Archive for March, 2009
Last night a few of us at Greensense went down to the foreshore in South Perth with some excellent pizza and a drop of red wine to watch the city lights go out as Perth participated in Earth Hour.
For the owners and managers of the big office buildings, Earth Hour seems to be all about the big, bright building signage. Turn that off and all is well, even if the lights inside are still blazing. Many of the buildings employed the low risk strategy of not bothering to turn on the signs at all! Others, like the AMP building, were a little late flicking the swtich, but most got there in the end.
The challenge for these building managers and their tenants is to extend their positive actions beyond these high profile events. By the time everyone is back at work on Monday, the Earth Hour posters in the offices will have been taken down and it’ll be business as usual.
We look a few photos and have put them together into a short movie. I hope you like it.
Earth Hour 2009, Perth, Western Australia from Pete Tickler on Vimeo.
Barrack Obama has started to deliver on some of his pre-election promises regarding the United States response on climate change. In an announcement planned to coincide with Earth Hour, Obama has invited figures from the world’s largest 16 economies to Washington in April.
The primary purpose of the forum is to “help generate the political leadership necessary to achieve a successful outcome at the UN climate change negotiations that will convene this December in Copenhagen”, according to the White House statement.
Given the increasingly dire climate change news coming from the world’s scientific community, together with a good deal of pessimism about the likelihood of reaching any king of global accord at Copenhagen, the timing could not be better for Obama to throw his hat into the ring.
Greensense recently attended the Carbon Trading Summit presented by the AIA. This is Part 4 of a series. You may like to start by reading Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3.
Following Tony Mahar we heard from Kim Horne. Kim was originally invited to speak in his role as the President of Chamber of Minerals and Energy. However, he instead focussed on his experiences with Alcoa Australia and Mitchell Corporation, a local trucking company.
In both cases he concentrated on the positive actions that business can take. He discussed Alcoa’s local cogeneration power plant and the sequestration of carbon from their industrial processes. He also discussed Mitchell’s initiative to convert their fleet to dual-fuel (LNG/diesel) motors.
What was particularly impressive was the approach Alcoa was taking to employee engagement. By harnessing the innovative thinking and enthusiasm of their workforce they were finding energy efficiency opportunities that benefit the environment and their bottom line.
Concluding thoughts
The tag-line for the event was ‘the bottom line’, with an event flyer that challenged attendees with the following questions:
What does the introduction of the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme (CPRS) mean to you & do you understand the issues that will affect you and your organisation? How much is this going to cost you and who can you go to for help?
I think this was a good event and the audience benefited from a broad range of views on the proposed emissions trading scheme. But I don’t think questions posed above were fully answered by any of the speakers.
If you attended this event looking for answers on how to prepare for the emissions trading scheme, here are a few things to think about. First and foremost, it is important to understand that the point of an emissions trading scheme is not to just be another tax. It is intended to help encourage investment to reduce the carbon intensity of your business. You need to be viewing this as an opportunity to transform your business in a positive way.
To start with, you must make sure you fully understand your compliance obligations. Do you need to report under NGERS? Are you likely to be a liable entity under the CPRS? You may need to take some immediate steps because the first reporting period for NGERS commenced on the 1st of July 2008.
Next you should do some commercial analysis and modeling. Do you know the carbon intensity of your business? You don’t need to do a full lifecycle assessment of all of your products services, like that undertaken by Mars Foods, but your should still follow a standard methodology. You should develop some new organisational metrics to help you to manage the carbon performance of your organisation. For example, these might be ‘tonnes CO2e per unit shipped’ or ‘tonnes CO2e per $1,000 EBIT’. You should also model the likely impacts on your business of different carbon cost scenarios. You should definitely know at what WACCO2 (weighted average cost of carbon) the viability of your business, in its current form, is put at risk.
Now begin to develop a register of carbon abatement opportunities: initiatives that will reduce the carbon intensity of your business. You should also adapt your capital expense planning process so that business cases for new initiatives consider impacts on carbon intensity and WACCO2. Consider starting a programme of employee engagement and innovation. Your workforce will be your best source of opportunities to innovate and transform your business.
Lastly, start thinking more broadly about the sustainability of your business and the opportunities it presents, not just for your bottom line but also for your community and the wider society and environment. Climate change and carbon management should just be one aspect of your overall sustainability strategy.
The Government is setting a price on carbon to help trigger a transformative journey for your business, the economy and society generally. If you’d like help with this journey, we’d be more than happy to help.
