Environment, Future, Solutions - How can Environment Business Australia help you?

 Had the pleasure of attending an event yesterday conducted by the EBA – ‘Environment Business Australia’

The program was titled ‘Yes We Can’ and provided a resource of information from senior executives on how to build a major climate change action strategy from the business community.

The objective they have is to strengthen Australia’s response to one of the world’s greatest challenges whilst building our next era of prosperity.

The presentations were diverse and varied with introduction from two main contributors

Dr David Karoly, School of Earth Sciences, University of Melbourne; IPCC author; member of the Wentworth Group of Concerned Scientists

And Nick Sankey, Head of Utilities, Energy & Renewable Solutions, Commonwealth Bank

Followed by a panel of nine – with short insights into what we can do.

Given Australia has five times the global average of emissions, it is appropriate that we have many more discussions along these lines.

Though as with all acts of leadership, there is nothing to follow before we act and have others follow, so the most important message taken from the presentation and feedback is we need to ACT.

A couple facts:

With the carbon emissions we put into the air, 50% is removed in the first year via photosynthesis (how plants survive) etc.

Of the remaining 50%, half of that is removed the following year.

The remaining 25% of the total... stay around for a millennium – 1,000 years.

With this as a backdrop from David Karoly, our representative from University of Melbourne, we were then provided with a sobering thought from Nick Sankey, Head of Utilities, Energy and Renewables at the Commonwealth Bank.

Whereas previously to the economic downturn, you had banks clambering to finance projects up to $2.5 Billion over 15 to 25 years return on investment, now the limit is closer to the $500 million level and the selection of return on investment is a much more cautious process.

Until the CPRS (Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme) legislation is passed – expected mid 2009 – this finance is also limited.

What followed as a selection of complementing solutions to our global climate problem was great.

Here are some of them. All are important. Most important is how long we need to discuss before we act.

I want to start with one of the simplest to introduce and probably has the largest short term impact in Australia...

As we all generally know, a large proportion of Australian vegetation has been removed. We also have a huge amount of waste (particularly putrefiable waste – food scraps etc) that is going into dumps. The dump creates huge amounts of methane as well – another problem for climate change and a lot of this methane is not harnessed to produce energy (another story for editorial).

The basic concept presented was that this putrefiable waste should be harvested, converted to soil, compost etc and used to improve the quality of our arable land. This will reduce waste and in turn provide larger quantities of photosynthesising plant matter that will convert carbon dioxides into our earth whilst also significantly improving problems such as water degradation etc.

So if everyone was no longer allowed to simply stick their putrefiable waste in the dump, we could have a solution that would help significantly whilst we get the other solutions discussed below in order.

Interestingly, 3% of gaseous pollutions come from the methane of putrefying goods.

The next most important solution is energy efficiency and the most important impact we can make on energy efficiency is insulation – adjusting heating and cooling costs.

Telstra also discussed all the benefits of teleconferencing, working from home etc and all the reduced travel costs and gaseous expenditure reductions.

Buildings also rated highly. Did you know using existing technologies we can reduce building emissions by 30-35% by 2030 and by including renewables - by 60%

Makes even more sense when you realise that the average life of all materials (including buildings) is only 6 months

Then there was also discussion of all the energy production alternatives, from wave/tidal energy, wind, solar, geothermal etc... many of which have less investment cost to implement than for example another coal fired energy provider or nuclear – an important consideration given the current credit crisis.

Finally, what about the smart grid energy & technology concept? Imagine if we all drove electric cars, could plug them in wherever we went. What a new generation – the new battery technology is approaching... Drive if you have to, park and partner with the electricity provider of your choice...

I left in a state of wonderment – when will we ACT and when will the government in the A.C.T. decide that implementation is key and we need to ACT?

What will happen if they don’t re-act?