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.

Many individuals and organisations – such as CarbonetiX – are passionate about reducing carbon emissions. CarbonetiX exists to reduce carbon emissions. And we have helped our customers cut their carbon. Many individuals and organisations are similar to us. We believe that Australia and the world must make massive cuts to greenhouse gas emissions not by 2050 but NOW.

But under the Rudd government’s emissions trading scheme our passion, effort, intellect, capital, time, risk, over-time, learning, sleepless nights, stamina, ingenuity, research, education, sacrifice, persistence, investment appears as though it will come to nought. Zip. Nada. Zero.

We do a lot of work with local government. Many local governments have committed to ambitious carbon reduction targets, and some are making large investments to achieve this. There are some tremendously passionate and dedicated people in local government giving their all to this. I’m sorry to say this, but thanks to the ETS it appears as though your council’s efforts may be in vain. Given that your blood sweat and tears may make no difference how do you feel?

I’m grateful to Ian Westmore for commenting on a blog post I made earlier this week and making this clear to me.

For seven years I have slaved away under the impression that somehow my contribution was making a difference. That I, along with many others, could help Australia cut its greenhouse gas emissions significantly. Not by a paltry 5% by 2020.

Three or four years ago now I was very disappointed when the Victorian government extended the life of the Hazelwood Power Station – Australia’s most carbon inefficient major power generator, which produces between 12 to 15 million tonnes of greenhouse gas a year. That’s an awful lot of carbon. I had done quite a lot of work for the Sustainable Energy Authority Victoria (SEAV) on more efficient street lighting. It was great to be able to show how a well designed T5 fluorescent street light was viable as a substitute for a “flower pot” mercury vapour street light – yet only used one third the power. These T5s are now starting to be rolled out as mercury vapour replacements. But I remember feeling how all that effort – and in fact how the entire budget of the SEAV – was effectively futile if the same government had extended Hazelwood.

And now the ETS has come along. And in effect the way the ETS is designed its unlikely that anything more than a 5% carbon reduction on 2000 levels will be achieved. In effect any electricity voluntarily saved by anyone becomes tradeable by the nations power generators, which are part of the ETS. The electricity I help my customers save through energy efficiency and energy conservation, the electricity you might save by putting solar panels on your roof – this all translates into carbon savings at the point of generation – the power stations of the nation. The power stations – which are the nations largest carbon polluters – can then sell that carbon saved to other major industries under the carbon trading scheme, who may then chose to increase their emissions.

Ian Westmore has explained this in his comments on my blog post of 10 February, and Richard Denniss of the Australia Institute also provides an excellent explanation on the Inside Story blog. This explains it much better than I have. 

Right now I am in shock, and am still struggling to understand the immediate consequences of this to my customers, my business, my children and the last seven years of my life.

In effect the ETS is throwing down the gauntlet to anyone wanting to save the planet. Its saying “We, the government of Australia don’t believe Australia should cut its emissions by more than 5%. We dare you to try to achieve a bigger cut than this.”

Given the disincentive of the ETS, there are only two ways that I can see Australia achieving significant greenhouse gas savings. Both of them should be pursued.

1. It becomes accepted across Australia by the vast majority of individuals that producing carbon is morally repugnant. That the stigma associated with carbon pollution is such that the major polluters voluntarily aim to achieve large cuts, and do not take advantage of the ETS. 
2. We use our ingenuity and brains to come up with highly cost effective ways of saving energy, producing carbon-free energy, and marketing these solutions. Good looking technologies that are so cost effective that it’s a no-brainer not to install them. That its financially stupid not to use them. That are cool. A light bulb that uses half the power of a compact fluorescent light bulb, lasts twice as long, and costs as much as an incandescent. A solar system that costs $500 installed and powers your whole house. Electricity storage systems that are cheap. Electric cars, trucks and buses using all that cheap solar power that cost less to buy than petrol, diesel or LPG vehicles and much less to run. Building retrofits that take less than two years to pay off and halve power use.

There may be a third way that should also be pursued. I understand that the proposed ETS legislation has yet to go through parliament. This legislation should be amended so that it doesn’t limit our carbon savings to 5%. Lobby for this change.

