The use of public transport in coastal Australia : modes of travel to work and greenhouse emissions

Commuting to work is one of the most important and regular routines of transportation in towns and cities. From a geographic perspective, the length of people’s commute is influenced, to some degree, by the spatial separation of their home and workplace and the transport infrastructure. The rise of car ownership in Australia from the 1950s to the present was accompanied by a considerable decrease of public transport use. Currently there is an average of 1.4 persons per car in Australia, and private cars are involved in approximately 90% of the trips, and public transportation in only 10%. Increased personal mobility has fuelled the trend of decentralised housing development, mostly without a clear planning for local employment, or alternative means of transportation. Transport sector accounts for 14% of Australia’s net greenhouse gas emissions. Without further policy action, Australia’s emissions are projected to continue to increase. The Australian Federal Government and the new Department of Climate Change have recently published a set of maps showing that rising seas would submerge large parts of Victoria coastal region. Such event would lead to major disruption in planned urban growth areas in the next 50 years with broad scale inundation of dwellings, facilities and road networks. The Greater Geelong Region has well established infrastructure as a major urban centre and tourist destination and hence attracted the attention of federal and state governments in their quest for further development and population growth. As a result of its natural beauty and ecological sensitivity, scenarios for growth in the region are currently under scrutiny from local government as well as development agencies, scientists, and planners. This paper is part of a broad research in the relationship between transportation system, urban form, trip demand, and emissions, as a paramount in addressing the challenges presented by urban growth. Progressing from previous work focused on private cars, this present paper investigates the use of public transport as a mode for commuting in the Greater Geelong Region. Using a GIS based interaction model, it characterises the current use of the existing public transportation system, and also builds a scenario of increased use of the existing public transportation system, estimating potencial reductions in CO2 emissions. This study provides an improved understanding of the extent to which choices of transport mode and travel activity patterns, affect emissions in the context of regional networks. The results indicate that emissions from commuting by public transportation are significantly lower than those from commuting by private car, and emphasise that there are opportunities for large abatment in the greenhouse emissions from the transportation sector related to efforts in increasing the use of existing public transportation system.

Energy and greenhouse gas emissions implications of alternative housing types for Australia

Many cities around the world are looking for ways to reduce their per capita greenhouse gas emissions. The outward growth of cities from a central business district, typical of many cities around the world, is often seen as working against this goal and as unsustainable. This is especially the case in circumstances where this growth is not supported by the necessary infrastructure, often resulting in an increase in the use of private transport. However, alternative scenarios to contain the outward growth are being proposed. This paper provides a comparison of the energy demand and greenhouse gas emissions between typical detached outer-suburban housing currently being built in Australia's major cities and inner-city and -suburban apartments, which are increasingly seen as a legitimate alternative to the housing that is currently being built on our outer city fringes. By analysing the energy demand associated with the construction and operation of each housing type and for occupant travel it was found that the location of the housing and its size are the dominant factors determining energy use and greenhouse gas emissions. The findings from this analysis provide useful information for policy-makers in planning the development of our cities into the future, when faced with a growing population and an increasing need to minimise greenhouse gas emissions.

Hope for resurrecting a functionally extinct parrot or squandered social capital? Landholder attitudes towards the Orange-bellied Parrot (Neophema chrysogaster) in Victoria, Australia

In early 2010, after 27 years of recovery effort, the orange-bellied parrot (OBP; Neophema chrysogaster) was expected to be extinct in the wild within a few years. Shortly before the imminent wild extinction became evident, we surveyed landholders (114 responses of 783 surveys delivered) in part of the main non-breeding area, according to three classes of modelled habitat suitability ('high', 'medium', and 'low'). Predictions of the habitat models appear to correlate with landholder perceptions of the presence of OBP habitat on private land, thus the models appear a tractable way to identify key stakeholders worthy of priority consultation in relation to habitat works. Landholders were sympathetic to wetlands and birds, including OBPs (89.4% were aware of OBPs). Most indicated that they would be upset if the OBP went extinct and agreed that critical habitat should be protected; 80.7% were prepared to consider changes to the way they managed their land to benefit the species, and sought more information on how they could do so (64.0%). This study suggests that the habitat model usefully identified key stakeholders and the OBP enjoyed high awareness, concern, and engagement among many stakeholders, shortly before the species was considered functionally extinct. The maintenance of landholder support is likely to be critical if future attempts are made to reintroduce the species to the wild.

The contribution of residential solar energy systems to the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions in the borough of Queenscliffe

The Borough of Queenscliffe has identified the importance of reducing its greenhouse gas emissions and aims to become a carbon zero municipality by 2020. For a house, suburb or town to become carbon neutral ideally it produces an equivalent amount of energy from renewable resources to that which it consumes. By increasing the number of solar systems, both photovoltaic (PV) and hot water, in the residential sector, greenhouse gas emissions will be reduced. The number of solar systems located in the Borough of Queenscliffe has been estimated and a database of these systems has been created, including the size and panel orientation. The energy generated by each solar system, in addition to the reductions in greenhouse gas emissions, has been calculated for an average year.

Is carbon emissions trading profitable?

The European Carbon Emissions Trading Scheme introduced in 2005 has led to both spot and futures market trading of carbon emissions. However, despite seven years of trading, we have no knowledge on how profitable carbon emissions trading is. In this paper, we first test whether carbon forward returns predict carbon spot returns. We find strong evidence on both in-sample and out-of-sample predictability. Based on this evidence, we forecast carbon spot returns using both carbon forward returns and a constant. We consider a mean-variance investor and a CRRA investor, and show that they have higher utility and can make more statistically significant profits by following forecasts generated from the forward returns model than from a constant returns model.