The Wire

Australians may think they’re pretty good at recycling and saving energy, but an Adelaide student who’s just returned from a world sustainability conference in Switzerland has found otherwise. Alexander Marks is an Adelaide University Civil and Environmental Engineering student, who was chosen to represent Australia at a two-week conference put on by the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology this month. He says given that Australia has a ‘car culture’ and big distances to travel, our energy consumption is higher than most would think, but perhaps we can follow Switzerland’s example. Following the launch there last week of the first pump to serve a green fuel, E-85, made of eighty-five per cent ethanol, the country is showing rapid improvements in developing greener policies for energy sustainability. The Wire’s Alex Parry asked him why Switzerland was such an appropriate setting for the global conference.