In the lead up to the election, the Climate Institute has relaunched the Pollute-O-Meter, a neat little site that tracks the climate policies of each of the major parties. As well as providing an indication of the effectiveness of each party’s approach to reducing emissions, it also includes a simple comparison of how each party is supporting emissions reduction in three key areas: limiting and reducing pollution, making companies responsible for pollution they cause and reducing the cost of clean energy.
And the winner is? Well, not the environment if the Pollute-O-Meter is to be believed. Whilst the Greens provide some hope, the policies offered up by the Libs and Labor still see us increasing our national emissions significantly by 2020. Given the recent preference deal brokered between Labor and the Greens though, if Labor were to hang on to power on August 21 it does raise the fascinating prospect of having to reconcile the best and the worst of our national climate policy.
At Greensense we love hearing about innovative ideas that reduce our environmental impact and improve the sustainability of our cities. For a while we have been following the Bike Share schemes — particularly in Paris and Montreal — and were pleased to hear that recently the scheme has arrived in Australia.
Melbourne has just launched their scheme with 10 stations and 100 bikes, with a plan to scale to 50 stations and 600 bikes later in the year. We’ll be watching closely to see if this simple behavioural change can make a difference to CBD travel.
Today the Department of Climate Change has released guidelines for organisations seeking to have their operations or products certified as carbon neutral.
The guidelines provide organisations with information on measuring their carbon footprint, monitoring and reducing emissions and purchasing and cancelling eligible carbon offsets.
The program will be administered by the Australian Carbon Trust and organisations will need to have their certification applications to the Trust independently verified.
Certified organisations will be required to pay an annual certification fee and must submit an annual report and public disclosure summary to the Trust. They must also obtain independent verification of these documents every two years.
Here is more information on the guidelines.
A new report issued today by the WA Auditor General reveals that a program to reduce energy use in WA Government agencies by 12% has only achieved a 0.1% reduction.
For those of you that prefer to think it terms of dollars and cents, that represents over $50 million in wasted energy over the last 7 years, or for the carbon-minded, 350,000 tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions.
The Energy Smart Program was a brain child of the Gallop government. Introduced in 2002, its goal was to reduce energy consumption by 12% below 2001-02 levels by 2006-07 in agencies with 25 or more full time staff. The report states that whilst some agencies achieved the 12% target, these achievements were “offset by a lack of progress among the larger energy consuming agencies”.
The Auditor General lists a number of reasons for the failure of the scheme. In particular the report singles out the Sustainable Energy Development Office (SEDO), concluding that it was “not sufficiently strategic” in managing the program and using incentives and penalties to encourage agencies to reduce energy consumption.
“There were no consequences for failing to achieve expected results.”
For me this highlights a challenge we see every day at Greensense. Conservation of our resources, whether that’s energy or water, is a pretty abstract concept for most people and for many businesses. Traditionally our consumption of energy is not well understood — I challenge anyone to walk into their office and ask their colleagues how much energy their building consumes during a working day. The silence will be deafening — and, as we all know, its hard to manage a problem if it’s not well understood and good quality data isn’t available. If you don’t believe me, then ask yourself how successful you’d be with a diet if you didn’t weigh yourself regularly.
At Greensense we’re focussed on educating people in the language of energy conservation. Greensense View is all about increasing awareness of how the buildings we use every day are consuming energy and water, and what we can do to ensure they perform at their very best.
Re-post from the excellent Skeptical Science:
Tonight, a public forum on climate change is being hosted by the University of Western Australia. Four scientists from the UWA will present short talks on climate change (fingers crossed they obey the mandate to keep it short). Afterwards, it’ll be thrown open to questions from the audience to a panel of local academics…and me (the initial idea was to broadcast the Skeptical Science iPhone app through the projector but the technology unfortunately failed us). The topics will be:Consensus in science: what does it mean?
Professor Stephan Lewandowsky (School of Psychology, UWA)
Time for accountability: junk science vs real science
Professor Kevin Judd (School of Mathematics and Statistics, UWA)
The scientific consensus: lessons from a warming planet
Professor Malcolm McCulloch (School of Earth Sciences, UWA)
The way forward: towards economic growth in a clean-energy future
Dr Volker Oschmann (senior government official within the German Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety)The forum will be at the Social Sciences Lecture Theatre from 6pm to 7.30pm so if you’re in the Perth area, please come along. For everyone else, the event will be recorded and compete audio/video will be made available at www.uwa.edu.au/climatescience.
