Welcome to issue #38 for March 2026.

We are now into our 4th year of this email newsletter and so we are reviewing how it can be improved. If you would like to give us a comment or suggestion, please just email them in a reply to this message.

Get involved…

“Saving civilization is not a spectator sport” (LR Brown, 2008), so here are lots of things you can get involved with this month:

• 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.
• Tuesday 3 March, 7-9am – the Bicycle Network is looking for volunteer bike counters for their Super Tuesday commuter surveys.
• Friday March 6, 6-9pm – join the Ripponlea Estate Nocturnal Creatures Night citizen science event. Registering is essential.
• Thursday 12 March, 7pm – Join Solar Savers free Energy Efficiency and Comfort for Renters and Landlords Webinar. Learn more and register.
• Sunday 22 March, 11am – join the March for Forests Melbourne
• Spend one hour/month cleaning a beach with your local Beach Patrol group, which are organized by postcode.
• 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. Commenting on the proposals for greening St Kilda, St Kilda West and Albert Park, Middle Park are particularly important.
• Consider joining the next free City of Port Phillip Environmental Leadership course, which starts in April.
• Consider signing the Greenpeace petition asking the Australian Government to Stop Big Gas
• Consider signing on for the Australian Marine Conservation Society’s email campaign to stop large industrial scale sardine fishing in Tasmania.
• Consider signing the Boomerang Alliance email campaign to improve Victoria’s container deposit scheme by adding wine and other bottles and increasing the deposit.
• It has been said that “one of the most powerful things anyone can do to combat the climate crisis is to make sure that their superannuation is invested in a clean fund”. Something to consider for a portion of your superannuation funding.
• Check out WWF Australia’s 10 tips on how you can help our wildlife and make a resolution to follow at least one this year.
• Download the Climate Council’s free conversation guide on how to talk to anybody about climate change and bushfire risk here and start having some conversations.
• Learn about the Great Southern Reef Foundation’s campaign to get people to eat more long spined sea urchin to change the economics of clearing these animals from our reefs. They are supposed to be delicious
• Consider showing off your sustainable house or apartment as part of Sustainable House Day on Sunday 17 May. Learn more and register here.

The ultimate test of man’s conscience may be his willingness to sacrifice something today for future generations whose words of thanks will not be heard.

Gaylord Nelson (1916-2005), former governor of Wisconsin, founder of Earth Day

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.

PECAN has been busy making submissions to the state government about reducing the minimum clearance distances between trees and powerlines, and Port Phillip Council about Call for Ideas for the Council budget and their Draft Roadmap to Zero-Safe Travel Strategy and Action Plan 2026-31. It has also been having meetings with Melbourne Water, Council and others on a variety of issues.

If you would like to get involved in its work, come to one of PECAN’s monthly meetings, which are usually on the last Wednesday of each month, starting at 5:30pm in the Port Phillip EcoCentre.

Around Melbourne…

Public access EV charging is coming to lots of places in Port Phillip, but the rollout could be faster according to TWISK.

The first stage of the Marinus Link electricity link between Tasmania and Victoria has been approved for construction.

A large new data centre has been approved for Fisherman’s Bend, but this may lead to significant environmental problems because of their large electricity and water demands.

I recently stumbled across the CoastSnap observation station at Sandridge Beach in Port Melbourne. It is one of many locations monitored by a global citizen science project to quantify the impact of climate change on our coastlines. There is a regional project for Port Phillip. A very worthy idea – I downloaded the app and tried it. Unfortunately, I could not get it to work (to upload my photo) and found it very clumsy to use, and there is no support contact point!

As part of the City of Melbourne’s Greenline Project, a new promenade from Federation Square to Batman Avenue has recently opened and looks good.

If you are looking to get a home battery, you might like to watch this good 90 minute webinar about home batteries and solar that was hosted by Lighter Footprints in Boroondara. I particularly liked the resident case studies.

In some excellent news, Australia’s offshore regulator, NOPSEMA, has formally refused to accept the Environment Plan for CGG Services’ proposed Regia 3D marine seismic survey in the Otway Basin. That means this seismic blasting project cannot go ahead, which is very good news for the Southern Right Whales.

Recently seen…

You might like to watch this good short video about a rain garden that somebody made at their home. It catches rainfall runoff from the roof and lets it soak into the soil, rather than be wasted in a stormwater drain.

This good podcast argues that electricity retailers should have a duty of care to ensure that their customers get the best deal available. It says that the current market is really an oligopoly that was “designed” 25 years ago and is no longer fit for purpose, if it ever was. Saul Griffith agrees, arguing that our energy markets need to be completely redesigned in his book Plug In (see below).

