Queensland Climate Movement

This workshop discussed the role that could be played by the Queensland Climate Movement in building effective transition pathways for urban sustainability. A series of position statements were developed by the group that could be used to form the basis of an urban sustainability policy platform.

Lifestyle, planning and design

1. Our lifestyles impact on the climate in multiple ways: transport, water, energy, food. Understanding the relationship between our daily lifestyle and the climate impacts is critical to building the connection between individual actions and greenhouse gas mitigation.

2. Innovative housing and community design can provide for urban agriculture. The need to ensure the re-introduction of biodiversity and food security into urban environments is a critical step in establishing sustainable urban settlement patterns.

3. Urban and regional planning is critical to the achievement of sustainability. Planning in Queensland, and in the south-east corner particularly, has paid insufficient attention to the need for the protection of agricultural land against urban encroachment and mining development.

4. There is a need to change the South-East Queensland Regional Plan to preserve agricultural land within the urban footprint. Vulnerability of food supply due to peak oil and climate change will significantly add to the need to ensure a regionally-sustaining supply of essential goods and services.

Energy

5. There are no real impediments to the use of solar energy in all building design - commercial and residential.

6. As an incentive for the conversion to solar and other renewable energy sources, the opportunity for feed-in tariffs can provide financial rewards to individuals and communities, and can assist in the co-generation and decentralisation of energy and power. Currently in Queensland, the Solar Bonus Scheme, which commenced on 1st July 2008, provides customers with a direct payment of 44 cents per kilowatt hour (kWh) for surplus electricity fed into the grid.

7. Impediments to the transition to renewable may include installation costs. As such a campaign which urges low interest loan and micro-finance providers to create credit arrangements to allow households to convert quickly to renewable energy.

8. Creating a sense of the urgency of climate change, and the impact of the carbon emissions trading scheme will help to encourage householders to financially plan ahead for conversion to solar energy.

9. Retrofit of urban spaces will require regulatory support. We advocate for change to the building codes in Queensland to require all buildings to convert renewable energy and to incorporate passive solar design.

Greenfield Planning

10. With the ever-expanding urban footprint of the south-east corner of Queensland, greenfield urban developments are a critical interface. New urban communities should be required to be independently sustainable as a precondition to their approval. The sustainability requirements should include community-level sufficiency in energy, water, transport and food components.

11. As a condition of their approval, new residential and commercial greenfield sites should have infrastructure required for the achievement of sustainability provided first and not afterwards.

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