Posts Tagged ‘local government’
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.
The Department of Climate Change and Energy Efficiency has started to unveil the proposed methodologies for the generation of offsets under the Labor governments Carbon Farming Initiative.
The idea behind the CFI is to provide economic incentives to land owners and managers to adopt practices that reduce carbon pollution. Whilst the list of eligible activities is likely to grow, the government has released methodologies for the first two; savanna burning and the capture and combustion of landfill gas.
More details on both can be found on the DCCEE website. For local governments and other landfill operators, the landfill methodology is definitely worth a read. Whilst much has been borrowed from other, more established, methodologies such as NGER, there are also some significant differences, both in the broad rules governing what emissions are “in play” under the scheme, as well as the very technical details of how abated emissions are calculated.
On a different note, just a reminder about our upcoming event looking at role of behavioural change in sustainability projects. More info and booking details here.
The Environmental Institute of Australia and New Zealand (EIANZ) are running a climate change leadership forum on November 23rd, on tools, techniques and leadership lessons on climate change adaptation and mitigation. Greensense Managing Director, Derek Gerrard, will be presenting on smart technologies and behavioural change, reviewing the Subiaco Oval case study, as well as our carbon emission’s reporting solution for Local Government in partnership with WALGA.
If you haven’t registered and would like to you can find out more information here.
Today the Federal Government announced $80 million dollars to help local councils and communities to make energy efficient upgrades to street lighting, community facilities, and council buildings. Details of the new scheme can be found in the Fact Sheet (PDF).
Successful applicants will need to report on the energy they have saved, and use their experience and project plans to help similar facilities undertaking these upgrades in the future. Greensense View ® is already used by eight local government authorities to monitor energy and water use in community buildings in real-time. Greensense View can also be used to monitor streetlights. It provides a great way to help target energy efficient upgrades for maximum impact, and to engage stakeholders and tell the story about the improvements that are being made
We blogged recently on the launch of Melbourne’s bike share scheme.
As it happens I’m over in Melbourne at the moment for the 2010 Carbon Expo. It’s my first trip and, I must say, it’s a cool town. I was particularly impressed to walk out of my hotel and almost immediately stumble across one of the bike stations for the new scheme.
The concept has been working well in other places around the world — Paris and Montreal have had successful schemes for a while (once the Parisians had stopped stealing the bikes) and London has also recently launched its own version, sponsored by Barclays bank — so a bike share scheme should work well in Melbourne, right?
Wrong.
Ok, sure, the cycle network is pretty good; the city is high density with everything pretty close to everything else; even the weather tries to help out, afterall cool and grey is perfect for cycling. So the ingredients are there, but none of these pros can outweigh a big a very obvious con. Victoria, like the rest of Australia, is a nanny state. In particular, you’re required by law to wear a cycling helmet when you jump on a bike, and they’re not kidding either.
Only moments after finding the bike station I spotted my first actual user — a middle aged chap proudly peddling alongside the Yarra astride his bright blue share bike. ‘Wow’, I thought, ‘This really works and people are actually using these bikes’. But disaster was only moments away. Unfortunately, our eco conscious bike sharer was not wearing a helmet and even more unfortunately three female police officers, also on bikes as it happens, were peddling in the opposite direction. You can guess what happened next. I stood and watched, fascinated, as our three cycling crime fighters wrote this poor guy a ticket for $150 (yup, I looked it up). I don’t think we’ll see him back on one of those bikes any time soon.
Now I understand that rules are rules, but that little exchange struck me as totally absurd. Bike share schemes are presumably not targeted at regular cyclists. These folks will already already have their own bike, helmet and (for the hardcore) lashings of lycra. Instead, they’re aimed at people who may occasionally want to use a bike to get from A to B, or for that spur of the moment trip when you decide to jump on a bike instead of walk or take public transport, or maybe for those tourists whos feet are getting tired.
So what do all our would-be bike sharers have in common? Well one thing is for sure, they don’t spend their day carrying around a bike helmet on the off chance that they might jump on a share bike at some point!
I’m not the only one who thinks this is a ridiculous situation. A quick search on google revealed a number of articles and blog posts on the topic — here’s one from The Age back in July.
So what can we learn from Melbourne’s experience? Well firstly that we need to lighted up. All of the most popular cycling cities in the world allow you to ride a bike without wearing a helmet. They manage to achieve this with a decrease in the number of injuries per km cycled compared to Australia. Secondly, it’s vital that councils do everything they can to ensure citizens adopt these great initiatives. There’s no point trying something like bike sharing if potential users have very compelling reasons to stay away. These issues need to be identified upfront and addressed before you launch your project. In this particular instance I understand the Victorian government is coming under considerable pressure to adapt council by-laws within the CBD that will provide an exemption for bike share users. I, for one, hope that this happens and happens quickly.
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.
Vancouver City Council has recently passed new building regulations requiring developers to include charging stations for electric vehicles (EVs) in at least 20 per cent of parking bays in new multi-dwelling buildings.
The Council have already established regulations requiring new homes to be pre-wired directly to the garage to make installing an electric vehicle charging system simpler in the future.
Vancouver is not alone. A lot of cities in North America including Chicago, San Francisco and Portland are putting in place new policies and new infrastructure to support EVs. The UK government is also rolling out charging stations.
The benefits of EVs are clear. When they are charged from renewable sources they produce no greenhouse gas emissions. When an EV is charged from a coal-fired power station it can still produce less emissions because traditional internal combustion engines are very inefficient. EVs can also benefit from load-shifting — charging at night when electricity is cheap.
EVs are also becoming mainstream very quickly. Better Place is rolling out large-scale infrastructure for charging EVs (including in Australia) and almost every major car manufacturer has plans to produce an EV (I have my eye on the new Mini E). It won’t be too long before they are available “drive away” from the showroom in Perth.
Local government has a very important role to play in helping EVs become mainstream in Australia. The key to success will be good public charging infrastructure supported by consistent and proactive government policies.
While Perth has an active Electric Vehicle Association, I’m not aware of any local government action on this front, yet, and I’d be keen to hear about any new initiatives.
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
