Archive for the ‘Greensense’ Category
On March 22–24, the WA Sustainable Energy Association will be hosting the Energising WA conference and Greensense is proud to be involved on a number of levels. Not only are we a Silver Sponsor of the conference, but we are also contributing by conducting a sustainability audit aimed at measuring the impact of the event to ensure the sustainability of future events — a theme at the core of WASEA’s business.
We’ll also be exhibiting at the conference — at stand number 1 — so why not come and say hello? We’ll be showcasing our dashboard product, Greensense View, which aims to increase awareness of realtime energy use, drive behavioural change and reduce consumption.
But wait, there’s still more! Greensense is also excited to announce that our Local Government Greenhouse Gas Reporting and Abatement Platform is a finalist in the category of Community and Regional Initiative at the Awards for Excellence and Innovation. The winner will be announced on Wednesday March 24, so stay tuned to hear how we fair. This platform was developed in collaboration with the Western Australian Local Government Association (WALGA). You can read more about it here.
We’re happy to have our new website design up and running. The old design was fine for when Peter, Derek and I first started the business two years ago. But since then, we’ve tripled in size and can count organisations like Horizon Power, Woodside, Sunset Events, BHP Billiton Iron Ore, a bunch of WA local governments through our climate change consulting preferred supplier agreement with WALGA and great Western Australian events like the Drug Aware Pro among our customers. It was time for a new site.
As well as a changing the design, we’ve changed our site to explain our services in a new way. We’ve divided up what we do into three main areas: Climate Change Consulting, Sustainable Event Management, and Technology for Sustainability. Expect to find more information within these areas over the next couple of months as we provide more details and case studies for our services.
The area that will get the most attention is Technology for Sustainability as we provide more information on a new product we are launching soon. Stay tuned. You’ll already find some information in this area on car pooling with liftshare. Liftshare provide the worlds best car pooling service and we are partnering with them to respond to a request for tender for a major new car pooling service in Australia.
We’d like to thank the clever folk at Cleverstarfish Web Design and Caboodle Copywriting for their help with the new site. If you have any feedback, let me know.
We held our first event for 2010 on Monday. Peter presented on the outcomes from the Copenhagen Conference, which he attended in December.
We got a great turn-out, with about seventy people attending, and we were very pleased with the level of interest and engagement. One of the main resons we decided to organise these events was what we saw as a lack of decent forums for networking and sharing ideas on climate change response. Thanks to all of our clients who came along and all the new people we met at the event.
We’ll be running our next event in May on domestic and international options for forestry offsets. Please e-mail us at info@greensense.com.au if you’d like to recieve an invitation.
Greensense co-founder Peter Tickler is currently in Copenhagen for the United Nations discussions on climate change.
We will be running a morning seminar in February to give you the opportunity to hear about the output of the convention, how it will influence your business in 2010 and a chance to network with like minded professionals. The Seminar will run on Feb 1 from 11am — 12.30pm at The Melbourne Hotel, 942 Hay St Perth.
Please RSVP to kylie@greensense.com.au by Fri Jan 8th if you or any of your colleagues would like to attend – spaces are limited.
Greensense is continuing to grow, with Annette McNamara our most recent addition. After eight years in the resources sector, Annette joined Greensense in May this year under a part time arrangement and has recently accepted a full time position. Since joining us, Annette has been fine-tuning our Sustainable Event Management offering and assisting with numerous carbon audits. Annette has a passion for the environment and continued study, recently completing a postgraduate certificate in Sustainable Development, the first step towards her Masters.
Greensense is currently exhibiting at the Local Government Convention hosted by WALGA. Day 1 kicked off with an opening address from WALGA President Cr Bill Mitchell followed up by an inspiring message from Frans Johansson on innovation. We are excited about Day 2 with some dedicated sessions on climate change.
We are show casing our real time energy monitoring and visualisation technology (all within Lego City) as well as completing a carbon audit for the event. If you are attending — would love to say hi so please drop by.
