The Audiobook’s Evolution from the Analog Era to AI

Greetings from "The Audiobook’s Evolution from the Analog Era to AI" by Matthew Rubery, from Queen Mary University of London. We are at the the National Library of Australia in Canberra, sponsored by the Australian National University. He started with the origins of recorded audio, pointing out the first recording was a nursery rhyme: Mary had a little lamb. He then moved onto how audiobooks were first for the blind, then a general readership. He ended with an AI version of Melania Trump reading her autobiography.

Canberra Health System Second First Hand Experience

A few weeks ago I put something in a bin, turned, took a step and my head hit something very hard. I screamed in pain, had a sensation of falling backwards, then the next thing I knew I was lying on my back looking up at someone. They asked "Are you okay?". It was a question I did not know the answer to. I took a few seconds to check I was not bleeding, & my limbs were working. I then slowly got up and introduced myself. I did this to check I still knew my name, which I did. I was remarkably uninjured apart from a bruise on my head & a slight headache. I then saw I had walked into the underside of an overhead concrete set of stairs. I suspect I was a victim of the forced perspective illusion: I had seen the sloping underside of the stairs as a flat ceiling overhead, receding into the distance.

Feeling not too bad I went to lunch, negotiated a parking space and new five year contract. However, several hours later I started to feel unwell. I found I had difficulty turning my head to the side & felt slightly dizzy. This got worse and as it was late at night I went to the Inner North (Dickson) Walk-in Centre. The wait was not too long, but I found myself getting worse. Show into a consulting room I explained what had happened. It was a little difficult to explain I had hit my head on a concrete stairwell, then fallen over. Asked if I was unconscious I couldn't say (eventually I worked out I must have been for ten seconds).

Things got interesting when the nurse took my blood pressure. They looked worried, then went out and got a much bigger machine, took another reading and looked even more worried. At this point ey suggested I needed to go to hospital & with my concurrence called an ambulance (at this point I was in a slightly dissociated state & would have agreed to anything). I was surprised they picked up a phone, dialled Triple-0 and relayed my details by voice. I had assumed they would click a red button on their screen & have my details (which were already entered in the ACT Health computer) sent electronically to the ACT Ambulance Service. Later the ambulance staff relayed my details by radio to the hospital, despite, again, this being part of the same health system. 

After a few minutes ,two ambulance personnel turned up and put me on a trolley. Unfortunately there is no curb cut directly outside the the Inner North (Dickson) Walk-in Centre and nowhere to park an ambulance. These are odd omissions for a medical facility. As a result I had to be wheeled along the footpath away from the ambulance, then after a 360 degree turn on the road, back to the ambulance. This was with traffic passing on the road. Some of the paperwork started blowing away and I could see the person pushing my trolley weighing up if they could level me long enough to secure it. We were on a downward slope towards a ramp into an underground carpark, so I had visions of careering down the street like a scene from Mr Bean. Fortunately the officer decided to keep hold of me and collect the paperwork later. 

The ride to North Canberra Hospital was surprisingly uncomfortable. This was my second ride in an ambulance (I don't remember much of the first one). I could feel every bump and the corners felt like the ambulance was spinning around (no doubt due to my condition). We arrived at hospital and I was quickly wheeled in and transferred to a bed. 

A succession of people asked me what medication I was taking. Unfortunately in my confused state I could not remember. I vaguely knew it was in an app on my phone but I couldn't remember which app (there are three different government systems I have records in). I have extreme difficulty trying to access MyGov, as it requires multi-factor authentication. It turns out the records I needed were in My Health Record, which only needed a thumb scan, but I lacked the presence of mind at the time. What is surprising is that staff at a government hospital don't have access to digital medical records held on government systems, in an emergency.

I was hooked up to beeping machines and had blood taken. Some time later I had a CAT scan. Every hour or so I was asked what were the three things I was asked to remember (I can still remember them). For the first few hours I was in the emergency ward and noticed that no one ever walked slowly. Everyone was walking very briskly, except for those pushing COWs (Computers of Wheels), where they were typing on screen, while pushing the equipment from patient to patient. 