Greensense recently attended the Carbon Trading Summit presented by the AIA. This is Part 3 of a series. You may like to start by reading Part 1 and Part 2.
Following Ray Wills and Andrew Canyon, we heard from Tony Mahar, Director of Sustainable Development with the Australian Food and Grocery Council.
Tony started with some background on the businesses represented by the Australian Food and Grocery Council. I was interested to hear that food manufacturing is the largest manufacturing sector in Australia, and is larger than automative parts and textiles.
Tony echoed some of the comments made by Andrew Canyon, calling for the CPRS to be delayed because industry needed more time to respond. He also made some interesting comments about the related Agriculture sector and how their eventual inclusion in the CPRS could create an additional burden for food manufacturers.
Initially, the CPRS will include about 1000 businesses that together account for around 75% of Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions. Including Agriculture within the CPRS, potentially slated for 2015, would require an additional 130,000 businesses to be included. In addition there are some technical challenges measuring on-farm emissions. One possibility raised by the White Paper is shifting the point of obligation up the supply chain to the food manufacturers. Tony also made an interesting aside about the potential for climate change to reduce the nutritional value of food.
Tony then spent some time on a case study of Mars Food Australia and the action they were taking. They have recently completed a life cycle assessment of Dolmio pasta sauce using the PAS2050 methodology.
Mars found that there are 259g CO2e emissions associated with every $1 unit of product. The majority comes from the glass jar and metal cap. Given the ceiling price of $40 per tonne in the proposed CPRS the 259g would have a carbon cost of around 1c.
However, this does not mean Mars would be directly liable for these emissions under the CPRS or would even necessarily incur additional costs from their up-stream supply chain for that cost of carbon. This is something we might discuss more in a later post.
I’ll conclude this series in my next post with some comments on the presentation made by Kim Horne, from Alcoa.
Greensense recently attended the Carbon Trading Summit presented by the AIA. This is Part 2 of a series. You may like to start by reading Part 1.
Following Tony Owen, Bruce Robinson, and Tim Shanahan, we heard from Ray Wills. Ray is the Chief Executive of the WA Sustainable Energy Association. Greensense is one of the members of WASEA.
Ray started with a useful primer on climate change and made the point that while climate change is a theory, it is a theory in the scientific sense, not the colloquial sense of something unproven. That is, it is a widely accepted theoretical explanation supported by clear empirical evidence. He took a number of opportunities to discuss the likely impacts of climate on our local region, mentioning the rule of thumb that each degree of warming was roughly equivalent to a 150Km shift in climatic zone.
He also provided a useful reminder of the long period of policy development to ‘put a price on carbon’ in Australia, starting with Rio in 1992. This reminder was particularly salient given the concerns raised by subsequent speakers that the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme was being rushed and that industry needed more time.
He finally, and perhaps unsurprisingly, finished with some advocacy for renewable energy describing Western Australia as “the middle-east of renewable energy resources”.
We next heard from Andrew Canyon from the local chamber of commerce and industry. He used the forum to advance CCI’s view that while they supported the concept of an emissions trading scheme, the CPRS legislation was being rushed, the current financial crisis meant industry did not have the resources to respond, and that the Government should “do it once and do it right”. He also took a swipe at renewable energy trotting out the old furfy that renewables could not provide ‘base load power’ and implying that WA should stick with coal and gas.
Andrew was followed by Tony Mahr, the Director of Sustainable Development with the Australian Food and Grocery Council. I’ll cover Tony’s presentation in my next post.
Clif and I recently attended the Carbon Trading Summit, which was presented by the Alliance of Industry Associations.
We were there to create a carbon inventory for the event — sustainable event management is one of the services Greensense offer — but we also enjoyed the presentations. There were seven speakers at the event, faciliated by the always engaging Gerry Gannon.
Tony Owen spoke first, a professor of economics at Curtin University. Tony explained the economic logic of an emissions trading scheme and a carbon tax. They both increase the direct costs incurred by consumers and businesses when they consume goods and services that generate greenhouse gases. This creates an incentive to make investments to reduce emissions. He suggested that, technically, they both had exactly the same effect and that he preferred a carbon tax over an emissions trading scheme.
He also decided to ridicule carbon labeling as promoted by Tesco’s. He suggested that if the cost of carbon is internalised into the price of a product, then that is sufficient to inform consumer choice. I disagree. The choice to buy one product over another is not a purely economic question. It is also a question of values.