Opening Address
Greensense will be exhibiting at the Local Government Convention at the Perth Exhibition Centre from Thursday 6th — Saturday 8th August. We will be completing a carbon audit for the event as well as having the Greensense Dashboard on display. Greensense is there as a WALGA preferred supplier for Local Government climate change consulting services.
If you are at the conference, we will be at stand 48 so come by and say hi.
Sustainable event management (SEM) is about applying sustainable development principles to the management of a particular event. Specifically, it looks at minimising an event’s ecological footprint and ensuring that it does not impact negatively on the communities and stakeholders involved.
As the world becomes more aware of climate change and other sustainability issues, sustainable events are becoming more common. So why should you consider including sustainability into your event planning and how should you go about doing it?
Why implement SEM?
Sustainability is an end itself but there are a number of other reasons to consider implementing SEM, including the following:
- SEM can deliver cost savings through better use of resources such as energy and water.
- SEM can provide the means to differentiate your event from other similar events.
- SEM can be used to balance any negativity associated with events requiring long distance travel (this can be particularly relevant for remote locations such as Perth)
- SEM provides the opportunity to establish effective relationships with stakeholders and improve your reputation
How to implement SEM
There is no single agreed methodology for implementing SEM. However, in 2007, the UK developed the British Standard for Sustainable Event Management (BS 8901). This standard is the first of its kind and may prove to be the basis of an international standard.
The BS8901 framework addresses sustainability as a process of continuous improvement. One will never achieve ‘sustainability’, but rather continuously progress towards it. Building on this concept, SEM becomes less daunting as it is not about doing all the right things, but about doing some of those things the right way. Then, at your next event, you can try changing a few more things and so on.
BS8901 is not a prescriptive standard. It provides a simple framework and some guiding steps to include in the event management planning process. These fall into three main phases:
- Pre-event planning – Here, you should define a sustainability policy for the event, establish commitment upfront and set high level goals, objectives and KPIs.
- Implementation and event monitoring – Once the objectives have been agreed, effective management of the supply chain is required to ensure all parties are working towards common goals. You should track your KPIs throughout the planning process and during the event to address and issues as they arise.
- Post-event review – KPIs are measured after the event and a review completed to identify which objectives were achieved, what needed more attention, and what can be done next year to improve again?
Following the above approach during your event planning process and ensuring you have some critical success factors (such as early engagement with your stakeholders and sufficient buy-in from your event planning team) will result in an event with a successful sustainability focus and its associated benefits.
The role of carbon offsets in SEM
A carbon neutral event is not necessarily a sustainable event. Even if one of your event objectives is to be carbon neutral, it is not enough to simply buy offsets.
Most events will have relatively modest greenhouse gas emissions and the vast majority of those emissions will be ‘Scope 3′ and associated with suppliers to the event. It is much more effective to work with your suppliers to reduce their sustainability impacts and to only use carbon offsets to balance the residual greenhouse gas emissions.
Managing an event is complex and time consuming and it pays to be pragmatic. Because many offset providers offer simple web-based calculators to self-assess your event’s carbon footprint, it may be tempting to simply buy offsets online and then proudly advertise your event as carbon neutral. However, you risk being seen to be green washing if this is all you do.
You will not necessarily achieve the reputation benefits you’re seeking if you have blatantly ignored obvious sustainability issues such as waste management or water use. Also, you may be in breach of the Trade Practices Act if you claim to be carbon neutral and cannot substantiate your claim, or if you have purchased inappropriate or poor quality offsets.
How Greensense can help
We offer a complete sustainable event management service, which is in line with the BS 8901 standard, and would be more than happy to work with you to make your event more sustainable.
e-Waste is any electronic equipment that is no longer useful as originally intended. e-Waste includes computers, mobile phones, televisions, fax machines, etc. This waste may be donated or sold for re-use, recycled, or disposed of, ending up in landfill.
