A related article by climate spectator highlighted that the unsubsidised cost of a Solar PV module bought for $1.80 translates into a cost of energy of 29c/kWh – which is roughly the price that many households pay for energy during peak demand. Although most businesses pay much less for electricity than this, the price of electricity is set to increase by between 3-9% over the next 25 years.

This translates to an interesting case for savy business owners – whilst the price of electricity is set to keep increasing, the cost of energy from solar (c/kWh) will remain the same over the systems lifetime. Essentially what this boils down to is simple: by installing commercial scale solar system a business can choose to buy electricity at a fixed cost for the next 25 years. This could be particularly critical once the carbon tax is implemented and businesses will have to not only pay for their carbon emissions but also pay increased electricity prices

At the same time, the price of solar has been reducing rapidly over the last decade. First Solar has indicated that its manufacturing cost has fallen in 2009 to 93 cents per watt, down 5% in three months and down 28% in a year. By 2014, it expects to drive down cost per watt to make solar modules to fall to between 52 and 63 cents. The biggest driver of the lower costs is better efficiency.

So when is the best time for a business to practice sustainability planning and act? Although the price of solar will decrease over the coming years, in Australia there is still subsidies available for small-scale solar. These government subsidies were sustainability funding created with the sole purpose of stimulating the Australian market as the price of solar components reduce. In my opinion, by securing your energy costs now you can dramatically insulate your business against the event of major energy price rises – something that will become increasingly important in this age of carbon.

Related articles

• Green Blog: Solar Installations Rise, but Manufacturing Declines (green.blogs.nytimes.com)

Image via Wikipedia

There was a lot of interest in my last post about carbon tax, and in particular, how to avoid increases in your electricity bill. There are some easy, practical and realistic steps you can take without any sort of sustainability consulting to help avoid the carbon tax and cut your bills and reduce energy consumption.

You don’t have to do them all – initiating even a few changes can make a difference. The more you do, the more you can save.
Some actions don’t cost anything and you can start doing them today – like turning appliances off at the power point, not leaving laptops and mobile phones on charge unnecessarily, taking shorter showers, and using a solar clothes dryer (a clothes line or rack).

Others you can do when you need to upgrade appliances – like comparing the water and energy rating labels of different appliances before you buy, or when you are building or renovating.

Some require an investment, like installing solar power, but there is a range of government assistance that can help with these.

The easiest and most cost effective method where you could save up to 50 per cent of the energy used for lighting is by making smarter lighting choices and using more efficient technologies. Most sustainability consultants would focus on this area first has it has the greatest return on investment.

Switching to energy-efficient lighting is one of the easiest and most cost-effective things you can do to reduce energy use – you could halve your household lighting costs. Compact fluorescent lamps (CFLs) only use around 20 per cent of the energy to produce the same amount of light as an incandescent light globe and last between 4 and 10 times longer.

• Get a home sustainability assessment. This will help you identify the areas where you could install efficient lighting. Your assessment report should include an estimate of potential energy savings.
• Switch to energy-efficient globes. There are many different models, styles and colours to suit your needs. Many new varieties are emerging as the technology develops.
• Install clever switching controls that turn lights on and off as needed.
• Try placing mirrors opposite your windows to reflect light around the room.
• Consider re-decorating with light-reflective surfaces and pale carpets and furnishings. This will reduce the need for artificial lighting.
• If you’re building or renovating, create cosy or dramatic effects with an energy-efficient lighting design. Start by talking to your builder and lighting retailer for options. A lighting designer experienced in energy-efficient systems will be able to help you design more effective lighting scheme.

Even if you have energy-efficient lighting, it makes sense to use lighting sensibly to further reduce energy use and electricity bills. There are a few simple steps you can take to use lights more efficiently:

• Check that you are not using a higher wattage globe than is necessary to light a room.
• Turn off unnecessary lights, especially when leaving a room.
• Have multiple switches to control the number of lights that come on at one time. Place switches at the exits from rooms and use two-way switching to encourage lights to be turned off when leaving the room.
• Consider installing movement sensors to turn lights on and off automatically in rooms that are used infrequently where lights may be left on by mistake.
• Use timers, daylight controls and motion sensors for outdoor security lights or for common areas, such as hallways and stairwells in multi-unit housing.
• Clean light fittings to allow more light to pass through.
• Take advantage of natural light.
• Consider using solar powered lighting for your garden.
• Consider decorating with light coloured finishes and furnishings – this can allow lighting levels to be reduced.

