No word yet from the utility companies on what impact these increases will have on business customers. We’ll blog on that as soon as we know.

WA budget announced. Electricity and water prices to increase is a post from: Greensense

The premise is simple: That whilst you can design an environmentally frugal building, it is the way the building is used that will ultimately determine how well it performs. The single biggest reason that well designed buildings fail to perform as well as the engineers’ models say they should is occupant behaviour. What LEED have acknowledged here is that by allowing the building to communicate with its occupants, explaining where and why energy and water are being used (or wasted) and what actions occupants can take to minimise that waste, that the overall performance of the building is improved, sometimes by as much as 30%.

If you want to download the fact sheet on the new credit then you can find it here.

Behavioural change recognised in LEED is a post from: Greensense

For those of you short for time, here are a couple of the main points:

• Energy waste related to inefficient operation of buildings can sometimes be hard to detect, but it IS there
• High quality, granular consumption data is the key to identifying opportunities
• Commercial buildings can find savings of up to 30% savings
• Many of these opportunities can be acted on by building owners and managers, without the need for outside expertise.

Operational efficiencies: The low hanging fruit in saving energy is a post from: Greensense

A detailed demand profile curve is a must-have for any facility and is often chock-a-block full of useful info to help you track down efficiency opportunities. During this webinar, the gurus at Greensense product support will talk about the value of profile curves for anyone looking to improve the energy and water efficiency of their buildings.

Upcoming Webinar: Getting to know your energy profile is a post from: Greensense

One of the interpretative modules used on the home owners dashboard

We’ve recently teamed up with the Water Corporation, Western Australia’s water utility, and environmental consultancy ENV, as part of the H₂OmeSmart campaign.

H₂Ome Smart is partially funded through the Water Corporation and the Australian Government’s Water for the Future initiative and aims to help households in Perth and Geraldton reduce their water use and encourage water efficiency.

What are we doing?

You won’t be surprised to hear that the area we’re working on is around the use of interpretive, contextual, real-time feedback as a tool to help home owners better understand, and then reduce, their water use.

How does it work?

Each home owner has access to a web based dashboard showing not only their own water use, both in real time as well as historical trends, but, and here’s the important bit, a view of how their consumption compares to other households in the H₂Ome Smart program.

We know that timely, engaging feedback plays a crucial role in helping us understand where, when and why we use water and energy, whether it be in our homes or our businesses. Often though, these kind of behavioral change initiatives can miss a trick, and that trick is context. For many people, it’s the ability to see how their performance compares to others that really brings the data to life.  In the case of this H₂Ome Smart project we provide context in a couple of different ways: Firstly, by comparing a home owner’s water use directly to other participants in the program, represented as a leader board and, secondly, by comparing that water use to predefined benchmarks that use a series of bands to categorise water use from “very high” to “very low”.

The project is still underway but initial feedback has been excellent. One thing we’ve been particularly excited about is how competitive the households have become about their water use! Competition can be a fantastic component of a behaviour change campaign and is often a great way to get folks engaged. We’ve already had feedback from participants telling us that not only are they working hard to improve their position on the leader board, but they’re also using the real time data to compete with family members, in particular around who spends more time in the shower. Great stuff and we’re very much looking forward to seeing the hard data over the coming weeks.

Partnering with the Water Corporation to reduce household water use is a post from: Greensense

Our next outing is at Green Cities next week. So if you’re in Sydney then drop us a line or catch up with us at the conference. You can also contact us if you’d like to go on our mailing list for an invite to the next event.

Talking Buildings Event at the Greenhouse is a post from: Greensense

Join us for an informal talk about Talking Buildings — buildings that engage their occupants in a conversation about sustainability and building performance.

We’ll discuss the concepts, provide some case studies, and get down and dirty with some of the technology required. This will be an industry focused event — food and drinks are on us — with plenty of opportunity to chat and network. Places are limited so make sure you RSVP as soon as possible.

Talking Building Event is a post from: Greensense

Typical mining town house

The North West of WA can be a harsh environment and the mining boom means more of us have to live and work there. Air-conditioning is essential, but air-conditioners in such a hot environment can use a lot of electricity. How can we create more sustainable, efficient homes in the north-west, homes that provide a comfortable living environment and use less energy and water?

Rio Tinto is exploring this question in Karratha and Paraburdoo. They have selected Greensense View to provide real-time monitoring of electricity, gas and water use as they retrofit a number of homes in both towns. While this isn’t our first foray into residential housing, we’re particularly excited by the potential of this project, and by the opportunity to contribute to a more sustainable mining industry.

Greensense and Rio Tinto team up for energy efficient mining accomodation is a post from: Greensense

Today the Federal Government announced the official opening of three new grant schemes under the Clean Energy Future banner.

• The $40 million energy efficiency information grants scheme is offering funding of up to $1 million to industry associations and non-profits for the development of information resources targeted at small and medium-sized businesses and community organisations.
• The $200 million community energy efficiency program is offering grants to councils and community organisations of up to $5 million for energy efficiency projects targeting community-use buildings, facilities and lighting.
• There’s also $100 million set aside for the low income energy efficiency program which offers grants of up to $10 million trial and evaluate projects to help low-income households become more energy efficient.

It’s the second one on that list that we’re particularly excited about, for a couple of reasons. Firstly, it’s been a long time coming! It was parked ahead of the Clean Energy Future legislation so it could be unveiled again with all the other sweeteners to help the carbon tax go down easily. It’s also good to see the Federal Government sharing the love around. The local government and community sector hasn’t had much attention when it comes to handouts in the energy efficiency space, with the commercial building sector seemingly getting the lions share, most recently via the feeding frenzy that was the Green Building Fund. And, we have a lot of councils on our client list and we’ve already been chatting to excited councils about what they might be able to achieve with the help of a grant.

So, what’s the Community Energy Efficiency Program all about? Quoting verbatim from the guidelines:

The objectives of the Community Energy Efficiency Program (the Program) are to:
• support a range of local councils and community organisations increase the energy efficiency of different types of non-residential council and community-use buildings, facilities and lighting
• demonstrate and encourage the adoption of improved energy management practices within councils, organisations and the broader community.

In addition to the objectives above, the Program will provide the following benefits:
• better services and improved amenity of buildings and community facilities
• minimising energy consumption and costs to manage the impacts of the carbon price
• building the knowledge and capacity of the energy services and construction industry, and supporting competitive Australian energy efficiency technology and equipment manufacturers
• contributing to the national effort to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Sounds pretty good to us.  Specifically focused on community and councils but broad in terms of what kinds of projects might get support. One point I should make is that solar PV installations will not be eligible. Solar has had a pretty good crack of the whip in recent times so it’s good to see a scheme focused purely on energy efficiency. 

The full details are in the guidelines but get your skates on as round one applications close on March 23.

New grant scheme for energy efficiency in the community is a post from: Greensense

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.

Environmental Sustainability Pack is a post from: Greensense

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.

An Analysis of Energy Behaviour Programs in the Workplace is a post from: Greensense

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

Talking Buildings is a post from: Greensense

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.

Green on YouTube is a post from: Greensense

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)

Residential electricity prices up 37% is a post from: Greensense

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!

iiNet Sustainability Report is a post from: Greensense

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

Energy savings in schools: the results are in is a post from: Greensense

EVENT DETAILS
Date: 11th November 2011
Time: 5:30–7:30pm
Venue: The Vic Hotel

Sustainability Sundowner is a post from: Greensense

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.

Australia will have a carbon price by mid 2012 is a post from: Greensense

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

Schools are bringing it down is a post from: Greensense

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.

Western Power Bring It Down Challenge is a post from: Greensense