The emissions case against apartments, the inadvisability of airtightness, and queries over the smartness of smart meters – and of toddlers

That past is gone

I live in a 43 storey tower in Melbourne and it's ideal for me as a single person. But I'm not convinced that energy efficiency is a reason for advocating high rise. One Australian report says "The average energy emissions for a new high rise apartment are comparable to the average emissions for a new house, even excluding emissions from central services. Common area energy emissions are more than a third as large as apartment energy emissions, so with these included, emissions per high rise apartment are about 19% higher than per house. As apartments tend to have fewer occupants than houses, average emissions per occupant are twice as high."
Tony Bryer

A smarter use of smart meters

It is obvious that demand management benefits will accrue but are the loads being shifted to another time thus not delivering any significant energy saving benefits – all in favour of it by the way having experience with a simple monitor in the house
Ivan Sproule

Eco-ventilation health scare prompts regulation change

Surprise. What did anyone expect of an idea as obviously foolish as increasing air tightness in residential buildings?
Barry Reid

Chelsea Barracks: which design do you prefer?

Terry please! Rogers steel and glass towers have no sense of place – they wouldn't be out of place in a suburban office park in the midwestern United States. Building these would be a huge mistake.
Captain Captain

Toddler buys digger in online auction

A nice story but I don't believe a word of it. Having sold a few things on line, I've had this excuse thrown back at me before. People like to mess around on auction sites for no good reason and then realise too late they've gone too far.

What kills the credibility of this tale is that a 3 year old could successfully navigate through the auction stages successfully. This involves inputing figures into the correct sections and clicking on small check boxes in a precise order.

My daughter is three and big for her age. We play on a PC together but she struggles to accurately position a curser and left click. She is big for her age and quite bright but there is no way she would be able to 'search for toys on line' or really understand the concept of doing so.
Nick

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