Page 4587 - Week 11 - Tuesday, 19 October 2010
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and targeted locations. Whilst we will continue to be a capital city set amongst the bush, I do not think anyone would say that Canberra in 50 years will be anything like the city it was in the 1950s.
I have just talked at some length about the sustainability challenge we face from the planning perspective, but cities are full of people and exist for their benefit. As such, it is people who will continue to make the decisions that will shape the future of Canberra as a sustainable and vibrant city. As such, education has a vital role to play. Indeed, the planners—and even the ACT Chief Minister of 2030—are probably right now in their latter years of high school or college. Environmental sustainability is something that ACT students learn every day from their teachers, and it is something we demonstrate to them every day in ACT schools, by embedding it into our refurbishments and new school programs.
In fact, we are investing over $20 million to make our schools carbon neutral by 2017. We are ensuring that new schools are designed to improve their energy efficiency and to reduce water consumption. The new Gungahlin college, the new P-10 school at Kambah and the Harrison secondary school are currently under construction. All are designed to achieve five-star green-star ratings from the Green Building Council of Australia.
A number of measures are included in the designs for the three schools, including: the installation of smart meters; the use of fittings and materials that have low volatile organic compound emissions; ensuring that there is enough secure and covered bicycle storage; photovoltaic generation systems to reduce the schools’ dependence on mains power; and a range of other energy consumption reduction measures throughout the buildings.
In addition, Gungahlin college has an underground thermal labyrinth to ventilate the college’s buildings. This labyrinth channels cooler air through the buildings in summer and warmer air in winter, increasing student and teacher comfort and, most importantly, saving energy. The college will also have a water retention pond and underground water tanks to collect rainwater and flush toilets for irrigation. The P-10 school at Kambah also has a range of similar measures.
Not surprisingly, it is a federal Labor government that has invested more in Australian schools than any other since Federation. Also, through the building the education revolution, a high emphasis was placed on environmentally sustainable design features.
The new environment centre at Gold Creek school has been designed to achieve a six-star green-star rating from the Green Building Council of Australia. It will generate more energy than it requires and will feed that energy back into the electricity distribution network. BER projects at a number of other schools include thermal labyrinths to ventilate their new libraries and assist with heating and cooling. Other school BER projects include a range of design features, such as natural light and energy efficient lighting, water efficient tapware and toilets, rainwater tanks and external shading to improve passive cooling.
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