In partnership with Greensense, the Department of Sport & Recreation has just launched an industry resource to assist sport and recreation organisations, reduce their environmental impact and improve their sustainability.
The resource has come out of an Environmental Ethics Working Group that has run over the last 2 years with the WA Football Commission, Football West, Triathlon WA, Rowing WA, Surf Life Saving of WA and Royal Life Saving. The group was facilitated by the Department of Sport and Recreation and Greensense was engaged as the technical advisors.
The working group was formed to raise awareness of environmental issues and allowed each participant to share ideas on sustainability initiatives they were implementing, learn from each others experiences and ensure that the sport and recreation industry continues to take a lead role in the community, by providing and promoting environmentally sound practices.
While the resource has been targeted at the sport and recreation industry it clearly provides value to many organisation and we would encourage our clients to take and look and see if it can be used for you own purposes. As well as a general introduction to the issues facing us around climate change, energy, water, waste and biodiversity the resource provides very practical recommendations on what your organisation can do to respond to these challenges with supporting tools, templates and documents to help you get started.
The Environmental Sustainability Pack was launched by the Minister for Sport and Recreation, Terry Waldon MLA, with presentations from yours truly, West Coast Eagle player Sam Butler and a panel of some of the working group members. As part of the presentation the Minister announced funding of $200,000 over 2 years to support sport and recreation organisations progress their sustainability initiatives.
At Greensense we value the opportunity to be involved in sustainability projects that deliver real outcomes as the success of this project has exemplified. If you would like our help in finding innovative ways to improve the sustainability of your organisation then make sure you get in touch.
I’ve come across a few good reports recently on energy efficiency and sustainability in the workplace. I might write about more of these, but the first that I think is worth a look is Greening Work Styles: An Analysis of Energy Behaviour Programs in the Workplace from the American Council for an Energy Efficient Economy.
Greensense View® is designed to spearhead a behavior change program, providing engaging, relevant feedback to building occupants such as the Head to Head module pictured
- setting the tone with the strong support of upper management,
- building a team with a project committee and peer champions on board,
- utilising communication tools to reach target audiences, and
- engaging building occupants by means of social norms, feedback, benign peer pressure and competition, as well as through performance-linked rewards.
The report also provided some great specific examples of that tactics and collateral used in each program: copies of posters, branding and logos, specific initiatives, rewards, real-time tracking tools, pledges and commitment schemes, and so on. There are some good ideas there.
The report also identified one area that needed more work across each case study, which was a good evaluation framework. It noted that “the absence of any evaluation framework for energy behavior programs may explain the lack of the evaluation information needed to assess the effectiveness of these programs, a substantial shortcoming that may lead to their exclusion from other, more technologically-focused energy efficiency programs.”
I think the last point is a good one. We know programs focused purely on behaviour change can deliver good savings, and while there are some good studies that demonstrate this, it is much harder to try and quantify the potential benefits in advance, compared with opportunities like lighting refits, or recommissioning HVAC systems.
When we help our customers with behaviour change programs, we always use Greensense View®. Not only does it provide a great way to engage employees and provide immediate feedback on improvements, it provides an important record of energy use before and after the program, and does enable rigorous evaluation.
City of Gosnells Administration Building uses Greensense View (5-Star rating)
A Green Building is a sustainable one. A building that enhances the natural environment and our well being; that does not diminish it.
Green Buildings are designed to be sustainable, and it is well recognised that the design and planning must encompass the total lifecycle of the building.
We know that no matter how sustainable a building may have been in its design and construction, it can only remain so if it is operated responsibly and maintained properly, and, if those who visit and occupy the building are engaged and informed as willing collaborators in creating a sustainable outcome.
Green rating schemes recognise this fact, awarding points for occupant education and engagement. We know that you can’t create a smart, green building with uninformed and unengaged occupants. But do we actually know how to effectively inform and engage?
Our vision at Greensense is that buildings should talk to their occupants, that they should engage them in a conversation about sustainability, that the ‘heartbeat’ of the building should be loud enough for everyone to hear.
On a hot day, when the building is working hard to keep people comfortable, they should know. The building should be able to remind people to use the stairs, applaud them when they recycle more, and let them know when performance is off kilter (Hey, last night I used more electricity than normal, what’s going on?).
In a really smart building, the occupants should be engaged to maximise the buildings performance, for example, letting you know the sea breeze is coming in and its time to open the windows, or that tomorrow is going to be really hot, so make sure you dress for the weather so I can keep the inside and outside temperature more in balance.
The building should be able to engage occupants in friendly competition. Lets have a challenge to see which floor can save the most electricity this month. Remember to switch off your computers at night, I’ll be watching!