Related articles

• Overlook House: Setting A Scene With Lighting (design-milk.com)

What are the world’s leading business research companies finding?

In 2008 IBM undertook a worldwide survey of senior executives which found that:

• 68% of business leaders were implementing sustainability “as an opportunity and platform for growth”, while 50% said that their companies sustainability activities were giving them an advantage over their top competitors

Despite these positive findings:

• Nearly two thirds of the executives didn’t fully understand their customers concerns around sustainability, while only 27% engaged their employees on sustainability initiatives.

In 2008, KPMG interviewed the 100 largest companies by revenue in 22 countries around the world in regards to their corporate social responsibility reporting. In total, 2200 companies were surveyed.

KPMG found that 80% of the world’s largest companies now publish CSR reports. Furthermore they identified that CSR reporting is now becoming the norm instead of the exception within the world’s largest companies.

In 2008, Unilever Australia commissioned AMR Interactive Research and Newspoll to look at Australians’ attitudes towards corporations and sustainability. It found:

• 90% wanted Australian business to invest more in sustainable practices
• 72% thought companies had a broad responsibility to act responsibly
• 81% thought companies could still make a profit while being environmentally responsible and taking the welfare of their workers into consideration
• 64% thought companies need to focus on sustainability to maintain their future profits
• 69% believed that businesses needed to prove their sustainability credentials in order to maintain future profits
• 75% believed there was a need for more sustainable products
• 37% said they were sceptical about the sustainability claims found on products

There is a wealth of research to suggest that sustainability is becoming deeply embedded in the fabric of modern business and that it makes sence to seek help from a sustainability consulting firm.

Related articles

• CSR: An Evolving Concept (juanvillamayor.com)

What is geosequestration? The objective of geosequestration is to remove the CO2 content of emissions, compress the gas and pump it underground into a reservoir generally more than 900m below the grounds surface – Sounds simple enough.

Here is where it becomes messy:

Huge commitment to technology that isn’t even developed
The Australian government has committed a whopping A$1.85 billion to the Carbon Capture & Storage (CCS) Flagships Program which is expected to accelerate the development and demonstration of CCS technologies. The CCS Flagships Program is expected to fund between two to four projects with an electricity generating capacity of 1000 MW. An additional A$385 million has been allocated to fund the National Low Emission Coal Initiative (NLECI). The NLECI will focus on the research, demonstration and deployment of low-emission coal technologies involving carbon capture and storage
Despite this commitment to so called sustainability funding, carbon sequestration technology is not expected to be commercially viable for at least 5 to 10 years.

Renewable energy misses out
At the same time, only $1.51 billion has been committed to renewable energy, with the majority going to solar.

Not a silver bullet
Sequestration can only be cost-effectively used in two circumstances: oil and gas platforms and new coal-fired power stations. Therefore the use of geosequestration encourages growth in non-renewable industries.

Inefficient / Not cost effective
Sequestration reduces operating efficiencies and thus produces more CO2. For example, a proposed project in Victoria had the objective of gasifing brown coal, then converting that gas into energy, whilst sequestering the carbon dioxide produced during energy generation. This process increased the total amount of CO2 produced by a factor of 9 when compared with a conventional oil refinery.
Studies have pointed out that in most cases it would be less expensive for a company to pay a tax on the carbon produced during electricity production than to geosequester that carbon.

Is it worth it?
There is some cases where carbon sequestration has produced truly innovative results. For example traditional cement manufacture produces a considerable amount of carbon emissions, however newly developed types of cement can absorb C02 emissions from ambient air during hardening
However, in most cases R & D in carbon sequestration diverts funds from renewable energy but fails to acknowledge the fact that sequestration relies on non-renewable energy sources which will someday expire. Sustainability planning means creating long-term improved environmental outcomes. Investing in carbon sequestration creates a short term strategy for climate change at a point in time when we need to be planning for our children’s grand-children.