When e-waste ends up in landfill, many different environmental issues are encountered, due to the materials it contains. International studies show that 70% of heavy metals (e.g. lead, mercury, cadmium) in all landfill come from e-waste. By recycling the equipment, the toxic substances can be removed, and resources can be collected for use in new equipment, saving energy in mining and manufacturing, and therefore reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
The e-waste problem is compounded by the relatively short life-span of electronic equipment and the fast growing volume of electronic devices in the market.
In Australia approximately 140,000 tonnes of e-Waste is currently generated per annum, with only 4% being recycled. Therefore, much more effort needs to be made to re-use this equipment to extend its life, and recycle it at the end of its life.
New recycling plants are being established within Australia to process this waste safely and effectively, and programmes are building momentum. Some electronics manufacturers, such as Apple and Dell, are embracing ‘product stewardship’ and taking responsibility for the environmental impacts of the full life-cycle of their products.
Apple are sponsoring a free event with local councils in Perth on the weekend of 6-7th June 2009 (website, poster) to recycle e-waste from consumers and small businesses. We encourage people to participate in this event, especially if you have been stockpiling any old equipment at home.
These voluntary efforts are to be commended, however, with many electronics manufacturers operating with low margins, an industry-wide self-regulated approach is not viable.
Therefore, governments are working towards introducing regulation. In April 2009 EPHC released a consultation paper titled A National Waste Policy: Managing Waste to 2020, with e-waste on the agenda. Earlier this month, at the 18th Meeting of EPHC:
“Council renewed its support for the development of an ambitious national waste policy by the end of 2009. It agreed to release a draft framework for the national policy, which will draw on the input of stakeholders, for public comment during June and July. The Waste policy will be finalised at the Council Meeting in November. The policy will establish a new national vision and direction for waste for the first time since 1992.”
Local councils, who are burdened with the majority of responsibility at present, welcome such moves.
In the meantime, businesses should think about the steps they can take to tackle this issue. Some action items to consider are:
- Measure the environmental impact of current ICT assets in the corporate asset register.
- Establish an e-waste policy, as part of a Sustainable Procurement Policy.
- Budget for disposal of e-waste during the procurement process.
e-Waste is just one consideration in the practice of Green IT. If you would like assistance in establishing Green IT policies and procedures in your business, please contact Greensense.
Greensense is continuing to grow and our most recent addition is Phil Marshall.
Phil joined Greensense as a Principal Consultant in February with over a decade of experience in implementing information systems spanning both business and technical domains, always with a focus on quality and exceeding client expectations.
In recent years, Phil has worked with blue chip mining and oil & gas companies implementing Stakeholder Engagement processes and Stakeholder Relationship Management systems igniting a passion for sustainability and corporate social responsibility. At Greensense Phil will have the opportunity to help companies make the transition into a carbon-limited economy and help them make sense of climate change.
Last night a few of us at Greensense went down to the foreshore in South Perth with some excellent pizza and a drop of red wine to watch the city lights go out as Perth participated in Earth Hour.
For the owners and managers of the big office buildings, Earth Hour seems to be all about the big, bright building signage. Turn that off and all is well, even if the lights inside are still blazing. Many of the buildings employed the low risk strategy of not bothering to turn on the signs at all! Others, like the AMP building, were a little late flicking the swtich, but most got there in the end.
The challenge for these building managers and their tenants is to extend their positive actions beyond these high profile events. By the time everyone is back at work on Monday, the Earth Hour posters in the offices will have been taken down and it’ll be business as usual.
We look a few photos and have put them together into a short movie. I hope you like it.
Earth Hour 2009, Perth, Western Australia from Pete Tickler on Vimeo.
Greensense recently attended the Carbon Trading Summit presented by the AIA. This is Part 4 of a series. You may like to start by reading Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3.
Following Tony Mahar we heard from Kim Horne. Kim was originally invited to speak in his role as the President of Chamber of Minerals and Energy. However, he instead focussed on his experiences with Alcoa Australia and Mitchell Corporation, a local trucking company.
In both cases he concentrated on the positive actions that business can take. He discussed Alcoa’s local cogeneration power plant and the sequestration of carbon from their industrial processes. He also discussed Mitchell’s initiative to convert their fleet to dual-fuel (LNG/diesel) motors.