My CAT scan came back okay & I was moved to a quieter ward. Unfortunately the gadgets attached to the patients still kept beeping all night. Around dawn I was asked to remember the three things for the final time and discharged. I walked down the hill from the hospital and, with a feeling of weary elation, got on a bus to go home.

Despite the above quibbles, I would like to thank the staff of the Inner North (Dickson) Walk-in Centre, ACT Ambulance Service and North Canberra Hospital for the excellent care I received. 

Code Embedded in the Floor of ANU Building

Standing in the coffee queue on the ground floor of the Marie Reay building at the Australian National University today, I accidentally decoded the floor. I was intending to scan a QR code on a poster, but pointed the camera at the polished concrete floor. To my surprise my phone interpreted the pattern of stones embed in the concrete as the number 08371140.

There are secret codes, provided by the Australian Signals Directorate, embedded in the fabric of the Hanna Neumann Building at ANU. But I wasn't aware of this happening with other buildings.

Privacy and the Future of the Web

Marcos Cáceres,
W3C

The World Wide Web Consortium, who do web standards, and the Australian National University, are conducting a roadshow on "Future of the Web: Who is managing your privacy and identity on the Web?", in Melbourne 14 Feb, Sydney 21 Feb and Canberra 22 Feb 2019. This features Marcos Cáceres, co-Chair of the W3C Web Platform Working Group and the Web Platform Incubator Community Group and Dr Lesley Seebeck, CEO of the ANU Cyber Institute.

The Unknown Unknowns of Computer Consulting

Andrea Parsons

Greetings from the Australian National University in Canberra, where computer consultant, Andrea Parsons is speaking to TechLauncher software engineering students on "The Unknown Unknowns of Computer Consulting". Andrea started with US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld's famous quote: "... there are also unknown unknowns – the ones we don't know we don't know ..." (US DoD Briefing, February 12, 2002).

Andrea undertakes engagements under a fixed price quotation. This starts with a scoping study to find the limits of the unknown unknowns. The quote includes an investigation and discovery step. The example given was of a new payroll system. The problem was, in essence, to get the client to understand how complex a problem this was.

Andrea emphasized the need to engage with stakeholders, avoiding "us" and "them". She pointed out the silliness of people sitting down the hall from each other, but communicating specifications by email.


What I found interesting about this is that many of the issues in software design are similar to those for educational design. In the courses MDDE 605: Planning and Management in Distance Education and MDDE 617 - Program Evaluation in DE, I had to plan a new educational initiative and in the latter prepare a quote for evaluation of an existing course. Presumably many other professions undertake these planning and estimation tasks.

Will the NEG transform Australia's energy landscape?

Greetings from the Australian National University in Canberra, where a panel is speaking on "Will the NEG transform Australia's energy landscape?".

Shane Rattenbury

First up is Mr Shane Rattenbury, ACT Minister for Climate Change and Sustainability.  Minister Rattenbury was one of the recipients of a letter today, from 23 energy researchers: "Call for Full Release of National Energy Guarantee Modelling". He pointed out that the National Energy Guarantee (NEG) will not reduce emissions significantly more than "business as usual". Also there will be a considerable number of coal plants reaching their design life just after 2030, requiring to be replaced.

Also to speak are Professor Frank Jotzo (Crawford School of Public Policy, ANU), Dr Hugh Saddler (energy consultant) and Ms Katharine Murphy (Political Editor, Guardian Australia).

ps:  Professor Jotzo and Dr Saddler agreed that the NEG was not a lot better than "business as usual". Katharine Murphy, looking at the political aspects, suggested the NEG could be useful, not because it achieves any fundamental reform, but primes the political process for something more ambitious.

Data Driving the Smart City in Canberra

Greetings from the Australian National University in Canberra, where Future of the Web: Data drives the Smart City, just started. This is in conjunction with the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). This will be repeated Thursday 10 May in Sydney. I consider the "Smart City" to be like the smart home: mostly marketing hype. It will be interesting to see if today's speakers can change my view.