It’s been an exciting week in politics with Kevin Rudd deposed and the appointment of Australia’s first female Prime Minister.
Prime Minister Julia Gillard has said that she “will re-prosecute the case for a carbon price at home and abroad”, but that “rebuilding consensus” is a precursor to pricing carbon. This doesn’t give me any cause to think we will have an emissions trading scheme in the next couple of years, and if anything it suggests the Labor party might restart consultation and might consider a different policy direction entirely. A carbon tax, perhaps? After years of development and debate will the CPRS be abandoned?
Meanwhile, there is a renewed focus on energy efficiency. The Department of Climate Change was recently renamed ‘Climate Change & Energy Efficiency’. The (previous) Prime Minister established an energy efficiency taskforce and now new legislation has been passed for mandatory disclosure of building energy efficiency. Climate Works Australia, a non-profit ‘think tank’ found in their Low Carbon Growth Plan report that energy efficiency could save the Australian economy over $5 billion dollars by 2020. And the Energy Efficiency Council of Australia have just released their own report (PDF), which said that energy efficiency represented the “biggest, cheapest and fastest” way to cut greenhouse gas emissions and is now more urgent, “particularly with both major political parties delaying a carbon price”.
Perhaps while Julia Gillard is rebuilding consensus on a carbon price, we’ll see some new policies developed to further encourage energy efficiency?
Display Energy Certificate
In the UK, all public buildings greater than 1000sqm, such as schools, libraries, council buildings and hosptials are required to publicly display a display energy certificate. The energy certificates are like our NABERS Energy scheme in that they focus on actual energy use.
One government agency is going further. The Department of Energy and Climate Change is showing their energy performance in real-time on their home page. Like Greensense View, the DECC dashboard provides real-time feedback on energy use. For example, when I checked their website as I wrote this blog post, the energy they were using was responsible 231kg CO2e emissions per hour.
Greensense View can provide a public dashboard like this for your building right now. You can contact us to find out more or read more about Greensense View on our site. Greensense View has also just been listed the Energy Smart WA Directory.
The always excellent The Fifth Estate online green property newsletter has another great article this week: Apartment blocks the missing link in sustainability.
The author Lynne Blundell introduces the challenge for apartment blocks, saying:
“High rise apartment blocks, it turns out, are the biggest energy guzzlers in the residential market. But they are falling through the cracks when it comes to energy and water efficiency incentive schemes. It is something that local councils are acutely aware of while state and federal government appear to be turning a blind eye.”
While she provides a strong case that there is a big policy hole and some very specific challenges — such as the strata rules that govern changes to common areas, she mentions some really positive schemes too. Not unusually, it is local government that seems to be showing the way.
City of Sydney is providing funding for Green Strata Wiki to provide an online knowledge base about retrofitting existing apartment buildings. The council is also regularly running workshop for apartment owners with presentations from lawyers, water and energy companies and other sustainability experts.
Willoughby Council is also providing a grants scheme for improving the sustainability of apartments. The Climate Clever scheme has two parts – energy efficiency and solar photovoltaic, which provide dollar-for-dollar matching to successful owners corporations.
Sydney Water is piloting a programme called HiRise, which aims to improve the water-use efficiency of participating buildings by at least 10% by co-funding auditing, sub-metering and water efficiency improvements. According to Sydney water, one of the benefits of sub-metering is detecting leaks: “a leak could waste 73 kilolitres a day, amounting to $136 a day or $49,537 a year.”
One of the big challenges of sustainability upgrades is funding. Efficiency improvements will often pay for themselves over a few years, but owners corporations still need to find some capital upfront. This is still an issue when co-funding is available, such as with the schemes mentioned above.
Sustainability initiatives should start with measurement, whether that is an audit or better still installing sub-meters. A building dashboard. can help the owners corporation track energy and water used in common areas, and allow individual apartment owners to measure their own performance, compared to others in the complex.
