Welcome to issue #41 for June 2026.

Get involved…

• Tuesday 9 June, 7-9pm. See Dr Monique Ryan MP and Mr Tim Buckley discuss Securing Australia’s Energy Independence at the Hawthorn Arts Centre
• Saturday 20 June, 1-5pm. Join The Adaption Game Port Phillip at the Port Phillip EcoCentre – it will be an excellent workshop to consider how Port Phillip should respond to various future climate disaster scenarios
• Saturday 20 June, 9:30am-12:30pm. Join ACF Community Macnamara, Bili Landcare and Westgate Biodiversity for a Westgate Park Volunteer Day – to RSVP

• Visit the Port Phillip EcoCentre events page to see what events you might like to join
• Visit the City of Port Phillip Have Your Say page and give feedback on a consultation that interests you; especially take part in the neighbourhood conversations and support the Alexandra Street Green Corridor
• Spend one hour/month cleaning a beach with your local Beach Patrol group, which are organized by postcode
• Join the regular Friday Vigil at 12:30pm outside the office of Josh Burns MP in Barkly Street St Kilda to protest against new oil and gas developments. Last week was the 1 year anniversary of these vigils, and it is surprising how many passing cars “honk for stronger climate action”
• Get children, family and friends interested in the environment by taking them on a whale watching trip – see here for tips and tricks
• Join one of the St Kilda Bike Kitchen‘s regular (4/month) volunteer run events – to learn bike repair, or teach it if you have the skills. See their facebook page for details.
• Start regularly eating sea urchin to save our coastline kelp beds
• Walk the scenic Solar System Trail along the beaches of Port Phillip
• Sign up for the 18 October Around the Bay bike ride, and start training for it

• Consider adding your voice to:
• • The Greenpeace petition to get industrial fishing out of Australia’s marine parks
  • The Australian Marine Conservation Society petition to stop bottom trawling in Australia’s marine parks, which is very environmentally destructive.
  • The Glen Eira Emergency Climate Action Group petition asking their city Council to pass a polluter pays motion to support a Climate Compensation Fund
  • The Birdlife Australia campaign to save Whalers Bay and stop the proposed rocket launch facility there
  • The Bicycle Network campaign asking for 5% of the Victoria’s transportation budget to be spent on our Strategic Cycling Corridors to cater for the 75% of people interested in riding for everyday local trips
  • The GetUp! campaign asking the Albanese Government to Stop Filling BHP’s Tank by giving it hundreds of millions of dollars each year as Fuel Tax Credits
  • The Wilderness Society petition asking the Albanese government to say NO to new fossil fuel drilling in Australai

If you have a topic you would like to see in this newsletter, send an article in for consideration by replying to this email. Articles that incorporate a (1) relevant banner image, (2) short title, and (3) 1-2 short paragraphs of text (100+ words), with relevant hyperlinks, are most suitable.

It seems to me that the natural world is the greatest source of excitement; the greatest source of visual beauty; the greatest source of intellectual interest. It is the greatest source of so much in life that makes life worth living.

David Attenborough

We are living and working on the unceded lands of the Yalukit Willam people. We pay our respects to the traditional owners of the land and their ongoing connection to land, waters, sky and culture.

A Cooler, Greener Port Phillip

On Wednesday 27 May, PECAN held its monthly Guest Speaker Meeting, part of a series of four events being presented in collaboration with the Port Phillip EcoCentre.

The guest speaker was Kerry Gore, a Glen Eira resident who played a key role in strengthening the City of Glen Eira’s Urban Forest Strategy. Drawing on his background in finance, policy and project management, Kerry channelled his passion for urban greening into a successful campaign for greater tree canopy coverage.

Kerry explained that more than 14 years ago, Glen Eira’s tree canopy was already low at 12% and projected to fall to 8%. At the time, Council’s draft strategy set a target of just 14% canopy cover by 2035.

In response, Kerry and a team of volunteers developed an alternative proposal. Working constructively with Council staff and councillors, they built a strong evidence-based case for a more ambitious target of 22% canopy cover by 2040. Their efforts ultimately succeeded.

The campaign involved extensive work on risk management, alliance-building, and understanding the financial and planning frameworks that shape council decision-making. A key achievement was convincing Council to view urban trees as essential infrastructure, requiring long-term investment, lifecycle management and ongoing maintenance.

Following Kerry’s informative presentation, Helen Halliday provided an update on the Raglan Street Renewal Plan and discussed opportunities to improve its implementation.

The next PECAN meeting will be a General Business Meeting at the EcoCentre at 5.30 pm on Wednesday 24 June 2026.