Lastly, the building, should share its performance data with others. Buildings exist within a common local environment, they exist within a commercial context, usually as part of a portfolio under common management, or owned by a common group. While rating schemes like NABERS provide a degree of comparability between buildings, more timely, higher resolution and more contextual data is much more powerful in identifying opportunities and anomalies and enabling richer more informative benchmarks.
If you’re in the business of creating sustainable buildings, we’d love to talk. We’ve been doing this for a while now, so get in contact, and we can help you build a rich and fulfilling relationship between your buildings and their occupants.
Greensense View will be a key feature of the new SA4 student accommodation for ANU
Here are three interesting videos I’ve found on YouTube recently.
30-story building built in 15 days
Not just fast, with much of the building pre-fabricated off site, but green too. The builder says that it is “five times more energy efficient, with 6-inch thick glass curtain wall insulation and four-paned windows with built-in shades.”
Carbon reduction at Unilever
Paul Polman the CEO of Unilever discusses the benefits they have seen from redacting carbon at Unilever. They have recently made a commitment to double the size of their business and at the same time halve emissions by 2020.
Sustainability Metrics in Agriculture
Here is an interesting video on measuring sustainability in Agriculture and on the importance of sustainability metrics generally.
Building Night Walks
For the majority of the year — likely between 5,000 and 6,200 out of 8,760 hours — buildings are unoccupied. Night walks are a great way to detect energy issues, or you can use Greensense View.
According to a recent report from the Australian Energy Market Commission, residential electricity prices are forecast to go up 37% over the next three years.
The forecast increases are broken down as follows:
- Transmission: 6% contribution
- Distribution: 34% contribution
- Wholesale: 40% contribution (includes impact of carbon price)
- Retail: 12% contribution
- Renewables (RET): 3% contribution (from renewable energy target)
- Renewables (FIT): 2% contribution (from feed in tariffs)
We recently completed a sustainability assessment for one of our clients — iiNet - who are taking action to monitor and enhance corporate sustainability.
This was the first year that iiNet had reported on corporate sustainability. We really liked what they did with our assessment, and especially the way its been presented online as part of their 2011 Annual Report: www.iinet.net.au/2011annualreport/sustainability-report/.
Go check it out!
Seven weeks ago, we kicked off the Perth Solar City Bring It Down Challenge, where seven schools were challenged to bring down their energy use over seven weeks.
This morning, the results are in, and I’m pleased to congratulate Mundaring Christian College who achieved a stunning 54% reduction in energy use. On Friday, Peter Collier, the Minister for Energy will visit the school to present their award, which will include $10,000 for an eco-makeover at the school.
You can view Mundaring Christian College’s energy use in real-time on their Greensense View Dashboard.
Every school in the competition made dramatic energy savings. The average weekly reduction was 26%. Together the schools saved over 64,500 kWh of electricity and a 33% reduction against their combined weekly historical baselines. This is enough energy to power 10 average homes and saved almost 60 tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions.
The biggest total energy saving was made by Ballajura Community College. They saved over 23,500kWh on their own, which represented a 16% reduction against their weekly historical baseline.
These savings didn’t require capital investment in new green technology, but were made just by reducing energy waste at the schools. If we’d tried to achieve the same savings using new PV systems, we would have needed more than 310kW of capacity across the schools.
The schools in the competition ranged from one of the largest secondary schools in the state, down to small independent primary schools. So we think the results of this competition are reflective of the kind of energy waste that exists across every school in the state. Tackling this waste could provide huge benefits to the community.
There are about 1050 schools in WA, so if we could scale this achievement out over every school, we could save around 72,000,000 kWh a year. Based on a tariff of 25c per kWh, this saving would be worth around $18,000,000 and would save more than 65,000 tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions a year.
The savings don’t end here. We will continue to monitor each schools energy use with Greensense View and we’ll provide an update in 6 months on how everyone is going.
Every school dashboard can be viewed from the Bring It Down page on the Perth Solar City web site, or you can click on the schools below to see how they are going:
Upper Swan Primary School
Ballajura Community College
Woodbridge Primary School
Mundaring Christian College
Hillside Christian College
Swan View Senior High School
Weld Square Primary School
We are holding a Sustainability Sundowner at The Vic Hotel in November in conjunction with The Green Network. You can download the Event Flyer (PDF) here.
EVENT DETAILS
Date: 11th November 2011
Time: 5:30–7:30pm
Venue: The Vic Hotel
The Clean Energy Future bills passed the lower house last night, and passage through the Senate looks assured, so Australia will have a carbon price by mid 2012.