Sub-metering can also open the door to a big financial benefit, which can help address the funding challenge.
Most residential apartment blocks in WA are on the standard residential electricity tariff with each apartment owner individually billed by Synergy. However, except for small apartment blocks, the total electricity used by these buildings will be above the ‘contestable level’ of 50,000kWh per year. This means the Owners Corporation could enter into a supply contract with another retailer at commercial rates.
Multi-residential buildings are quite attractive to retailers because the load profile is different to other commercial buildings and significant discounts on the standard residential tarrif are available. The discount can be as much as 40% in some cases. The owners corporation then needs to charge individual apartment owners for the electricity use along with their strata fees.
Our wireless sub-meters and energy monitoring dashboard can enable this kind of solution, help make apartment blocks more sustainable, and save money through efficiency and lower electricity prices.
There are a number of worthwhile programmes in progress at the moment which have taken my interest, and I thought I would share some of them with you. While climate change issues seem to have taken a back step to health and taxes in the political arena, it’s nice to see some of these programmes taking place to keep our mind on things we can all be doing.
During May, here in Western Australia, daysofchange.org has been running a very comprehensive multi-channel campaign on broad sustainability changes that everyone can make in their lives both at home and work . One of the things I like about this programme is that it gives you the opportunity to state the actions you are already undertaking, as well as pledge to make new improvements in your life. If you haven’t been to their web site to fill out your profile, it’s not too late!
Another programme starting this week has a more specific focus — International Green IT Awareness Week www.greenitweek.org. This event promises some very practical presentations as well as good resources on the event website. You might like to send a link to your IT Manager.
The web sites both post tips about improvements you can make. Even though the audiences are very different for these programmes, one of the themes you can see on both these web sites is the monitoring of energy consumption. Our Greensense View product is designed specifically to help organisations tackle this issue. We believe this is a great way to drive energy efficiency programmes that save money and reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
This weekend I facilitated the first of a two-part workshop series on climate change adaptation in Mundaring. Supported by the EMRC, the Shire of Mundaring is engaging with the community on climate change.
Climate change is a huge issue for local government. While many authorities are developing adaptation plans, this is the first community consultation in Western Australia, at least that I’m aware of.
As part of the workshop, we had Dianne Katscherian from the Department of Health give an excellent presentation on climate change and health in WA. We’ll be incorporating some of her information into our risk assessment framework, for example the need to consider chronic health issues as well death and injury in consequence scales.
During the workshop, I found the discussion and the comments from members of the community quite fascinating. At one one of the tables, we were discussing the prospects for Mundaring in the future based on the climate change scenario we were reviewing. At first the vision for Mundaring in 2070 was seemed quite negative. Just one more dormitory suburb at the end of highway leading out from Perth. A hot and dry place, prone to summer bushfires, with some of natural environment that attracted people to the area irrevocably lost to climate change.
But another participant, when reflecting on how Mundaring had changed in the last 60 years helped me see a more positive vision. He suggested in the past Mundaring had been very self-sufficient with more facilities and amenities in the area so there was less need to travel to Perth. One of the elected members at the workshop described the community in Mundaring as being resilient and used to living with threat of bushfire. I could start to imagine Mundaring in 2070 as a self-sufficient and sustainable community, living in harmony with the changed environment, actively managing the impacts of climate change on their place in Western Australia.
I’m quite excited about the second workshop in two weeks time, when we’ll start work on the action plan. climate change adaptation is one of our climate change consulting services. Please contact us if you’d like help with your climate change strategy.
On Thursday, May 6, Professor Sackett, the Chief Scientist for Australia, presented at the Sir Mark Oliphant CleanTech conference dinner, hosted at the MCG, on the topic of Green Sport.
In referring to some of the great moments in sport she said “with every one of these moments in our sporting history has come emissions of carbon, in the form of CO2 and soot, the same substances that are directly or indirectly risking tennis players fainting at the Australian open as they fight through our hottest summers yet, Olympic athletes to wheeze as they run through poor air quality in Beijing, and contributing to drought in areas where athletes need fields to train.”
