Archive for April, 2009
The UK Chancellor Alistair Darling announced last week the world’s first carbon budget - pledging to slash UK emissions 34 per cent on 1990 levels by 2020 and announcing billions of pounds in fresh clean-tech investment to help ensure the new target is met.
Investment commitments include a new £750m fund for emerging technologies such as clean tech, £405m specifically for green manufacturing, an additional £435m for building energy efficiency initiatives, and £260m for skills development in industries with “strong future demand”. Darling added that £4bn in low carbon investment would also be provided by the European Investment Bank.
We’re delighted to announce that Greensense has been selected as a preferred supplier of climate change consultancy services for Western Australian Local Government.
The categories we’ve been qualified under are listed below:
- Climate Change Management Skills
- Climate Change Policy and Strategic Planning Services
- Greenhouse Gas Emissions Calculation Assessment and Mitigation Target Setting
- Climate Change Vulnerability and Adaptation Assessment and Risk Management Planning Services
- Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme and National Greenhouse and Energy Reporting Scheme
The government today announced a new ‘superfast’ [sic] national broadband network. This will be one of the biggest ever infrastructure projects in Australia and at its peek might support 37,000 jobs.
With the right incentives, this network should enable a significant reduction in business travel and employee commuting in Australia.
Around the same time that our new network was being announced, Al Gore said: “This is one of those rare times we all agree that the government needs to build out a green infrastructure that will free us from foreign oil and draw on clean energy.”
He was presenting at a conference on wireless networking technology and making specific reference to how wireless broadband networks support the roll-out of smart grid technology to improve energy efficiency.
Hopefully the right policies and design decisions are made now so our fibre to the premises network will support the roll-out of smart grid technology in Australia.
The introduction of the proposed Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme (CPRS) will have a significant impact on Australian business. It is essential that your organisation is ready to participate in the auction process and the preparation required should not be underestimated.
To assist you with this Greensense, in partnership with tradeslot (the only technology member of the Emissions Trading Scheme advisory panel to the Dept of Climate Change) has developed a comprehensive auction master class. For those businesses that will be liable to trade permits under the CPRS this provides an opportunity to test your readiness and learn in an interactive, hands-on environment.
The master class is run over the course of a day and ends in an online simulated auction. This is a unique offering where scenarios can be tested in real time within an electronic environment that mirrors the current design of the CPRS platform.
For more information contact Greensense on info@greensense.com.au
Greensense is continuing to grow and our most recent addition is Phil Marshall.
Phil joined Greensense as a Principal Consultant in February with over a decade of experience in implementing information systems spanning both business and technical domains, always with a focus on quality and exceeding client expectations.
In recent years, Phil has worked with blue chip mining and oil & gas companies implementing Stakeholder Engagement processes and Stakeholder Relationship Management systems igniting a passion for sustainability and corporate social responsibility. At Greensense Phil will have the opportunity to help companies make the transition into a carbon-limited economy and help them make sense of climate change.
The 2007/08 National Pollutant Inventory (NPI) emission data was released this week. The NPI provides the community, industry and government with free information about substance emissions in Australia and is a cooperative program implemented by the Federal, State and Territory Governments.
The latest data provides estimates for the emissions of 90 toxic substances from 414 sources and covers 4116 facilities across Australia
The NPI reports on pollutant emissions from industry and diffuse sources, by location. Industrial facilities are required to report emissions to the NPI if they use more than a certain amount of one or more substances on the NPI reporting list, or consume more than a specified amount of fuel or electricity, or emit more than a certain amount of nitrogen or phosphorus to water.
Although it doesn’t cover the 6 Kyoto greenhouse gases, data collection and reporting for NPI does follow a similar, albeit more complex, methodology NGERS and the GHG Protocol. For many organisation that have previously reported under NPI and are now also required to report under NGERS, they are simply expanding that reporting to include greenhouse gases.
Whilst this is a logical way of addressing the NGERS reporting requirements, it does present some challenges. Given the financial implications of NGERS, the reporting process must be robust, highly transparent and able to stand up to external audit by the regulator. This has never been a requirement for NPI reporting and so the reporting processes within organisations may need to be reviewed to ensure they’re up to scratch.
For those of you who are interested, there’s an excellent Google Earth layer that’s been developed that plots NPI data from Australian polluters. The screenshot below shows NPI data from Perth facilities looking North up the coast. You can read more about this at the Google Earth community group.