What was particularly impressive was the approach Alcoa was taking to employee engagement. By harnessing the innovative thinking and enthusiasm of their workforce they were finding energy efficiency opportunities that benefit the environment and their bottom line.
Concluding thoughts
The tag-line for the event was ‘the bottom line’, with an event flyer that challenged attendees with the following questions:
What does the introduction of the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme (CPRS) mean to you & do you understand the issues that will affect you and your organisation? How much is this going to cost you and who can you go to for help?
I think this was a good event and the audience benefited from a broad range of views on the proposed emissions trading scheme. But I don’t think questions posed above were fully answered by any of the speakers.
If you attended this event looking for answers on how to prepare for the emissions trading scheme, here are a few things to think about. First and foremost, it is important to understand that the point of an emissions trading scheme is not to just be another tax. It is intended to help encourage investment to reduce the carbon intensity of your business. You need to be viewing this as an opportunity to transform your business in a positive way.
To start with, you must make sure you fully understand your compliance obligations. Do you need to report under NGERS? Are you likely to be a liable entity under the CPRS? You may need to take some immediate steps because the first reporting period for NGERS commenced on the 1st of July 2008.
Next you should do some commercial analysis and modeling. Do you know the carbon intensity of your business? You don’t need to do a full lifecycle assessment of all of your products services, like that undertaken by Mars Foods, but your should still follow a standard methodology. You should develop some new organisational metrics to help you to manage the carbon performance of your organisation. For example, these might be ‘tonnes CO2e per unit shipped’ or ‘tonnes CO2e per $1,000 EBIT’. You should also model the likely impacts on your business of different carbon cost scenarios. You should definitely know at what WACCO2 (weighted average cost of carbon) the viability of your business, in its current form, is put at risk.
Now begin to develop a register of carbon abatement opportunities: initiatives that will reduce the carbon intensity of your business. You should also adapt your capital expense planning process so that business cases for new initiatives consider impacts on carbon intensity and WACCO2. Consider starting a programme of employee engagement and innovation. Your workforce will be your best source of opportunities to innovate and transform your business.
Lastly, start thinking more broadly about the sustainability of your business and the opportunities it presents, not just for your bottom line but also for your community and the wider society and environment. Climate change and carbon management should just be one aspect of your overall sustainability strategy.
The Government is setting a price on carbon to help trigger a transformative journey for your business, the economy and society generally. If you’d like help with this journey, we’d be more than happy to help.
Greensense recently attended the Carbon Trading Summit presented by the AIA. This is Part 3 of a series. You may like to start by reading Part 1 and Part 2.
Following Ray Wills and Andrew Canyon, we heard from Tony Mahar, Director of Sustainable Development with the Australian Food and Grocery Council.
Tony started with some background on the businesses represented by the Australian Food and Grocery Council. I was interested to hear that food manufacturing is the largest manufacturing sector in Australia, and is larger than automative parts and textiles.
Tony echoed some of the comments made by Andrew Canyon, calling for the CPRS to be delayed because industry needed more time to respond. He also made some interesting comments about the related Agriculture sector and how their eventual inclusion in the CPRS could create an additional burden for food manufacturers.
Initially, the CPRS will include about 1000 businesses that together account for around 75% of Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions. Including Agriculture within the CPRS, potentially slated for 2015, would require an additional 130,000 businesses to be included. In addition there are some technical challenges measuring on-farm emissions. One possibility raised by the White Paper is shifting the point of obligation up the supply chain to the food manufacturers. Tony also made an interesting aside about the potential for climate change to reduce the nutritional value of food.
Tony then spent some time on a case study of Mars Food Australia and the action they were taking. They have recently completed a life cycle assessment of Dolmio pasta sauce using the PAS2050 methodology.
Mars found that there are 259g CO2e emissions associated with every $1 unit of product. The majority comes from the glass jar and metal cap. Given the ceiling price of $40 per tonne in the proposed CPRS the 259g would have a carbon cost of around 1c.
