Green Cities Pedal Power Action
Green Cities Pedal Power Action
| 25 June 2010 |
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| AE Smith draws on pedal power to highlight Green Cities messages. AE Smith again stepped up this year to support the 2010 Green Cities Conference, held at the Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Centre on February 22nd and 23rd. Australia’s pre-eminent annual conference focusing on sustainability for the built environment, the Green Cites Conference is a joint initiative of the Green Building Council of Australia (GBCA) and the Property Council of Australia (PCA) and explores new ideas in sustainable building, forges connections and launches new products and technologies. As a major sponsor of the event for the third year running, AE Smith this year asked more than 200 employees, clients and friends to swap their business suits for bike wear to highlight the importance of energy efficiency to Green Cities delegates in a series of virtual cycling ‘races’. Dubbed the AE Smith Pedal Power Generator Race, the inaugural concept aimed to spotlight the effort required to be energy efficient by encouraging people to help generate power via a special bicycle generator station, which operated throughout the two day conference. Pitting teams of four against one another in a series of exercise bike battles, AE Smith undertook to not only provide a Business Centre & Internet Cafe for the major green event, but to create the power to run it by harnessing the watt hours generated by the more than 30 teams. The Pedal Power Generator Race collectively produced more than 7,500 watt hours over the course of the conference. What turned into a highly competitive battle to generate the most watt hours per race was ultimately won by representatives from Thylacine Cycles, closely followed by Lend Lease. In addition to AE Smith’s innovative pedalling initiative, the Green Cities Conference called on delegates for urgent action, with attendees moving on from last year’s world financial woes to focus instead on developing strategies around renewable energy. The focus of the conference also turned to looking beyond the performance of individual buildings to a broader vision of sustainable communities, with keynote speaker and US green building expert, Jerry Yudelson summing up the biggest challenge currently facing sustainable buildings in the title of his address: “If it doesn’t perform it isn’t green.” “Underperformance destroys the validity of the green building promise,” he said. “Why should governments put faith in green buildings without evidence of their performance?” “Without performance reporting we don’t know anything. What gets measured gets managed,” Yudelson said. Australian experts agreed that building performance is a pressing problem and considerable improvement is needed, with GBCA’s chief executive, Romilly Madew, emphasising: “We have to act now. There is no excuse any more for new developments not to.” AE Smith CEO, Andrew Permezel said the adventurous Pedal Power initiative highlighted AE Smith’s commitment to urgent action on environmental sustainability issues, while also emphasising the importance of these issues to a broader audience through an approachable and attention-grabbing installation. “We know the pathway to an energy efficient future is going to be an uphill challenge for all businesses and industries,” Mr Permezel said. He said that while the Pedal Power Generator Race was an innovative concept designed to complement AE Smith’s sponsorship of the Green Cities Conference, it belied a serious message. “The challenge now, with resource scarcity looming as the major issue of the 21st century, is to effectively communicate that message to current and future clients, along with the options available to industry in the way of conservation and energy efficiency.” That point was driven home by the fact that despite more than 200 committed individual efforts over the two days of the conference, the energy generated fell well short of the target 5,000 watt hours per day. See 16 hours of pedal power action compressed into 52 seconds! Watch the YouTube clip now at www.aesmith.com.au/RaceResults |
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| AE Smith Green Cities 2010 competition winners: > Host of 3 Minute AE Smith Angels – Dorothea Scanlon, Caulfield Grammar School, Melbourne. > Motorola Smartphone – Tristan Stuiber, Brightwater Care Group, Perth. > HP Mini 210 Netbook won by Ken Loh, Umow Lai, Melbourne (pictured above). > Herman Miller ‘The Purpose of Design’ – Beck Dawson, Investa Property Group, Sydney (pictured below). |
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