The first speaker was Dr Ole Nielsen, Deputy Chief Digital Officer and Director of Digital Transformation, ACT Government. I asked Dr Nielsen if the ACT Government was securing system sufficiently against cyber attack. He replied that data should not be stored on drives connected to people's email and data stored in the basement of offices is no more secure than on Amazon Web Services.
 

9.35am	Industry Keynote	Dr Mukesh Mohania (IBM Distinguished Engineer in IBM Research)
10.05am	Ubiquitous sensing, located	Dr Kerry Taylor (Chair, W3C Spatial Data on the Web)
10.35am	Break
10.50am	Smart Grid	Dr Lachlan Blackhall (Head of the Battery Storage and Grid Integration Program, ANU) Dr Armin Haller (W3C Office Manager, ANU)
11.30am	Power to the People: Privacy in the smart city	(in Melbourne) Dr David Hyland-Wood (Blockchain Protocol Architect, Consensys) (in Canberra) Dr Peter Christen (Professor, Data Mining and Matching, ANU) (in Sydney) Christine Cowper (Principal Consultant, Information Integrity Solutions)
12.00pm	Panel: “How do we best enable smart cities?” round-up of W3C activities and value proposition capacity building – what skills do we need? what issues should we consider? How do we solve them? Discussion with all earlier speakers	chaired by  J. Alan Bird (W3C Global Business Development Lead) All above speakers as participants Interactive audience

Canberra Start-up Overnight Success Decades in the Making

Ken Kroeger, Executive Chairman of Seeing Machines gave a virtuoso presentation on the origins, accomplishments and future of this Canberra startup at an Australian Computer Society meeting last night. Seeing machines makes head and eye tracking technology to check drivers of vehicles and pilots of aircraft are paying sufficient attention.

Seeing Machines was spun off ANU research in 1999, around the same time I join the Computer Science faculty. I saw vehicles with weird cameras attached around the university and this was part of research into driver aids. Occasionally I have been an experimental subject having my eye gaze tracked. But from then, until now, I did not know the depth and breadth of what Seeing Machines has attempted and accomplished.

Ken demonstrated Seeing Machines technology using a volunteer from the audience. He also described the ways the company attempted to commercialize the technology, with several "pivots" where they changed direction. Curiously, one large market for Seeing Machines is autonomous vehicles. There are now cars being offered which can drive themselves, but only in very limited conditions. The driver has to be paying attention to be able to take over when the automated system can't. The Seeing Machines system helps with this by making sure the driver is looking at the road and the vehicle instruments and is not reading a book, or asleep.

In retrospect a successful hi-tech product can sound very simple: put a couple of cameras in a box with a small computer and bolt it to the dashboard of a vehicle. But Ken took us through some of the complications of sun glinting off the driver's spectacles to mining companies which jump start start trucks with an electric welder and clean the cab with a high pressure hose, thus destroying the electronics.

One of the remarkable things about Seeing Machines is that after a decade they are still in business, another is that they are now an "overnight" success. Perhaps most remarkably, while their industrial partners are in the USA, manufacturing in Asia and financing in the UK, the research and development is still based in Canberra, a short distance from the Australian National University campus.

Cyberwar: The Most Hideous Form of Warfare of the 21st Century

Greetings from the great hall of the Australian National University in Canberra, where Dr Mohammad Sabah Al-Salem Al-Sabah, former Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs of the State of Kuwait is speaking on "Regional Security in a Turbulent World: A GCC Perspective". Dr Al-Sabah referred to cyber-warfare as "The most hideous form of warfare of the 21st Century". Dr Al-Sabah pointed out how terrorist groups were now very well versed in the use of the Internet.

However, in my view, there is nothing in the nature of cyber-warfare which makes it worse than the use of conventional weapons and certainly not in the same category as chemical weapons. In teaching ethics to computer students at the ANU I used a Hypothetical on Cyberwar as an example. As with other weapons, the users of cyber-weapons should be judged by the effect intended.