Late amendments benefit waste sector
One of the most significant late amendments to the bills related to emissions from landfill. This is relevant to a lot of our local government customers. Previously, the threshold for many landfill facilities was going to be 10kt because of proximity rules that only applied to this sector. Now the threshold will be 25kt like every other facility affected by the legislation. Because landfill operators will only be liable for emissions from waste disposed of from the start of the scheme (non-legacy emissions), many operators won’t be affected at all for the first few years of the scheme, and operators that implement good abatement strategies may be able to stay below the threshold indefinitely.
Also, landfill operators will have the opportunity to reduce 100% of landfill emissions using CFI offset-credits. So, for example, a landfill operator cold invest in a forestry project to reduce their liability. While this might help reduce the cost of the liability, the other significant benefit is the potential to provide cost certainty. Landfill facilities continue to produce emissions after the facility is closed because of the time it takes waste to decompose. This means operators have to increase gate prices now to fund the liability when the facility is closed and no longer able to generate revenue.
The carbon price will be driven by the market so anticipating the size of this future liability is difficult. By investing in an offset project that will generate a stream of offset credits over time, they can fix their carbon price in future years, and so more easily manage this future liability.
While most CFI offset projects are associated with the agriculture sector and land management, the waste sector itself can produce offsets from projects that reduce legacy emissions, for example by extracting methane from closed cells at their facility for flaring or power generation. They can then bank these offset-credits to reduce their future liability.
While the waste sector will be heavily impacted by a carbon price, these late amendments provide some new opportunities to reduce the impact.
Last week we started the Perth Solar City Bring It Down Challenge, where seven schools are being challenged to bring down their energy use over seven weeks.
Round one of the competition is over and we’re incredibly pleased that every school has managed to reduce their energy use. Mundaring Christian College and Hillside Christian College are neck and neck at the moment, with Mundaring just pipping Hillside in Round 1 with an awesome 50% reduction in their energy use.
Ballajura Community College is the largest school in the competition, with a huge student population and a baseline energy use of over 24,000kWh per week, which is equivalent to about 220 average homes. While they only scored 10 points this round, I think the 6% reduction, equivalent to over 1,500kWh, is fantastic. To put 1,500kWh in perspective, its equivalent to the energy that Ballajura might get if they installed a 55kW PV array.
If you’d like to check out the complete results from round one, you can download the Western Power Bring It Down Challenge Round 1 Results (PDF).
Every school dashboard can be viewed from the Bring It Down page on the Perth Solar City web site, or you can click on the schools below to see how they are going:
Upper Swan Primary School
Ballajura Community College
Woodbridge Primary School
Mundaring Christian College
Hillside Christian College
Swan View Senior High School
Weld Square Primary School
Greensense is working with Western Power and the Perth Solar City project to run the Bring It Down challenge.
Seven Perth schools have been challenged to reduce their energy use over seven weeks. The school that makes the biggest saving will win a $10,000 eco-makeover for their school from Perth Solar City. We have provided each school with a real-time energy monitoring system to help them find energy savings and to run the competition.
We have loaded historical data on each schools energy use into Greensense View to calculate a baseline. Each week we award points to the schools based on their energy reduction against their baseline. This way smaller schools like Weld Square Primary School can compete with bigger schools like Ballajura Community College.
The competition will extend over the up coming school holidays, so there is a big incentive for schools to understand and manage their energy use when the school is unoccupied. One of the top tips we gave schools was to develop ‘switch off’ plans for their class rooms and common areas. These apply from lunch breaks, to after school, and from weekends to school holidays.
Every school dashboard can be viewed from the Bring It Down page on the Perth Solar City web site, or you can click on the schools below to see how they are going:
Upper Swan Primary School
Ballajura Community College
Woodbridge Primary School
Mundaring Christian College
Hillside Christian College
Swan View Senior High School
Weld Square Primary School
We’ll be tracking the competition and providing advice to the schools throughout the competition and you can follow the action on our Twitter stream: @GreensenseView.
Greentech Media recently published an article titled “The Rise of Information Based Cleantech”. It explores the value of technology, information, data and automation in building an energy efficient future — the sweet-pot of our technology Greensense View®.
A couple of the key points they discuss are:
Data as a Service
Our energy networks and the energy guzzling equipment that runs on them are still not that smart, but they’re becoming more intelligent as sensors and communications become cheaper and more widely available. This intelligence allows the collection and analysis of massive amounts of data that can be leveraged for monitoring and verification of performance and identification of efficiency opportunities.
Automation
Once we have the data related to energy production, distribution and consumption, the next natural step is to tackle the optimisation of these activities. Information plus automation can lead to significant resource and dollar savings.
Simply put, the data matters. 23% of Australia’s emissions are directly attributable to energy demand in commercial and residential buildings. Everything in our buildings that consumes (or generates) energy can be metered and monitored today. This data significantly improves the overall quality and quantity of our decision making, engages and educates building occupants and fuels innovation and collaboration that ultimately accelerates the move to a more energy efficient future.