Melbourne University researchers are saying that rural Australians need mental preparation as much as sandbags ahead of disasters. Because they face 12 times higher disaster risks than city dwellers, psychological readiness for rural Australians can be just as vital as emergency kits.

A news article about Malta tells us that they have started paying people under 30 there the equivalent of AU$8,300/year to surrender their driving licences as a way to reduce the number of vehicles on their roads. Malta has the most congested road network in Europe.

I was very pleased to read that somebody has finally put solar panels and a battery on a refrigerated long haul truck to get significant fuel savings over a 1,671km trial run.

What is PassivHaus (Passive House)?

As explained in this video, PassivHaus is a European building design philosophy that emphasizes good building orientation and overhangs, along with strong insulation throughout the building envelope (including the windows), very high air-tightness and active mechanical control of the indoor air quality. This makes the building very efficient to operate and very comfortable to live in.

PassivHaus is often talked about in terms of residential homes, but the approach can also be used for larger buildings, eg student dormitories (Frankston), university concert halls (Oxford University), and even factories (Norway).

Should humans colonize space?

Researchers asked five recognized Australian experts in the field whether humanity should be colonizing space, and 4 said no! For various reasons they generally feel that humanity is not ready (mature enough) to expand beyond planet Earth. Even the term “colonize” is very problematic, given the major issues that arose from our colonizing parts of Earth, including the arrival of the British in Australia. We have also gotten a very bad track record for destroying the ecological integrity of places, and do we really want to do that to the whole Milky Way Galaxy? The researchers tend to the view that we should clean up our act here to demonstrate that we can be adults before venturing out into space.

The Floating Hotel That Creates More Energy Than It Uses?!

If you have a spare 30 minutes, you might like to watch this inspiring video about an all renewable electric floating hotel in Namibia and how it is very effectively doing environmentally friendly nature tourism – it includes some great African wildlife clips.

Continuing our nautical theme – more electric flying ferries please!

High speed electric ferries have great promise in suitable locations because of their low fuel costs and mechanical simplicity (which equates to low maintenance costs). Smaller ferries can also be made and operated cost-effectively (partly because they do not need large fuel tanks). This is very important for places with lots of small islands, like Stockholm and its surrounds. Interestingly, 70+% of new ferries being built in Europe are electric!  Learn more here.

In a previous life I regularly traveled on the high speed hydrofoil ferries between Hong Kong and Macau that were powered by aircraft jet engines. Their relatively high fuel costs and maintenance costs led to them being replaced by diesel powered high speed catamaran ferries. Later still, the ferries were displaced by cheaper bus trips over the new 80km bridge between the two places.

The hydrofoils were always my favourite way to travel for this trip, so maybe these new electric ferries, which should have very low fuel costs and should be very low maintenance could compete. I hope so, because I would love to take that ride again.

Also, it always surprises me how little we use ferries in Melbourne and how many places could be easily accessible for commuting if we had more of them – think of all the towns all round the Bay. They can be a very cheap form of public transport infrastructure – you just need the terminals (and no roads/rails).

Climate change is fuelling extreme fires all across the planet

Climate change is clearly already here, and looks like getting worse in the future. The more extreme temperatures being experienced in many places is causing more, and more extreme, forest fires all round the world. The evidence is clear, and it is just a taste of what is to come in the next 50 years. A research study has used satellite observations and advanced modelling to find and investigate the causes of wildfires in the past year. The research team considered the role that climate and land use change played, and found a clear interrelationship between climate and extreme events.

VAWT or HAWT: What works better for offshore wind?

The open sea is a very different environment to the land, especially in deep water where you cannot anchor things to the seabed. The typical 3-blade, horizontal axis land based wind turbine is a well proven technology, but is it really the best approach for offshore wind based power generation? This good video explains the pros and cons of adopting the conventional land based wind turbine design for use in offshore deep ocean waters. Circumstances should alter cases and assuming one particular design solution is universally applicable is very simplistic – think motorbikes and jet-skis, which are very different design solutions for the personal mobility problem on land and in water.

A bit of fun…

The world really is changing – after 400 years of operations, Denmark’s state-run postal service has decided to stop collecting and delivering letters from the end of 2025 – see here. They expect that private services for letter and parcels will continue. They will also let you redeem the value of any unused stamps that you have, but only until the end of 2026.

Germany’s Deutsche Post is facing similar problems and is axing 8,000 jobs because of falling demand for letter collections/deliveries. No doubt, many other countries have the same problems.

I suppose that this is the natural endpoint for going “paperless”, but I do find the plethora of electronic messaging services a pain to keep track of at times. There is also not really an alternative to registered mail except, perhaps, the “read receipt” feature of email (which my lawyer uses every time she sends me stuff!).