Direct quote from the government’s 2009 budget web site:

“Households and small businesses will be able to calculate the potential dollar savings from their energy efficiency actions and make tax deductible donations to the Energy Efficiency Savings Pledge Fund. The Australian Carbon Trust will use these donations to purchase and retire Australian emissions units or purchase carbon offsets.”
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(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.
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A couple of months ago Barney wrote a post on this blog about plasma lighting - a form of cold cathode fluorescent lighting. They aren’t yet on the market, but I’ve managed to get hold of a couple. I’ve just installed these lights in my house, next to a window, above each end of a sofa often used for reading at night. So how have the plasma lights performed?

Considering that they only use 8 watts of power - as compared to the 55 to 65 watts used by a 50 watt halogen downlight - they have performed well. They are cheaper than the very high performance LEDs, but produce around the same amount of light. They start up quickly - unlike many CFLs. And if I wanted, I could have put them on a dimming circuit - unlike LEDs which generally aren’t designed for dimming. They are fully sealed, so there is no air movement through the fitting into the ceiling cavity. The light colour is acceptable, although it’s perhaps slightly too blue for my liking (I’ve installed cool white lamps). But the light colour is still much more comfortable than the harsh light of a 5000K daylight compact fluoro.
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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.
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This blog aims to show how improving water and resource efficiency within a business not only improves the environment but also a business’s bottom line.

Australia is the driest inhabited continent in the world yet we have the highest consumption per person in the developed world, we also have extremely poor recycling practices with less than 3% recycling of waste water in Australia. Much of the reason for this excessive usage and indiscriminate wastage is due to the commonly accepted belief that we could never run out of water nor over pollute water bodies. Our water resources have been exploited since European settlement to promote economic and demographic growth and employment generation with no thoughts toward long term sustainability.   
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