Related articles

• Can carbon sequestration reduce global warming (wiki.answers.com)

I hear again and again in the media, that businesses are going to have to let employees go and this tax will cost a lot of people their jobs; and you know, if businesses do not practice sustainability management, this will more than likely the case, however, the point of the carbon tax is actually not for business to continue to use current policy and processes and pay the carbon tax, it is for business to  practice sustainability planning and reduce their carbon foot print, as well as help save our resources.

Why should people have to pay for their carbon footprint? I look at this scenario a lot like a financial budget, in that money is like our natural resources and it is scarce and will eventually run out, and at our current rate, we need at least 3 planets to fund our current usage, so basically we have been living beyond our means for quite some time. If you were to do this with a business or personal budget you would eventually run out of money and have to borrow funds at an additional cost until you got your spending back to within your budget. Our natural resources are exactly the same, in that we now have to pay the price to get our budget back on track, although the government has offered a number of measures to ensure that personal households are not out of pocket.

So what happens if we don’t bring our resource budget back into shape?

The CSIRO, the Bureau of Meteorology, and academies of science from around the world have all advised that the world is warming and high levels of carbon pollution risk environmental and economic damage. For example, extreme weather events, such as droughts, heat waves and bush fires, are likely to become more frequent and severe.

We at Sustainability Insights would prefer to see the no tax cuts to compensate households for the carbon tax, which does seem tough I know, but people will not change their actions if there are no consequences, and by that I mean they will not use less electricity and move to solar power because their budget will be the same, whereas if there were no tax cuts, people would consciously use less electricity, and the funds from the carbon tax could be directly used for investment in cleaner energy.

Related articles

• Axeing carbon tax would delay CO2 action (news.theage.com.au)
• Australia plans to impose carbon tax (martinjquinn.com)

Image via CrunchBase

Modern business is seeing a change in attitude from the “pillage and plunder” attitude of the 90s to a more responsible, caring business environment. Corporate sustainability is becoming increasingly important for CEO’s, senior executives, change agents and key stakeholders of a modern organisation.  However, corporate sustainability is not just another “tick box” for modern businesses, but also a chance to create a clear identity and point of difference. In this blog we look at the online book marketplace “Biblio” and the steps it has taken to improve its relationship with it’s customer base by adopting the principles of corporate sustainability.

Biblio is one of the world’s leading marketplaces for new, used and rare books. Despite operating in global marketplace Biblio has always been committed to sustainability and sustainability management.

In fact Biblio has now launched a program to offset the carbon emissions of every shipment of its books, making it the first book marketplace to be carbon neutral. In a great example of corporate sustainability Biblio has initiated a new program call ‘ecosend’, which is being launched in partnership with NativeEnergy, a privately held Native American renewable energy company, to provide funding for wind turbines and farm methane energy projects in Native American communities and on family farms throughout the US.

According to the team at Biblio

“A triple bottom line means working towards the three goals of achieving profit, serving people, and preserving the environment as the benchmark measurements for a company’s success. When ‘social entrepreneurship’ was little more than an academic buzzword, we made our commitment to a triple bottom line.”

By adopting corporate sustainability practices from inception, Biblio has been able to create a unique point of difference to competitors. More importantly, by incorporating corporate sustainability into everyday business operations Biblio will stay one step ahead of the game, which is important in today’s business world where a price on carbon looms just on the horizon.

Hopefully more organisations will take a leaf out of Biblio’s books and organise a corporate sustainability assessment.

Image of a CFL via Wikipedia

Did you know that the simple act of changing an incandescent lightbulb with a Compact Fluorescent (CFL) could save you $300 over ten years, and switching that CFL with a light emitting diode (LED) light bulb could you save you a further $60?

The reason is simple, the incandescent lighbulb is an outdated piece of technology, in fact up to 90% of the energy used to power an incandescent lightbulb is emitted as heat – not as light.  Interestingly, the Australian Government has placed an import restriction on inefficient incandescent lightbulbs, however many Australian households and businesses continue to use this outdated technology.

The reason that CFL and LED lights save so much more money is due to their effectiveness. Most incandescent lightbulbs use anywhere between 50 – 100W of power and last only 1000 hours, whilst their CFL counterparts use only around 20W and can last in excess of 20,000 hours. LED lights are increasingly being used due to their extremely low energy usage and long life-time. Most LED lights will use less than 10W of power and can last over 30,000 hours! It goes to show that sustainability planning coupled with action can create a real investment for the future.