Rake's Progress at ANU

Yesterday I had the pleasure of attending a lunchtime talk by actor Richard Roxburgh at the Australian National University (ANU) in Canberra. Richard is an ANU economics graduate and now a children’s book author, in Canberra to launch "Artie and the Grime Wave". He is best know for his role in TV comedy "Rake", as Cleaver Greene, a character usually claimed to be based on Sydney barrister Charles Waterstreet. Roxburgh asserted that this was untrue and the character was based on someone who drank at the ANU bar.

Australian Cybersecurity for Energy

Greetings from the National Gallery of Australia where Michelle Price, Department of Prime Minister & Cabinet (currently at the ANU National Security College) is speaking on "Cyber security in relation to Australia’s energy security". This is part of an Energy Security Forum.

Dr. Price suggested talking about "critical services", rather than critical infrastructure. This is to focus on what people need, rather than poles and wires. For the first week of a disaster she suggested the Internet and electricity are all that are needed. I found this surprising, as I had assumed the HF radio systems Australian governments maintain would be sufficient for essential services. In 2015 the Australian Defence Force tested transmitting digital video via an Internet Protocol (IP) data link over Wideband High Frequency (WBHF) radio between Canberra, Townsville, Wagga, and an aircraft on the ground in South Australia.

Change! Combining analytic approaches with street wisdom

Greetings from the Australian National University in Canberra, where a panel discussion on "Change" is being recorded for broadcast on ABC Radio National Big Ideas. The panelists, Dee Madigan, Mark Stafford Smith, Grant Wardlaw, Lindell Bromham and Gabriele Bammer are authors of the book "Change! - Combining Analytic Approaches with Street Wisdom", published by ANU Press. The book is available free Online.

Dee Madigan talked about how advertisers were using neurological research to find out exactly how emotions motivate consumers.

The panel then moved on motivations to act on climate change. There was discussion of if the analysis techniques developed by intelligence agencies for the cold war are applicable to today's terrorist groups. It seems to me that the terrorists have learned to use social media, but the military have not and are unhappy that their new enemy is not playing by the rules. There was a comment that universities were not good at complex problems. But in engineering and computer science we now teach students to work in teams and deal with human issues.

Table of Contents

Part 1 Introduction

• 1. An Approach to Understanding Change

Part 2 Perspectives

• 2. A Politician’s View of Change
• 3. Responding to Global Environmental Change
• 4. Teleology, Cyclicality and Episodism: Three competing views of change in international relations
• 5. Change is Central to Sociology
• 6. Advertising and Change: Message, mind, medium, and mores
• 7. Media Advocacy for Public Health
• 8. Is the Intelligence Community Changing Appropriately to Meet the Challenges of the New Security Environment?
• 9. Evolutionary Change: Nothing stands still in biology
• 10. Demographic Change: How, why and consequences
• 11. Conceptual Change and Conceptual Diversity Contribute to Progress in Science
• 12. Mental Illness and Psychiatry Have Seen Substantial Change—But There is Still a Long Way To Go
• 13. Education Reform: Learning from past experience and overseas successes
• 14. Ten Lessons from Changing Policing Organisations
• 15. Change Management in Materials Conservation
• 16. Change and Continuity in Anthropology: Examples from Christianity and from the situations of contemporary Indigenous Australians
• 17. Learning about Change Through Industrial Open Innovation in the Fast‑Moving Consumer Goods Sector
• 18. Increasing Interest in the Economic Determinants of Structural, Technological and Climate Change
• 19. Visual Fine Art: Documenting change, influencing change, and subjected to change

Part 3 Synthesis

• 20. Improving Research Impact by Better Understanding Change: A case study of multidisciplinary synthesis
• Contributors

The Luck of Politics by Andrew Leigh MP

Greetings from the Australian National University in Canberra, where Andrew Leigh MP (and former ANU lecturer) is speaking on his new book "The Luck of Politics". Andrew was introduced by Senator Katy Gallagher. Andrew used an anecdote about how the Spanish Armada intending to invade England was blow off course. Perhaps an unfortunate story as the Australian Navy's largest ever warships were made in Spain to a design for the Spanish navy (still called the Armada).

