Archive for February, 2010
Platform Screenshot for “Lego Town”
Local government has an important leadership role to play in responding to the challenges of climate change through community engagement, adaptation and emissions abatement strategies. This process begins with effective measurement and reporting of greenhouse gas emissions, energy consumption and energy production.
The Western Australian Local Government Association has recognised a significant gap in Local Governments’ ability to collect and report greenhouse gas emissions data following the termination of the Cities for Climate Protection Program and the absence of a dedicated Local Government reporting system.
To ensure that councils have a robust and consistent reporting framework with which they can meet both their mandatory and voluntary reporting requirements we have worked with WALGA, to develop a sector-wide Greenhouse Gas Reporting and Abatement Platform that is specific to Local Government needs.
The platform allows councils to track and monitor their emissions and energy use, providing a simple to use interface to input raw data such as electricity consumed or fuel purchased. The platform then completes all required calculations to determine the greenhouse gas emissions resulting from council activities. The resulting emissions data can be visualised and analysed using interactive charts, enabling councils to quickly identify trends and highlight emissions or energy intensive parts of their operations.
Mark Wong from the City of Geraldton-Greenough was involved in the pilot.
“The Platform has provided a simple, yet effective means of capturing the City’s emissions profile from a host of Local Government facilities that the City owns and operates. In addition to achieving various compliance and reporting obligations, the platform has helped identify the larger emitters and energy intensive areas, making Officers aware of potential financial savings in these areas through efficiency improvement measures.”
We’re very proud to be involved in this initiative and we’ll be working closely with WALGA to roll-out the platform across the state in 2010. The platform is suitable for other associations or industry groups that have an interest in working together to manage greenhouse gas emissions.
Greensense provides a range of technology solutions for emissions reporting and real time energy monitoring. For more information please contact me on +61 403 068 271.
We held our first event for 2010 on Monday. Peter presented on the outcomes from the Copenhagen Conference, which he attended in December.
We got a great turn-out, with about seventy people attending, and we were very pleased with the level of interest and engagement. One of the main resons we decided to organise these events was what we saw as a lack of decent forums for networking and sharing ideas on climate change response. Thanks to all of our clients who came along and all the new people we met at the event.
We’ll be running our next event in May on domestic and international options for forestry offsets. Please e-mail us at info@greensense.com.au if you’d like to recieve an invitation.
While our goal is to try and mitigate the worst affects of climate change by reducing greenhouse gas emissions, we are already committed to a changed climate. This is why adaptation should be part of your climate change strategy.
The direct impacts of climate change include increased temperature, shifts in rainfall patterns, increased evaporation, rising sea levels, more weather extremes and bushfires.
Adaptation is about planning for these changes and understanding what they mean for our way of life. A common example is the house on the beach. With rising sea levels and more severe weather extremes, storm surges may wash away the beach and potentially the foundations, leading to damage to property or in the worse case, collapse. Adaptation is about deciding how to deal with this, and is not necessarily an easy task. In Western Australia the government has forecast that around 20,000 buildings are at risk of inundation. One response to this risk is for local governments to refuse planning approval without a minimum set back from the beach (see this previous blog).
However, we don’t all live on the beach, and when it isn’t your house, it can be easier to ignore. So what about other impacts? For example, climate change can improve conditions for invasive pest species, which can wipe out native species and may have a numerous impacts on our way of life and economy (see this YouTube video). Increased storm severity is likely to lead to more frequent damage to property (both private and public), which may lead to increased insurance expenses. Reduced rainfall, increased temperatures and increased evaporation may reduce our water supplies, which in turn will increase the cost of water and we may seesome open space areas are no longer watered, thus affecting our recreational lifestyles.
These changes to our climate have the potential to impact many aspects of our lifestyle and our businesses, and they often cause a chain reaction where one change leads to another and so on. Adaptation starts off with a risk assessment approach: identifying and prioritising the climate change risks specific to your area. Armed with this knowledge you can target your Adaptation Strategy to address key risks first and ensure sufficient resources are allocated to deal with them.
Greensense have worked with a number of clients to assist with identifying climate change risks, developing action plans, developing policies and strategies and consulting with the community. If you feel your organisation is not equipped to deal with the likely effects of climate change, we can help.