At Sustainability Insights we can offer a sustainability assessment that can work out exactly how much your lighting is costing you, furthermore we can develop a strategy to help you identify other Sustainable Investments.

The solution is simple, the AuziMAX system from Auzion. It is not only a great sustainability management tool, as it tracks your usage by rooms and appliances, as well as seeing how much electricity you are generating, so you can practise sustainability reporting and measure your savings at the same time. Not to mention that this tool is the difference between all other solar panel suppliers and installers.

Have a look at the screenshot above and you can see how user friendly the Auzion Energy Maximiser is. The auziMAX system is actually not for available for sale just yet as this exciting project is still being tested. It can monitor all your building’s energy needs (including incoming mains, power circuits, lights, hot water and air conditioning) in conjunction with the solar power generated. Through a secure web portal you can then view an accurate breakdown of your energy usage. The device gives you important tips on tracking to budget and allows you to establish energy alerts to optimise usage in line with set targets.

The Auzion Energy Maximiser is being developed in conjunction with Auzion’s Sustainable Home Project and in partnership with Griffith Universities Industrial Affiliates Program. Results of the first 50 pilot installations are due to be analysed by the Sunshine Coast University Regional Sustainability Research Group. Initial testing suggests a 20% energy saving is achievable on top of that generated through solar grid connect. The research centre will publish an independent report on usage patterns and energy savings made by Auzion Energy Maximiser customers.

We at Sustainability Insights commend this great initiative by Auzion, and are more than happy to recommend them as our preferred supplier & installer of solar panels and systems.

Related articles

• Guide to solar panels (permaculturepower.wordpress.com)
• Solar Power Panels in Your Home Offer Significant Cost Savings and Benefits (mydecorarticles.com)
• Open House: Eco Upgrades (casasugar.com)

The new labels, which replace a five-year-old design that provided only basic information about estimated fuel economy, represent the broadest overhaul in the sticker program’s 35-year history. There will be different labels for conventional vehicles, plug-in hybrids and all-electric vehicles, with cars running solely on battery power estimated to get 99 miles per gallon.
What a great idea, and we at Sustainability Insights say well done and hope that the Australian government pay attention.

Related articles

• EPA Releases New Vehicle Fuel Economy Window Stickers (thewmeacblog.org)
• Revamped car mileage stickers give more info (cbsnews.com)
• New M.P.G. Stickers Include Greenhouse Gas Data (nytimes.com)

Well I am not pulling your leg. There is a great sustainability funding initiative by energex, and it called the conversation community.

Residents in selected Sunshine Coast suburbs are eligible for a $50 cash eftpos gift card for joining. You do need to have a air-conditioner and/or a swimming pool to join and help reduce your electricity bill and reduce peak demand.

Residents who sign up will not only be actively helping their community become more sustainable but will be rewarded with a package of incentives including the $50 cash card, a stand-by energy savings board, a CSIRO Home Energy Savings Handbook, a air-conditioner clean and check and a hot water efficiency check.

After signing up, Energex will arrange the installation of cycling devices on your nominated air-conditioning unit(s) and/or swimming pool. These devices are used to help reduce the peak demand by up to 20% on the electricity network between 4pm and 8pm during times of extreme temperature.

During air-conditioning cycling, a remote signal is sent to the load control device that tells the air-compressor to switch off between 7 to 10 minutes every 1/2 hour during selected peak times. the air-conditioners fan continues to operate as normal, to ensure comfort levels are maintained.

Pool pumps are cycled for 3 to 4 hours during peak demand days with households given an option that allows the resident to turn the pool filter on during the cycling, for cumulative 1 hour period, if essential maintenance is required during this period.

Installation takes approximately 1 hour to complete and will be arranged by 1 of Energex’s approved contractors.

So where can you get a comprehensive sustainability assessment for free, and in fact get paid for receiving a assessment that will also enable you to save money and help the environment.

If you are interested in this great opportunity, just click here for how to sign up.

Of course this option is really only for households, and we at Sustainability Insights don’t want businesses to miss out, so you can always contact us and we will be able to provide numerous funding opportunities for you.

Related articles

• Maximize air conditioning to reduce energy spending (charlotte.news14.com)