Around Melbourne…

A eucalypts audit along Canterbury Road in Albert Park has revealed a treasure trove of biodiversity that will help guide tree selection across Port Phillip.

The new Port Philip EcoCentre has won the City of Port Phillip 2026 Design and Development Award for Sustainable Design – well deserved.

Not just Melbourne needs to spend more on trees, with many Victorian country towns set to lose most of their tree canopies in coming years because their trees are aging.

Water has started flowing into the urban wetlands in the Yalukit Willam Nature Reserve, which is on the border between Port Phillip and Bayside Councils.

New bike riding counts across Melbourne show that significantly more people have taken to riding in the past month, in the wake of the growing cost-of-living crisis.

Meri-bek City Council is now offering subsidies for families with children in childcare, kindergarten or primary school to buy or rent an e-bike as a fuel crisis relief measure.

Recently seen…

This RACV article explains the cycling road rules that every Victorian should know – both cyclists and licensed vehicle drivers.

According to this article and recent data, we are at the beginning of the end of the road for diesel trucks. New electric trucks cost about the same, are significantly cheaper to run, and can maintain highway speeds much better uphill (so that journey times can be significantly shorter). And this article explains that Australia is at a tipping point for electric trucks because half our country’s fleet is old and needing replacement and diesel fuel costs are rising strongly. We just need our government to provide some incentives to push us over the edge!

The Climate Council’s Pedal to the Metal: A Budget to Break Free from Fuel Chaos report which advocates investing in electrified transport, expanded shared and active transport and increased investment in renewable electricity generation and storage.

Read how Victoria’s active transport plan aims to increase the proportion of active transport trips from 18% in 2021 to 25% in 2030. We can expect to see many more electric bikes and scooters, and hopefully, lots, lots more bike path investment that separates them from cars.

Another Climate Council Power Games: Who’s Driving High Power Bills? report which blames high energy costs on our reliance on aging and unreliable fossil fuel (especially gas) power-stations, past over-investment in poles and wires, and greedy energy retailers that penalize customer loyalty.

This recent Not Just Bikes video that lists and explains all the scientifically well founded reasons why we should discourage and limit car use in urban spaces.

A large mining company, that is converting its vehicle fleet to electric, has financed this FORT30FUELP advertising campaign to limit the diesel fuel tax credit to $50 million/beneficiary.

The reading materials discussed in Electrify Borondara’s excellent Does a Battery Make Sense for Me? seminar. Well worth a read if you are thinking of a home battery.

This good report asks why trams in Australia often run on tracks set in concrete, and rarely on tracks edged in grass, while in Europe the reverse is the norm. Grass edged tram tracks look much better and significantly reduce heat island effects.

Food, Climate and Local Action: The Plant Based Treaty

Food systems are a major but often overlooked driver of climate change. In Australia, livestock grazing uses more than half the continent’s landmass and is a major cause of land clearing and biodiversity loss. Agriculture is also responsible for around 57% of Australia’s methane emissions, mostly from livestock – a powerful greenhouse gas the world has committed to rapidly reduce this decade.

The Plant Based Treaty complements the Paris Agreement by putting food systems on the climate agenda. The Treaty calls for a shift toward healthier, more sustainable plant-based food systems, ecosystem restoration, and no further expansion of industrial animal agriculture. The IPCC identifies plant-based diets as a major opportunity to help tackle climate change.

Already, more than 260,000 individuals, 4,500 businesses and organisations, and 71 cities worldwide have endorsed the Treaty.

Cities and councils can play an important role by increasing plant-based food options at council events and facilities, public awareness campaigns, supporting community gardens and food security initiatives, reducing food waste, restoring habitat and biodiversity, and incorporating food systems into climate planning.

As councils seek practical ways to reduce emissions and improve community wellbeing, these actions align closely with goals around climate action, biodiversity, sustainability, public health and resilience. We hope Port Phillip City Council will consider how food system solutions can help meet these goals.

Learn more or endorse the Treaty at Plant Based Treaty.org.

Buying electric will save you money

If you are one of the shrinking minority who have NOT caught on that changing to an EV (electric vehicle) will save you a lot, this article may convince you to get with the smart money and buy a second-hand EV as your next car, but only when you need a newer vehicle. The operating cost savings are clear, and while new EVs are more expensive than the equivalent ICE car, this price premium disappears when you buy a secondhand vehicle.

Moreover, analysis shows that replacing 1 million petrol cars with EVs would cut Australia’s reliance on foreign fuel by 1 billion litres/year, and the recent troubles in the Middle-East have proven our need for better fuel security.