Andrew presented amusing statistics about politics: politicians with shorter popular names are more likely to be elected. He had a serious point to the humor, pointing out that luck largely determines someones chance in life and the message was that we need social policies to redress the "bad" luck of birth. As an example, Andrew pointed out that the Australian nominations for OAs was "overly bureaucratic" and as a result favors males.

Andrew mentioned that entrepreneurs accept they will have failed ventures and have been known to put the name of one such venture on their number plate to remind them (like a Roman Slave whispering "Memento homo"). It happens today I was discussing the use of Star Trek in teaching, including using the  "Kobayashi Maru" test. in this Star-fleet Academy students are put in a no-win situation, so they can learn from failure.I might write this into my innovation course.


Andrew mentioned that the "Recession we had to have". It happens that one of my colleagues found the error at the ABS, which when corrected caused an economic boom.

The speech (and book) shows that Andrew Leigh MP has a sense of humor as well as deep insights. But only history will tell if these help, or hinders, his political career.

Applying German Renewable Energy Transformation in Australia

Andreas Löschel, Professor for Energy and Resource Economics, University of Münster, will speak on "Germany’s energy transition and implications for Australia", at the Australian National University in Canberra, 12.30pm, 28 August 2015.

"With the energy transition or Energiewende, the German government aims to deeply reduce carbon dioxide emissions by increasing renewable energy to 60 per cent of total energy supply by mid-century, and by drastically reducing total energy consumption.

Achieving these ambitious goals could have significant economic and social costs, and poses challenges for policy design and practical implementation. Germany’s support for renewables through long-term feed-in tariffs is effective, but not efficient. EU emissions trading scheme are not high enough to trigger fuel substitution. In energy efficiency, large gains were made since the early 1990s but in recent years annual improvements were at only half the rate required to achieve the targets. Germany’s industrial energy costs remain competitive and there is no structural shift away from energy-intensive industries. To succeed, the Energiewende will need clearer priorities and a hierarchy of the many separate goals.
Many of these issues are relevant to Australia’s efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and transition in Australia’s energy system, and especially the current policy debate over renewable energy.
Professor Andreas Löschel holds a chair for Energy and Resource Economics at the University of Münster and is Director of the Centre of Applied Economic Research Münster (CAWM). He chairs the Energy Expert Commission of the German Government to monitor energy transformation. He served as Lead Author on the IPCC Fifth Assessment Report, was visiting scholar at MIT, Stanford, Tsinghua and ANU. Before his present appointment Professor Löschel was head department at the Centre for European Economic Research (ZEW) in Mannheim and Professor of Economics at the University of Heidelberg. He advised the European Commission, the European Parliament, the OECD, the World Bank and national ministries in Germany and the UK on environmental, energy and climate change issues. He has been ranked among the 25 most influential economists in Germany.
Professor Loeschel’s visit is arranged by the Centre for Climate Economics and Policy at Crawford School, with funding from the German government."

World Wide Web Consortium Moving to the Australian National University

The Australian National University will be hosting the Australian office of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). To get things started, J. Alan Bird, W3C Global Business Development Lead based at MIT will be speaking about "Data on the Web", 9:30am, 27 July 2015 at ANU (please RSVP to attend):

" Alan will introduce attendees to some of the most recent standards work of the W3C in vertical domains where the Web is emerging as a major disruptive force, in particular the recommendations around the publishing and use of data."

By the way, I get a mention on the W3C Accessibility pages in the "A Cautionary Tale of Inaccessibility: Sydney Olympics Website", as I was one of the expert witnesses in the Australian Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission case.

