If you know much about climate change you’ll know that cows and sheep produce a lot of greenhouse gas. In fact a cow can produce around 200 litres of methane a day, and methane has global warming potential 23 times greater than carbon dioxide. To put that into context thats 1.2 tonnes of greenhouse gas a year per cow, a bit over one quarter of the greenhouse gas produced by a car over a year. I once did an audit of a large business that grazed cattle basically to keep grass under control (it was by no means their core business), and the cattle accounted for 10% of their carbon emissions. Needless to say I recommended they switch to grazing kangaroos, which don’t produce methane.

As reported by MX The town of Ghent in Belgium has now declared Thursday a vegetarian day to help reduce carbon emissions. All government departments and schools are banning the consumption of meat on Thursdays.

Now this may seem radical to some, but I believe this is a fantastic “climate positive” initiative. In fact its something we may start in our office – a vegetarian Thursday. Its easy to do, it will save you money, and its good for the environment, and if you eat a lot of meat its good for your health too. A triple win!

And if you do enjoy meat the other days of the week consider kangaroo. Its lean. Its inexpensive. You can buy it in the supermarket, and it tastes delicious. YOu can buy it as a roast, plain, marinated and you can even get kangaroo sausages. My favourite is roast skippy.

(Part One)

One of the most energy intensive (and therefore costly) processes in any house is the heating of water. Heating water accounts to about 37% – 40% of the annual energy consumption in an average Australian household and about 20% of its greenhouse emissions. Therefore it is important to consider all the alternatives, such as using the heat of the sun in solar hot water systems.

The diagram below summarises the GHG emissions of each type of hot water system.

GHG emissions from hot water systems

Throughout the day, a sensor monitors the difference in water temperature between the water in the storage tank and the water in the collector (typically mounted on the roof). At a preset temperature difference, the sensor triggers a pump to circulate the water through the collectors where it absorbs solar heat.

Below is a summary of the two types of commonly used domestic solar hot water systems. Both the flat panel and evacuated systems have several versions, where gas or electricity is used to boost the water temperature if it is not sufficiently hot coming out of the water tank. In most cases the sun is simply used to ‘preheat’ the water to higher temperatures (40-70 C) before it goes into a storage tank. A pump may be used to circulate the water from the tank to the collectors until it is used. In addition the flat panel systems may use a heat-exchange mechanism typically where the water may freeze.

Flat panel or evacuated tubes?

In recent years evacuated tubes have become more popular and affordable and together with the flat panels have become widely used in Australia, especially since generous government rebates have been introduced. However, it is still disputed which system is better than the other. Obviously the manufacturers of each type of system claim that theirs is better than the other (sometimes claiming 90% to 160% more efficiency than the other system). The following reasons have been cited: because it captures sunlight better, is better in certain climates, is more cost effective, has better output for dollar spent, has faster payback, is less prone to failure or damage, is cheaper to repair, requires less roof installation area, etc.

It is difficult to find impartial opinions on the subject. It seems that each system should be examined in its own context. The climatic conditions and application will determine the better collector. One of them may be the preferred choice over the other due to a number of variables, such as the environment, availability of sunlight, elevation, orientation, average outdoor temperature, greenhouse gas savings, ease of installation including existing plumbing, payback period, running cost, availability of natural gas to use for boosting water temperature, how well the hot water tanks are insulated and many other factors. So which one is better and how do they compare?

To be continued……..soon……….

Its been a while since our last blog post. Which of course means we have been busy helping our customers save lots of carbon!

Its always tremendously satisfying to see customers act on our advice and thus cut their energy costs and carbon emissions. We recently helped one of our oldest customers identify savings in a building they have recently occupied, before I knew it our advice had been acted on and the next bill that comes in will be lower. As a consultant its pretty hard to beat the sense of fulfilment that comes from results such as this.

Over the last couple of years its been interesting to observe that the propensity for action is increasing. More of our customers are more willing to invest to achieve carbon savings. I think that there are a couple of  reasons for this.

Firstly, the obvious reason is that there is now much more popular support for efforts to reduce carbon emissions than there were three years ago. This has also transformed the mandate of many of the managers we deal with, to move from planning to action. Which is fantastic.

However another reason is also the experience of many of our customers. They have become “true believers” in energy efficiency because they have seen the results for themselves in the past. Two or three years ago they might have felt they were going out on a bit of a limb to put money into energy efficiency. Could our advice be trusted? But they did. And, surprise surprise, their energy consumption dropped. They saved money and carbon. Now they are much more willing to invest.

