Archive for the ‘Accounting and reporting (NGER, NCOS, ISO14064)’ Category
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 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.
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.
The Department of Climate Change has announced it will be running a series of NGER reporting workshops with the first to be held this Thursday 25 June in Perth. The workshops are aimed at NGER registrants and will provide a brief overview of NGER but, more particularly, walk participants through the use of OSCAR, the online system used to submit GHG reporting data to the Department.
If you’re interested in attending then you can find out more info and register on the DCC website. The Department is warning that places are limited, although they will most likely run more workshops if there’s the demand.
With the anticipated release of the Department of Climate Change’s white paper on the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme (CPRS) (due Dec 15), many questions remain around the role and characteristics that the regulator will play, both in carbon trading and also in the implementation of NGERS. It’s a shift the industry will need to make quickly — from design to implementation. Here are some of the signifincat questions that need to be asked:
Big stick or enabler?
Will the regulator be solely responsible for monitoring compliance against the legislation and look for those who are not meeting their obligation, or will they look to become a source of information that supports the process?
Cost recovery
A report completed by the CSIRO entitled “Growing the Green Collar Economy” in June 2008 has estimated that over 3 million green collared workers will be required to help reduce our national carbon footprint. This is across all industry but what about in the case of the regulator? New roles will need to be created to administer the implementation of NGERS. These do not exist today and therefore will be an additional cost to government — which poses the question — how will this cost be recovered?
Size of the regulator
NGERS estimates the threshold coverage is 700 companies. How many staff will it take to regulate the industry?
Audit framework
Work is currently underway to define the auditing framework and guidelines required for NGERS and the CPRS so while legislation has already been implemented the actual regulation is now playing catch up — what is the role of the regulator versus the external auditor?
Workflow
What system will be implemented to support the workflow of submission, follow up, compliance, tracking, reviewing and monitoring? The implementation of the regulatory process needs to be defined in detail and then supported with appropriate tools to ensue the long term efficiency of the system.
Training
The guidelines have been produced and they are predominately based on the GHG Protocol and ISO 14064. The GHG Institute provides training for organisation and project level carbon accounting under this protocol within an online environment. The questions remains though — how do both industry representatives and, more important to this discussion, the regulators, get the required training within the right time frames?
