. Source: Gizmag.com

When I read this Gizmag article about The Rasa hydrogen fuel-cell electric vehicle I thought, ‘Wow, this looks like a real game-changer’. So you can imagine my surprise when I learned that it was being developed in Wales of all places. Who would have thought it would be the Welsh to come out with the first small, practical, hydrogen-powered electric vehicle? Wales is not exactly famous for producing world-beating high-tech automobiles. But I have to say, this one looks very promising. It’s not commercially available yet and the article gives no indication of the expected price but a full production model is scheduled for some time in 2018.

The design brief for the road-legal two-seater was for ‘lightness, strength, affordability and safety as well as the maximisation of fuel-economy and the minimisation of pollution’. Water is the only tailpipe emission and, even if the hydrogen is sourced from petroleum, the carbon emissions are claimed to be the lowest of any car yet made. That’s a pretty impressive claim and is achieved by the use of such technologies as:

• In-wheel electric motors
• Carbon-fibre shell
• Regenerative braking which stores energy in a bank of super-capacitors
• Faired rear wheels
• Gull-wing doors
• Total weight of 580kg
• Top speed of 100km/h
• And a fuel economy of 0.9L/100km.

Another interesting development with this car is that the company intends not to sell but to offer it to customers for a monthly fee that will include a distance allowance plus all repairs, maintenance, insurance and fuel costs. If anything goes wrong with the car, the owner will not have it repaired, they will simply swap it for a new one. The company describes this as ‘a lightness of ownership that neither places a burden on the pockets of motorists or the surrounding environment’.

It sounds great to me. I just wish it were available now in Australia. Unfortunately, with current government policy and manufacturers apparent reluctance to advance electric vehicle uptake here, it might be a VERY long time before we see The Rasa on the streets of Sydney.

By the way, on the subject of hydrogen vehicles, I was also quite fascinated by this other Gizmag article which describes a drone plane powered by hydrogen fuel pellets. Liquid hydrogen typically has to be stored in large, heavy pressurised tanks which makes it a tricky fuel to use, especially for planes. The drone in this article was flown using a new type of fuel pellet made by Cella Energy in Britain which can be stored in an unpressurised container and which releases hydrogen when heat is applied. This is converted to electricity by a fuel cell to power the electric motor which drives the prop. The combined weight of the pellets and the fuel cell are reportedly less than the weight of the Lithium-ion battery that was previously used to power the drone. The idea of using hydrogen pellets instead of pressurised hydrogen could potentially solve some of the major problems that have limited the usability of hydrogen as a an energy storage medium and a replacement fuel for petroleum. It will be very interesting to see how this technology develops.

Petition for Compulsory Solar Panels

Finally for this week… this article from the Energy Matters Newsletter describes a petition that has been started ‘calling on the Australian Federal Government and all state premiers to make solar panels mandatory on new houses’.

13,286 people have already signed the petition which you can find here... including yours truly. As the wording of the petition puts it…

‘We don’t want to sit back and do nothing and leave a world not worth living in for our grandchildren.’ 

Hmmm… perhaps I’ll start another petition calling on our governments to introduce higher energy-efficiency standards for buildings in Australia too.