If you still haven’t seen the results of investing in energy efficiency yourself, do a small trial. Firstly, establish your baseline energy consumption. Pick a small building – for example your home – and go through the bills to establish your annual cost and carbon emissions (www.fossilfueldiet.com.au has a calculator which will help you do this). Then do some things to reduce your electricity use. Change any incandescent bulbs to compact fluorescent. If you have a beer fridge, used only occassionally, turn it off, and only turn on when needed. Rearrange your power boards so its easy to turn off stand by loads. Actively start thinking about light switches and turning off lights in empty rooms. If you can see that bad switch off habits in the household aren’t changing as quickly as you would like, try to do some things that “lock in” energy savings. For example, if your electric hot water unit is set to 70 degrees, lower this to 60 degrees, and start using timers to turn things off automatically.

You’ll learn a lot, and will see savings in your bills (remember to compare with the same time last year, as usage is seasonal). You can then apply these lessons at work to get much larger savings.

Become a “true believer” in energy efficiency and be a person of action. Simple, but something that can have a big impact when it comes to reducing carbon emissions.

This blog aims to show how acting vigorously to reduce carbon emissions is good for the environment and good for business. That it is possible to create a “win-win” with the right approach. The Emissions Trading Scheme – officially known as the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme (CPRS) clearly, as explained in earlier blog posts, is climate negative - its not good for the environment.  

Various blogs today responding to the release of the draft CPRS legislation by Climate Change Minister Penny Wong point out that its not just bad for the environment – it goes so far in its compensation to major emittors that its actually good for big business.  

Crikey.com refer to a study commissioned by the Australian Conservation Foundation which shows that many of the major polluters will actually benefit from the CPRS as a result of the free permits handed out. The Crikey post summarises this as follows “So let’s be clear: the the Government’s rationale for amending its already-generous ETS so that it rewarded big polluters was not to prevent the loss of jobs and emissions overseas, but to ensure the profitability of big polluters.”

Paul Gilding in the Business Spectator writes “This is as good a deal as business will get. It is easy to imagine a future government, when the icecaps have melted, the cyclones are hitting and the fires are burning, imposing a much tougher regime than the one currently on the table. The CPRS is a bad deal for the climate but it’s a great deal for business. Take it and run or you’ll rue the day you didn’t.

So lets summarise the above. The CPRS is bad for the climate, but good for big business. Its lose-win legislation – a loss for the environment and a win for those businesses that are major pollutors. In the short term anyway its a win for the major polluters, but in the long run won’t be - big business managers and shareholders won’t be immune to the effects of dangerous climate change.

Which brings me back to the argument that those of us who want to be climate positive need to be coming up with ways of reducing carbon pollution that are also great for the hip-pocket - in the short to medium term and not just in the long term. With products and services that business willingly buy because its good for the bottom line as well as being good for the environment. And that we need to be making the CPRS irrelevant – by making it so easy to be sustainable that its foolish not to. We have clarity now that the CPRS won’t cut emissions, and may actually put a floor on the amount of emissions reduction that can be achieved. Hopefully this flaw will be removed over the next few months as the legislation is debated. But we have a heck of of an innovation and entrepreneurial challenge!

And there is also a tremendous social challenge – the challenge of changing society to the point where carbon pollution becomes abhorrent and morally repugnant – for most of us.

If you care about future climate stability I’d encourage you to act as a carbon-saving innovator or entrepreneur, or to influence to create a society that is carbon-intolerant, and not put too much faith in the CPRS.

We assume so much in life, both personally and at work. Our assumptions and reality aren’t always the same. An occasional “reality check” can be very valuable. I wonder what expensive assumptions our organisations might harbour?

One of our clients, a medium size organisation somewhere in Australia, discovered in a very easy way that they were unnecessarily using $50,000 extra electricity each year.

It only took an overnight audit to discover this fantastic wastage. It was done by their staff as participants in our Greenhouse Gossip program

Most staff would shut down their computers when leaving work. No one was there to see that many of the computers were turning themselves back on around 8pm! Really, who would expect that?

After their audit, the staff came back the next day, to speak to the staff members whose computers were on. They discussed this and discovered the problem. By speaking to staff in other buildings in their organisation, and the ICT people, they discovered it was across the organisation.

The problem is now solved and they have an additional $50,000 to use each year from that one building (plus other savings identified and implemented in the program).

This is the kind of benefit that a structured, inquiring program can deliver.