Bruce Robinson spoke next on the topic of peak oil. Bruce is the convenor of ASPO Australia, the association for the study of peak oil. Peak oil is the point in time when the extraction of oil and gas peaks and, without sufficient preparation, there is a risk of social and economic breakdown.
Bruce took a number of opportunities to poke fun at economists who, he suggested, falsely believe that ever increasing demand will ensure ever increasing supply. Later, during the panel session, it was clear that Tony Owen, the resident economist was not a believer in peak oil.
The next speaker was Tim Shanahan, the Director of the Energy and Minerals Initiative at UWA. Tim began his presentation by showing the trailer for An Inconvenient Truth (embedded below), reminding us that climate change is a moral issue, not an economic one.
Tim spent some of his presentation talking about the research UWA is doing into geothermal energy. Rather than generating electricity, UWA is looking at using hydrothermal energy (i.e. warm water) with a heat exchanger to provide cooling or heating. This means that, while beneficial for the environment, the technology won’t attract renewable energy certificates, a good example of how Government policy doesn’t always provide the right incentives.
I’ll continue writing about the event in my next post.
Greensense will calculate the carbon inventory of the 2009 Margaret River Drug Aware Pro and develop strategies to reduce the environmental impact of future events with a view to them carbon neutral.
Derek Gerrard, Managing Director of Greensense says “This initiative is about raising awareness of the climate change issue and recognising that simple behavioural changes can make a big difference.”
To calculate the carbon inventory of the event, Greensense estimates the carbon emissions produced by competitor, official and spectator travel and accommodation, catering, water usage, waste management, recycling, ticketing, printing, marketing and other carbon producing activities.
Tom Wilson, International Events Manager of Surfing WA says “We are embarking on a new and positive direction for the future of the Drug Aware Pro. In a first for any major event in Western Australia, Greensense will be undertaking a carbon audit that will produce some real positive outcomes for the future of the Drug Aware Pro on how best we can manage the pollution we put into the environment.”
According to recent research by the independent group The Climate Institute, Australia’s emissions are continuing to rise, despite the economic slowdown. The report suggests that according to key indicators for climate change: commercial and residential electricity and fuel use, national carbon pollution increased by 800,000 tonnes in the December quarter. That is equivalent to the emissions of 80,000 households or 185,000 cars.
This recent report provides further evidence, if more were still needed, that there must be no delay in households and business making immediate changes to put in measures to reduce their carbon emissions. Greensense believes there is still too much talk and not enough action occurring in our nation and both government and business should be taking bolder steps. If your business needs assistance with this then contact Greensense, who is fast becoming Perth’s premier climate change consultancy.
Greensense is continuing to grow and our most recent addition is Clif Edwards.
Clif joined Greensense having worked as a consultant specialising in the tourism and related industries, based in Margaret River. His passion for tackling climate change was heightened with his involvement in the $3.1 million Jewel Cave Redevelopment and Preservation Project which was caused by a combination of dramatically reduced rainfall and human intervention in placing facilities directly above the cave.
To read a recent news article on Clif click here
The government today released the draft CPRS legislation amongst media reports that the emissions trading scheme would be delayed. Meanwhile, there are continuing reports that climate change is accelerating faster than previously feared.
The preamble to the draft legislation sets out a clear rational for action and action now.
“Climate change is the greatest social, economic and environmental
challenge of our time. Scientific evidence confirms that human activities,
such as burning fossil fuels (coal, oil and natural gas), agriculture and land
clearing, have increased the concentration of greenhouse gases in the
atmosphere. As a consequence, the earth’s average temperature is rising
and weather patterns are changing. This is affecting rainfall patterns,
water availability, sea levels, storm activity, droughts and bushfire
frequency, putting at risk Australian coastal communities, health
outcomes, agriculture, tourism, heritage and biodiversity for current and
future generations.“
Perhaps the scheme proposed by the government is flawed: perhaps the targets are too low and the subsidies too high. But the CPRS does commit us to action and it does set us firmly down the path to carbon reduction.
Greensense recently attended the Sustainable Living Festival, held in Melbourne from February 20–22, and participated in the Key Forum on Sustainable Events. The Forum featured national and international speakers sharing their successes in reducing the carbon footprint of their events, principally through travel, waste and water management and recycling, venue choice, compostable toilets and ticketing systems.
The Festival featured many public and industry specific forums and over 120 exhibitors promoting environmentally friendly products and services. The Festival also launched a DVD ‘The Summer of Sustainablity’ featuring five major music festivals and their actions on environmental issues.