However, this does not mean Mars would be directly liable for these emissions under the CPRS or would even necessarily incur additional costs from their up-stream supply chain for that cost of carbon. This is something we might discuss more in a later post.
I’ll conclude this series in my next post with some comments on the presentation made by Kim Horne, from Alcoa.
Greensense recently attended the Carbon Trading Summit presented by the AIA. This is Part 2 of a series. You may like to start by reading Part 1.
Following Tony Owen, Bruce Robinson, and Tim Shanahan, we heard from Ray Wills. Ray is the Chief Executive of the WA Sustainable Energy Association. Greensense is one of the members of WASEA.
Ray started with a useful primer on climate change and made the point that while climate change is a theory, it is a theory in the scientific sense, not the colloquial sense of something unproven. That is, it is a widely accepted theoretical explanation supported by clear empirical evidence. He took a number of opportunities to discuss the likely impacts of climate on our local region, mentioning the rule of thumb that each degree of warming was roughly equivalent to a 150Km shift in climatic zone.
He also provided a useful reminder of the long period of policy development to ‘put a price on carbon’ in Australia, starting with Rio in 1992. This reminder was particularly salient given the concerns raised by subsequent speakers that the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme was being rushed and that industry needed more time.
He finally, and perhaps unsurprisingly, finished with some advocacy for renewable energy describing Western Australia as “the middle-east of renewable energy resources”.
We next heard from Andrew Canyon from the local chamber of commerce and industry. He used the forum to advance CCI’s view that while they supported the concept of an emissions trading scheme, the CPRS legislation was being rushed, the current financial crisis meant industry did not have the resources to respond, and that the Government should “do it once and do it right”. He also took a swipe at renewable energy trotting out the old furfy that renewables could not provide ‘base load power’ and implying that WA should stick with coal and gas.
Andrew was followed by Tony Mahr, the Director of Sustainable Development with the Australian Food and Grocery Council. I’ll cover Tony’s presentation in my next post.
Clif and I recently attended the Carbon Trading Summit, which was presented by the Alliance of Industry Associations.
We were there to create a carbon inventory for the event — sustainable event management is one of the services Greensense offer — but we also enjoyed the presentations. There were seven speakers at the event, faciliated by the always engaging Gerry Gannon.
Tony Owen spoke first, a professor of economics at Curtin University. Tony explained the economic logic of an emissions trading scheme and a carbon tax. They both increase the direct costs incurred by consumers and businesses when they consume goods and services that generate greenhouse gases. This creates an incentive to make investments to reduce emissions. He suggested that, technically, they both had exactly the same effect and that he preferred a carbon tax over an emissions trading scheme.
He also decided to ridicule carbon labeling as promoted by Tesco’s. He suggested that if the cost of carbon is internalised into the price of a product, then that is sufficient to inform consumer choice. I disagree. The choice to buy one product over another is not a purely economic question. It is also a question of values.
Bruce Robinson spoke next on the topic of peak oil. Bruce is the convenor of ASPO Australia, the association for the study of peak oil. Peak oil is the point in time when the extraction of oil and gas peaks and, without sufficient preparation, there is a risk of social and economic breakdown.
Bruce took a number of opportunities to poke fun at economists who, he suggested, falsely believe that ever increasing demand will ensure ever increasing supply. Later, during the panel session, it was clear that Tony Owen, the resident economist was not a believer in peak oil.
The next speaker was Tim Shanahan, the Director of the Energy and Minerals Initiative at UWA. Tim began his presentation by showing the trailer for An Inconvenient Truth (embedded below), reminding us that climate change is a moral issue, not an economic one.
Tim spent some of his presentation talking about the research UWA is doing into geothermal energy. Rather than generating electricity, UWA is looking at using hydrothermal energy (i.e. warm water) with a heat exchanger to provide cooling or heating. This means that, while beneficial for the environment, the technology won’t attract renewable energy certificates, a good example of how Government policy doesn’t always provide the right incentives.
I’ll continue writing about the event in my next post.