Climathon in Canberra

Greeting from the Climathon in Canberra, at the Australian National University. About fifty people will spend the weekend considering what to do about climate change in Canberra. Unfortunately the world have no effective process for combating climate change. The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) process has proved unworkable and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) ineffective (about the only thing which is going to curb emissions is recession brought on by China).

I suggest that the UNFCCC and IPCC processes be replaced with on-line working. Canberra has the combination of policy making and techncial skills to do this. For my part I am teaching how to reduce carbon emissions by using ICT.

At a more local level, I suggest the ACT Government abandon plans for light rail, which will increase carbon emissions and implement bus lanes on existing roads. The bus lanes will displace cars and so reduce emissions.These can be used by conventional buses now, renewable fueled buses in the near future and driver-less autonomous mini-buses ("pods") further in the future.

What to See in Cambridge (UK) in July

Any suggestions as to what to do in Cambridge (UK) in July? I have visited twice before by bus and bicycle.

I will be at Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge, 21 to 26 July 2015, to present a paper at the 10th International Conference on Computer Science and Education (ICCSE 2015). Normally when speaking at a conference I also give a free public talk for government, professionals and academics, hosted by a local body. Anyone willing to host a talk please let me know. On a previous visit I talked at the Cambridge Computer Lab.

The paper for the conference (prepared with Hao Wu), is "Time-shifted Learning: Merging Synchronous and Asynchronous Techniques for E-Learning":

E-learning techniques are usually classified into two broad categories: synchronous and synchronous. The core question of this research is how to combine synchronous and asynchronous techniques in e-learning software, so it can have a stronger connection with constructivist education. The benefits and drawbacks of existing e-learning software is looked at broadly. Three popular e-learning packages used at the Australian National University are investigated: Adobe Connect (synchronous), Moodle and edX (asynchronous). The results of a brief survey of edX students is reported. Using the results of this work a team of students at the ANU Research School of Computer Science is now implementing enhanced asynchronous software to be plugged into Moodle and other asynchronous e-learning packages.

Worthington, T. & Wu, H. (2015, July). Time-shifted Learning: Merging Synchronous and Asynchronous Techniques for E-Learning. In Computer Science & Education (ICCSE), 20152 10th International Conference on (accepted paper). Preprint: http://hdl.handle.net/1885/13554

ps: Any suggestions on where to stop and speak on the way from Australia to Europe would also be welcome. For example, in 2008 I stopped off in Kuala Lumpur and filled in for a missing speaker at the 2008 World Congress of Information Technology.

Fossil Fuel Lifestyle on a Renewable Budget

Frank Jotzo and Luke Kemp, from the Australian National University, produced the report "Australia can cut emissions deeply and the cost is low" (2015) for the World Wildlife Fund. That is a bold claim to make and, as I encourage my sustainability students to do, I thought it worth doing a back-of-the-envelope calculation to see if it is possible.

Jotzo and Kemp suggest Australia can be carbon neutral by 2050 though:

1. "Ambitious energy efficiency improvements throughout the economy.
2. Low carbon electricity supplied by either 100% renewables or a mixture of renewable energy and carbon capture and storage (CCS).
3. Electrification and fuel switching towards biofuels and gas. 
4. Reducing non-energy emissions through carbon farming and forestry, process improvements and CCS in energy intensive industrial applications."

But rather than make a whole of nation calculation, can a single householder maintain their lifestyle and be carbon neutral? The back of my ActewAGL electricity bill indicates that a one person household uses about 10 kWh of electricity a month.

A Nissan Leaf electric car has a range of 117 km with a 24 kWh battery, or 0.2 kWh per km. The average car is driven 12,881 km a year, or 1,073 km a month, which would require 220 kWh.

Assuming your job takes another 2010 kWh per employee per year, or 168 kWh a month.

That is in total, per month:

• Home: 10  kWh
• Transport: 220 kWh
• Job: 168 kWh
• Total: 398 kWh

Annual average solar radiation for the least sunny parts of southern Australia is 12 MJ/m² per day, or 101 kWh/m² per month. Assuming photo-voltaic system with 15% efficiency, this would be 15 kWh/m² per month.