Professor Sackett went on to say that “sport is, without a doubt, a crucial part of the Australian cultural fabric” and at Greensense we believe it is an industry that through it’s leadership has the ability to educate and influence a nation to more sustainable living. We are already engaged with the WA Football Commission, Triathlon WA, Perth 2011 and the Drug Aware Pro, some of WA’s leading sporting groups, to help them become leaders in sustainable events and operations. We are working with them on everything from sustainable event management, education and awareness, energy efficient buildings and organising green team initiatives.
The key things Professor Sackett suggested a sporting event must take into account are:
– the greenhouse costs of building the stadium or venue,
– the transportation of tens of thousands of spectators,
– stadium lighting
– and even the cost of old Bob sitting at home watching the game on his voracious plasma TV.
A key suggestion related to transportation as one of the largest contributors to carbon emissions, where encouraging and subsidising public transport would assist in reducing the number of cars on the road and CO2 in the air. Another key area is development in sustainable architecture. According to research conducted by CSIRO, energy use in buildings accounts for 26 per cent of Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions.
We’re already working with some of Western Australian’s top sporting events to help make sport more sustainable, including the Perth 2011 Sailing Regatta, Drug Aware Pro, TriWA and the Bussleton Half-Ironman, and, the Western Australian Football Commission.
We’re passionate about Sustainable Sport. We’d love to help you make your sport or sporting event more sustainable. You can read more about our sustainable event management services or contact us for more information.
A Negawatt is the opposite of a Megawatt. It’s a unit of energy we didn’t have to generate due to energy efficiency.
Negawatt power is cheaper and greener then wind, solar or tidal power. It’s been estimated that every kilowatt of savings at the plug actually contributes 3 kilowatts of savings in total due to energy losses from generation, distribution and consumption.
According to modelling from the International Energy Association, energy efficiency offers the biggest scope for cutting greenhouse gas emissions. It can contribute more abatement than renewable energy, more than carbon capture and storage and more than nuclear power.
The IEA goes on to say in their report:
Energy-effiency investments in buildings, industry and transport usually have short pay-back periods and negative net abatement costs, as the fuel-cost savings over the lifetime of capital stock often outweigh the additional capital costs of the efficiency measure, even when future savings are discounted.
While the recent name change of the Department of Climate Change and Energy Efficiency probably has more to do with the Government’s backflip on the ETS the focus on energy efficiency is welcome.
Greensense View is one way we are supporting energy efficiency. Contact us, if you’d like to find out more.
It looks like Labor has shelved plans for an emissions trading scheme for the time being.
At the same time Republican Lindsey Graham withdrew his support for a similar bill in the US over immigration politics, effectively scuttling ‘cap and trade’ in the US until at least the next congress.
It’s been a long time since the US passed their Climate Change Bill through Congress but, so far, no progress has been made getting a similar bill through the Senate. There are some parallels with the passage of the CPRS here.
On Monday a new US Climate Change Bill is due to be presented to the Senate, proposed jointly by Democrat John Kerry, Republican Lindsey Graham and independent Joe Leiberman.
This is going to be the last real chance to get a bill passed before the US mid-term elections and the trio have been working hard to get bipartisan and industry support for the Bill. The outcome of the debate on this Bill is important for Australia for two reasons.
Firstly, the prospects for improving on the Copenhagen Accord will be bleak without meaningful US action. While the US has made a reduction commitment under the accord, as has Australia, we still need to see what policy the US will use to achieve the target.
Secondly, both major parties in Australia are keen to be seen to be in-line with US policy. With a Federal election looming, the outcome of debate on this bill in the US could influence policy here — or at least election posturing.
There have been claims in the media here that ‘cap and trade’ is dead and this means the US will move to a direct action model, in line with Coalition policy. On the other hand, we’ve recently had President Obama’s comments on the 7:30 Report that “you have to put a price on carbon of some sort”, in line with Labor policy.
We should know more details on the Bill this week and have a good idea of its prospects soon enough, but no one is suggesting it will pass easily, and most are suggesting it will fail. If the Bill does fail, does that mean the US won’t meet its reduction target? Does it mean ‘cap and trade’ is dead? And what does it mean for Australia?