Black Saturday 7 February 2009: Melbourne’s temperature reached 46.4 degrees (116.5 deg F), fanned by strong hot winds 400 bushfires across the state killed over 170 people and destroyed 700 homes. And the dams supplying the state with water are at record lows.

If letters to the editor in the newspaper are any indication, many people are making the link between the terrible events of 7 February and climate change.

Fifteen years ago – on 21 March 1994 in Rio de Janeiro the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) came into existence. This document states that “The Parties should take precautionary measures to anticipate, prevent or minimize the causes of climate change and mitigate its adverse effects. Where there are threats of serious or irreversible damage, lack of full scientific certainty should not be used as a reason for postponing such measures.”

Australia’s parliament ratified the convention in 1992 – before it came into force. The USA ratified it in 1992. China ratified it in 1993. 192 countries around the world have ratified the UNFCCC.

Yet fifteen years on global carbon emissions have ballooned. Clearly the parties have NOT undertaken precautionary measures to prevent of minimise the causes of climate change and mitigate its adverse effects.

Based on my understanding of climate change science had there been concerted action to take precautionary measures fifteen years ago Victoria may have still experienced Black Saturday, although perhaps it might not have been quite as bad. This is because of the tremendous inertia in climatic systems. I’d be happy to stand corrected on this by someone suitably qualified.

However if we had managed to cut global carbon emissions from 1994 on I believe that the likely 50 degree temperatures that I have a feeling Victoria may be experiencing in the next twenty or thirty years probably could have been avoided. And that we may well have in our vocabulary then a complete set of Black days – a Black Sunday, a Black Monday, a Black Tuesday, a Black Wednesday, a Black Thursday, a Black Saturday and a Black Sunday.

Unfortunately based on what I read of the science of climate change this full suite of Black days could now well be locked in because of the great inertia of our climatic systems. However if we do manage to greatly cut emissions now we may avoid even worse weather.

Why, in 2009, are atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases still on the rise? I believe primarily because of fear of the economic costs that may arise if resources were put into cutting carbon pollution. Fear fanned by fossil fuel dependent industries.

Yet ever since former World Bank chief economist Nicolas Stern published the Stern Review of Climate Change in 2006 its been credibly shown that the future economic consequences of inaction far outweigh the economic costs of acting now to prevent dangerous climate change.

Whoever you are that is reading this – if you are shocked by the events of Black Saturday -  let me put it to you that you should consider cutting your carbon emissions to lessen the number of future black Tuesdays. Don’t just say this is the government’s problem and leave it at that. You see most governments around the world are not doing enough to drive the sorts of carbon cuts we need. The Australian federal government is an example of this – the 5% carbon reduction target by 2020 is laughable given what the science is saying.

So it is up to all of us to do something – both at home and also at work. Don’t just bitch and moan about how the government isn’t doing enough. Do something yourself. Take whatever assistance you can get from your government - but don’t stop at that - go beyond that. People of the world – unite to cut our carbon emissions – hopefully our government’s will one day start to genuinely lead instead of just continuing to play the prisoner’s dilemma.  (That is saying they recognise there is a problem, but aren’t willing to act unless other countries act because acting alone would be bad for the economy and that acting along wouldn’t reduce carbon emissions sufficiently to actually make much of a difference). And if you live in Victoria, make a fire plan.

And let me also suggest that choosing to act may not be of that much economic cost now, that in fact if you are particularly wasteful in your use of fossil fuel sourced energy that you may still be in front financially by cutting your carbon pollution - even after you’ve spend some of your savings to buy 100% greenpower.  And that choosing to act now may well be of great benefit to you and your family in the future.

At home get a smaller car. Then substitute a drive with a phone call, a walk or a cycle. Switch off stuff not in use - at the wall. Insulate. Get rid of those horribly wasteful halogen downlights.

At work do an energy audit, or get one done, and act on it. Delamp. Optimise your cooling and heating. Turn off stuff not in use - at the wall. Get energy efficient computers and equipment.

At home and work buy 100% certified green power, or get solar panels (make sure you aren’t selling the carbon savings in exchange for a discount from the supplier).

Climate change demands a vigorous, positive response - the more of us who do this, the greater the likelihood of climate stability in the future.