Additionally, Australian trials of electric road haul trucks show that we are reaching the tipping point where they will lower transport fuel and maintenance costs and actually speed up deliveries – see here and here. Further, recent analysis suggests that converting all road freight between Melbourne and Sydney from diesel powered to electric trucks would have a payback period of around 4 years because of the much lower fuel and maintenance costs of the electric trucks. And, according to this article, Fortescue Mining’s plans to replace its fleet of diesel ore haulage trucks with battery electric equivalents will save it about $800 million/year in fuel costs, giving the project a very short payback period.

If are are starting to consider changing to an electric vehicle, the Australian Electric Vehicle Association website has a lot of valuable information, including detailed fact sheets on the different makes and models available.

The transition to EVs is a hot topic now, and this interesting video explains how it is well under way, but that it will likely not be smooth sailing, and we can expect to see hiccups along the way.

We may finally have a better way to make copper from concentrates

For the last 40+ years, halide hydrometallurgy has offered the prospect of cheaper, cleaner copper production, by making copper metal from mineral concentrate at the mine site. Nowadays, mine concentrate is usually shipped from the mine to a distant processing plant. This is expensive and often leads to pollution because of the fossil fuels used for transporting the ore, and the energy consumed in smelting to convert the ore to copper metal. The world is going to need a lot more copper as we transition away from fossil fuels, and better ways to process concentrates are important for achieving this goal.

An Australian company, Loop Hydrometallurgy, continues to innovate in advanced halide-based minerals processing. Its Halion Loop™ employs mixed halides to extract copper, nickel, cobalt, lead, zinc, silver, gold, REEs and other metals from a broad range of concentrates, tailings and industrial waste materials. It operates at atmospheric pressure and less than 100°C, with no noxious gas emissions and no liquid effluents. This new technology has the potential to redefine the industry cost curve for the production of copper from mineral concentrates and industrial wastes. Hopefully, this new approach will prove itself as it is commercialized. And the processing can be readily done at mine sites.

Biofuels will only be a niche decarbonization solution in the long run

Planting a crop which uses photosynthesis to pull CO2 from the air for its growth, and then harvesting this crop and converting it into a biofuel which is lastly burnt in an internal combustion engine to do useful work, while releasing the CO2 back into the atmosphere, tells a good carbon neutral story.

However there are two key facts that people pushing this approach to eliminating climate change will never tell you:

• biofuel production and use converts < 1% of the incident sunlight into useful work, whereas solar panels convert convert 25+% of the incident light into useful energy. Thus, you need around 50 times the land area for biofuel production than for the equivalent direct solar energy production. Then you need manpower/capital to continually harvest and process the crop and distribute the fuel, whereas solar panels are passive electricity generators.
• Wild natural lands absorb several times more CO2 than the same area of crop land. Moreover, natural lands retain the CO2 absorbed for many years, while crop lands release it as part of the annual harvesting cycle.

In the long run, a solar, all-electric economy is orders of magnitude more efficient from both production cost and land use perspectives. Long term market forces, therefore mean that except for a few very hard to electrify industries (like air travel), biofuels are a technological and economic dead end. Unfortunately, the false promise of biofuels is now encouraging a lot of undesirable land clearing globally. Learn more here.

Vertical farming

Plant cultivation is in a significant transition, and vertical farming will make an important contribution in the longer term. Vertical farming is growing plants in multi-story buildings in cities, usually via hydroponics (no soil, with chemical nutrients added to water as the growing medium) or aquaponics (hydroponics with the addition of fish poo to provide the plant nutrients). Because it is indoors with a controlled environment (including light and humidity and air quality) pesticides are not needed and growth speed can be increased. Vertical farms can also be very close to the point of consumption so that transport costs are minimized and the plants can be picked when they are fully ripe so that their taste and quality is maximized.

Compressed air may be making a comeback

The ever reliable Engineering With Rosie explains how mankind has used compressed air for many applications, and it is still widely used in industry. In the late 1800’s it was a serious contender for distributing mail and other materials and as an alternative to electrical wiring for distributing energy, but wires won that competition. Now, with intermittent renewable energy generation we have ever greater needs to store energy for hours to days. Electric batteries are one solution to this problem, as are hydropower systems. Storing energy as compressed air in large underground (or underwater) caverns also has a chance. All three approaches probably have their place, depending on local circumstances.

A bit of fun…

This pile of rocks is a rendering of one of the five finalists for the design of a “100% sustainable landmark” that inspires people to take action against the climate and biodiversity crises. A Dutch social venture proposes spending 240 million euros to build it in Rotterdam. I am not sure that the project will actually get off the ground, but I hope it does. Learn more.

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