I recently attended a presentation by from Frank Litz, a Senior Fellow from the World Resources Institute (WRI). He said that research still to be published by WRI has found that the US could still meet their reduction target without a national ‘cap and trade’ system. There are two reasons why. Firstly, there is already a regional emissions trading scheme in the US and there are two more in development. The Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative is underway and covers the electricity sector in 10 mid-Atlantic states. The Western Climate Initiative will cover 11 Pacific states across the US and Canada and the Midwest Greenhouse Gas Reduction Accord will cover 7 more US states. It is clear that even without a national ‘cap and trade’ system, emissions trading will be a major driver of abatement in North America.
Also, the President has significant power to regulate emissions through existing legislation, such as the Clean Air Act. The Environmental Protection Authority has recently issued a finding that greenhouse gas emissions endanger public health and welfare with the support of the White House and following a ruling from the Supreme Court. This means they can begin to put in place performance standards on major emission sources such as vehicles, factories, and power plants. Other agencies such as the Department of Energy and the Department of Transport also have powers that could be used by the President to regulate emissions.
It’s important to distinguish this kind of ‘direct action’ from that proposed by the Liberal Party. The Liberal Party’s policy is to make direct investments in offsets and some renewable energy production and to provide grants to companies to reduce emissions. The policy placese no limit on emissions and makes no attempt to regulate emission sources.
Some people have gone further and suggested that the US EPA might have the power to implement a national emissions trading scheme under existing laws. But even without using existing laws there are some reasons to think the US will have a national scheme soon and if not during this congress, then probably in the next one. And if the US puts a price on carbon, Australia is pretty sure to follow suit.
One of the reasons there is doubt that the Kerry-Graham-Leiberman Bill will get enough support this time around is the looming mid-term elections, rather than insurmountable opposition to such a scheme. The Bill will need Republican support to pass and there is a view that after Obama’s success with Health reform, the Republicans don’t want to give the Democrats another high-profile win. Also, President Obama has indicated that the Financial Reform Bill is a higher priority and he also has a highly political Supreme Court nomination to deal with before the mid-terms. So climate change might not get the attention it deserves.
Direct regulation by the EPA is very unpopular with industry and is seen as a more expensive way to achieve emissions reductions. So we can expect to see renewed pressure from industry for a national trading scheme if and when they become subject to more stringent regulation of emissions. Again, there are echoes of the situation in Australia, where industry is calling for more certainty.
What does this all mean for Australia and our upcoming Federal election?
Right now neither of the major parties has a strong or popular position on climate change, but both parties will hope to get some political mileage from the outcome of debate on this bill. If the US bill does get up then it will provide strong support for Labor’s policy and may see Rudd want to make even more of climate change as an election issue. Despite his failure to pass the CPRS Bill and the disappointment of Copenhagen, he is back talking about emissions trading now and definitely sees it as an area where he has stronger credentials than the Coalition.
Tony Abbott seems quite happy to make up new policies on the run, so what he will do is anyone’s guess. If the Bill fails it should be good news for him because the media will interpret this as a trend away from emissions trading towards direct action. However, President Obama will still want to show international leadership on climate change and demonstrate to partners that the US is taking action to meet its commitment under the Copenhagen Accord ahead of COP16 in Mexico. He will probably draw to attention to the trading schemes that are already underway in the US and use his executive powers to start regulating emissions with new performance standards.
This kind of action is quite different to what the Coalition is proposing, which lets polluters off the hook entirely. And the US will probably get a national emissions trading scheme, sooner or later.
Barrack Obama was on the 7:30 Report last night and he said a few interesting things.
On the need to move to a low-carbon economy:
“[What] I would say to the world is that if we focus our attention, our ingenuity, our innovative capacity on transforming from a fossil fuel based economy to a clean energy based economy then potentially we can not only solve the problem of climate change but unleash an enormous amount of economic growth for the future.”
On the need for a price on carbon:
“I am absolutely convinced you have to put a price on carbon of some sort, so there are a number of ways of doing that, you could do a carbon tax, you can do a cap and trade system which is what originally I had suggested, very similar to the program that Kevin Rudd has proposed, but the key is to change incentives for the market place, where we are actually pricing these pollutants that are going into our atmosphere, if a price is placed on them, if industry has to take them into account then we can count on the market place responding effectively.”