As part of the Clean Energy Future policy announcement, the Government unveiled plans for a new National Energy Saving Initiative. This kind of scheme is already in place in NSW, Victoria, and South Australia.
The main mechanism driving the Energy Saving Initiative will be similar to that driving Australia’s renewable energy target (20% renewable energy by 2020).
The large-scale renewable energy target (LRET) and small-scale renewable energy scheme (SRES) both place a legal obligation on energy retailers to obtain and surrender a rising number of certificates each year which represent a unit of renewable energy generation. Renewable energy project developers obtain these certificates from the government. The trade in these certificates creates a financial incentive for further investment in renewable energy.
In the case of the Energy Saving Initiative a similar legal obligation will be placed on energy retailers to obtain and surrender certificates which represent a unit of avoided energy consumption. Again, there is likely to be some kind of rising target, which for a retailer will represent an increasing proportion of the electricity they send out each year. For example, in year 1 of the scheme, retailers may be required to obtain certificates equivalent to 1% of the electricity they send out.
As with LRET and SRES, the supply of certificates will come from energy savings projects. For different kinds of energy savings projects there will be different recognised calculation methods, and accredited project participants will by able to apply these methods to obtain certificates from the government.
The next step in the implementation of the Energy Saving Initiative will be a consultation process. You can register to receive more information about the initiative by emailing energyefficiency@climatechange.gov.au.
- Electricity tariffs increased on 1 July 2011.
The new financial year is here and, as promised by the current state government, it has brought an increase to the cost of electricity with it.
We have successfully conducted a number of energy audits for our clients in recent times. After completing the on-site audit, we prepare and submit a detailed Energy Report for their review.
The report helps clients to identify where and when they are using energy in their business operations and, importantly, they contain quantified recommendations to help them reduce their usage, and associated costs and greenhouse gas emissions.
As you would expect, the recommendations for each client vary somewhat. However, there was one recommendation that was common to nearly all client facilities - conduct a tariff analysis.
If you’re based in WA and your business uses more than 50MWh (50,000 kWh) of electricity each year, then you are probably on Synergy’s L3 tariff. Did you know that the cost of your electricity has just increased by 29.5%? Your daily supply charge has also increased by a similar amount to just under 50c per day!
If your business is using more than 50 MWh of electricity each year, then you have a fully contestable site and are entitled to go to the market and seek alternative quotes from other energy retailers.
The team here at Greensene encourages you to spend some time investigating your options and seeking three quotes from energy retailers - you may just find a better deal that could save you hundreds of dollars in 2011/12.
Yesterday the Government finally released their plan to price carbon through their Clean Energy Future package. This package will see the Government tackle climate change by:
- pricing carbon
- encouraging renewable energy
- encouraging energy efficiency and;
- increasing the amount of carbon stored in the land (through the Carbon Farming Initiative)
Perhaps the most talked about and anticipated announcement was the detail supporting the price on carbon. From July 1, 2012 this new package will see about 500 of Australia’s top polluters pay a fixed price of $23 per tonne of CO2e emitted. This price will rise by 2.5% per annum for three years before becoming a market-driven Emissions Trading Scheme, with linkages to international markets.
For now, the Carbon Price will apply to stationary energy, industrial processes, fugitive emissions and non-legacy waste. Significant compensation has been announced for both households (approximately $4 billion per annum) and industry (approximately $3 billion per annum).
In addition to the carbon price, there is a strong focus on delivering cleaner energy through investment in new technologies and the closure of highly emissions intensive energy generation as well as further investment in renewable energy technologies.
It is expected that this package will deliver on Australia’s commitment to reduce pollution by 5% on 2000 levels by 2020, and 80% by 2050.
This new, long-term, trajectory is one of the most significant aspects of the package, representing a 2% decrease in emissions from today’s levels, while supporting a projected increase in the Australian population of over 13 million.
So what to make of the package?
There are a number of pros and cons of this package, which we will continue to see debated in the public domain in the coming months before it goes to Parliament in November. Whilst no-one would argue this current package is perfect, given the unsuccessful history we have of trying to address climate change (whether it be through an emissions trading scheme, a carbon tax, energy efficiencies or direct action) I think this package represents a compromise that will not only show the world that Australia is willing to do their bit to address climate change, but hopefully will also provide the momentum needed to shift Australia to a low emissions future.
For businesses, the package will mean something different for everyone. To understand its impact and prepare for a July 1 2012 start, businesses who believe they will be impacted should give careful consideration to the package with regards to their own operating environment. Unless you are directly liable, your main focus should be on energy use in your business.
With a planned start less than 12 months away it won’t be too soon to start such a review immediately. If needed, Greensense is able to assist with such a review and to develop any strategies to address any anticipated risks or cost increases.