So the householder would need 27 m² of solar panels. A modest one bedroom, one story home would have a roof area sufficient for this and so be able to generate enough energy for a reasonable Australian lifestyle.

Please note that I have not allowed for the energy needed for food production, manufacture of goods or their transport, nor losses for storage of energy. But also I have not allowed for the savings in energy from multiple dwelling households and use of public transport.

Also there is the issue of cost. Assuming PV solar panels cost $2,000 per kW (including installation) and get 3 hours of peak sun a day, producing 91 kWh a month. To power the single dweller's lifestyle will cost about $8,700 in PV panels. However, if these were installed as part of a manufactured home's roof the cost may come down to $4,400 (and lasting 10 years).

But the householder will also need batteries to store energy, which is where renewable energy becomes expensive. The 24-kWh battery pack for a Nissan Leaf costs $6,500 and is expected to last 8 years. The householder will need 13 kWh a day, even when the sun is not shining. Enough batteries for three days electricity supply would cost $10,600, or  about $111 a month.

However, this all assumes no energy saving measures, which Jotzo and Kemp point out can make a difference. As an example, while the typical one person household in Canberra uses 10 kWh of electricity a month, my energy efficient apartment uses about half that. Also I can walk to work, at my home office or corporate office, most days and so drive my car about one tenth the national average. As I need little more than a computer, my workplace uses about one half the amount typical. Adding up all this, per month:

• Home: 5 kWh
• Transport: 22 kWh
• Job: 76 kWh
• Total: 103 kWh

This would require a 7 m² PV panel costing $2,300 and $2,700 of batteries, or $48 a month. There would be enough room on the roof of an three story apartment block for the solar panels to power each apartment.

The above figures are approximate "back of the envelope" calculations. However, they are relatively conservative and suggest a comfortable Australian lifestyle could be carbon neutral using current technology.

Developing good economic reforms

Jillian Broadbent, Chair of the Clean Energy Finance Corporation, will speak on "Will she be right? Macro and micro observations on economic policies" at the Australian National University, 5.30pm, 8 April 2015.

Developing good economic reforms and creating an environment that leads to wide spread community support is difficult and is becoming more so. Jillian will draw from personal experiences in the public and private sectors to discuss how Australia might better develop engagement between these sectors to cope effectively and efficiently with the increasing need for change.

Jillian Broadbent has made wide ranging contributions to both sectors including, Board member of the Reserve Bank of Australia, Chair of the Clean Energy Finance Corporation and other Board membership has included Woolworths Limited, Coca-Cola Amatil Limited, Qantas Airways Ltd, ASX Limited, Special Broadcasting Service (SBS) and Woodside Petroleum Ltd. She has also contributed extensively to the development of the arts community and served as Chairman of the National Institute of Dramatic Arts and a Trustee, Vice President and Chief Treasurer of the Art Gallery of New South Wales.

 

Outcomes of the Lima Conference on Climate Change

Marcus Priest from Sparke Helmore lawyers, will speak on the "Lima call for climate action", at the Australian National University in Canberra, 1pm 30 January 2015.

The Abbott Government will face increased international scrutiny over its commitment to tackling climate change in the lead up to the next United Nations meeting in Paris in 2015. This scrutiny is likely to influence the way the Government implements its Direct Action policy and its proposal to reduce the Renewable Energy Target. That is the key takeout from the Lima conference of the United Nations Framework Convention for Climate Change. However, the final outcome of Lima was messy and less than hoped for. This was especially so given the landmark announcement by China and the United States in the lead up to Lima of an agreement to cut or cap carbon emissions after 2020. Despite the high hopes it soon became clear in Lima that one of the key dynamics of climate change negotiations over the last 20 years – the division between developing and developed countries – was again the major sticking points in the talks. This issue now looms large for next year’s meeting in Paris and will need to be resolved if there is to be any prospect of a meaningful post-2020 agreement.

My course "ICT Sustainability" starts again at ANU, 16 February.