Lighting is the easiest way to cut your electricity bill without any investment at all, and this is demonstrated in the following green blog.

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.

1. 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.
2. 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.
3. Install clever switching controls that turn lights on and off as needed.
4. Try placing mirrors opposite your windows to reflect light around the room.
5. Consider re-decorating with light-reflective surfaces and pale carpets and furnishings. This will reduce the need for artificial lighting.
6. 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:

1. Check that you are not using a higher wattage globe than is necessary to light a room.
2. Turn off unnecessary lights, especially when leaving a room.
3. 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.
4. 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.
5. Use timers, daylight controls and motion sensors for outdoor security lights or for common areas, such as hallways and stairwells in multi-unit housing.
6. Clean light fittings to allow more light to pass through.
7. Take advantage of natural light.
8. Consider using solar powered lighting for your garden.
9. Consider decorating with light coloured finishes and furnishings – this can allow lighting levels to be reduced.

Related articles

• The truth about a carbon Tax (sustainabilityinsights.com)

Well wind power is already viable and in use in a number of countries, we just need people and governments to get on board. The following green blog from national geographic gives us (without getting to in-depth) 10 great valid reasons why wind power could be a great sustainability solution.

The American Renewable Energy Day (AREDAY) conference opened Thursday in Aspen, Colorado, with leaders from the sectors of government, industry, activism and science engaging on questions about how the United States can wean itself from dependency on fossil fuels.

In an early keynote speech, Lester Brown, founder and president of the Earth Policy Institute, offered 10 succinct reasons why wind power is desirable:

It is abundant. China, for example, has enough harnessable wind to increase its electricity consumption 16-fold.
It is carbon-free. Reducing carbon emissions is a key part of any plan to transition from fossil fuels.
It is non-depletable. What we use today doesn’t affect how much we have tomorrow.
It does not require any water. This is in contrast to other water-intensive energy sources, such as nuclear and natural gas.
It does not use any fuel. Wind farm developers are ready to sign 20-year fixed-price contracts, Brown said, because the main cost associated with wind is building the farm.
Wind turbines don’t use a lot of land. It’s true that wind farms take up a lot of land. But the turbines themselves only occupy 1 percent of a wind farms land area, which leads to the next point.
Land owners can double-crop. It’s possible to produce cattle, wheat, corn, and other commodities while also harvesting wind energy. Far from creating a NIMBY (not-in-my-backyard) problem, wind farms become very desirable in agricultural areas.
It is locally available. Wind is everywhere.
It scales up easily. A wind farm can go from 20 to 400 megawatts easily.
Wind farm construction is not time-intensive. The power can be brought online very quickly.

Brown cited Denmark, Spain, Germany and India as having significant portions of energy sourced from wind. But wind still represents only a small fraction of worldwide power generation (in the United States, it’s around 2 percent), and like other renewable energy sources struggling to gain on the fossil-fuel behemoths, it needs support.

Speakers at AREDAY had varying ideas about what would finally create a breakthrough for renewable energy. For Brown, it was the problem of how to feed 7 billion people with shrinking resources: food prices will be the biggest indicator to bring us face-to-face with the climate problem, he said.

Research says that organisations are able to gain a real competitive advantage from practising sustainability management, but research also states that executives do not fully understand their customers concerns around sustainability issues. This leads us to believe that businesses really need the help of sustainability consultants to help them take the steps towards utilising this possible competitive advantage.

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.

Politicians have raised fresh questions about the role of coal seam gas in Australia’s energy future.

Greens Senators Bob Brown and Christine Milne, along with MP Adam Bandt have all expressed concern about the emissions intensity of coal seam gas in the first week of the autumn session of parliament.

On Wednesday Senator Brown warned that the veracity of the claims made by proponents of coal seam gas is in doubt: “The presumption that the damage done by gas is half that done by coal is under very serious questioning.”

The leader of the Greens also highlighted that the aim of the clean energy package is ultimately to replace the burning of fossil fuels with renewable energy. His comments echoed those made on Tuesday by his deputy, Senator Christine Milne.

“Once you start looking at the greenhouse gas emissions and intensity of all that, you will find that all these people who claim that coal seam gas is cleaner than coal are in fact wildly exaggerating any benefits,” she said, adding that the nation needed to “move straight to renewables.”

In addition to these criticisms, Greens MP Adam Bandt flagged on Thursday his concern that in as little as two decades, the infrastructure built for coal seam gas could become a massive stranded asset.

Though Mr Bandt stated that his party’s concerns about the fuel source did not threaten its support for the government’s carbon price package, he maintained that there was a real question about where money should be invested for the future of energy in Australia.

“We are in the midst of an energy revolution; we want to get to 100 percent renewable energy as fast we can,” he said.

Similar views have long been espoused by BZE. While Prime Minister Gillard’s carbon policy is a step in the right direction, we still hold major reservations regarding the scheme’s actual implementation. Our primary concern is the need to avoid a shift to gas power.

Establishing fossil gas as a large supplier of electricity foolishly repeats history by building another set of barricades to developing truly renewable, clean power. There is no reasonable motive to invest in gas power when better alternatives are available, such as the award-winning Zero Carbon Australia Stationary Energy Plan, which provides a fully assessable roadmap to get Australia running on 100 percent renewable energy in ten years.

Please find following a great green blog on geosequestration as a environmental solution.

Fossil fuel based companies are responding to climate change by developing methods of capturing Carbon Dioxide (CO2) and storing it deep underground in a process known as geosequestration. But is sequestration sustainability management in action or is the focus on sequestration reducing the much needed attention on renewable energy – which doesn’t generate CO2 emissions in the first place?

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.

Unfortunately there is a lot of confusion about the carbon tax. I for now do not think it is the ultimate solution, but it is a step in the right direction.

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 planningand 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.

A great green blog from Go Eco-Friendly titled “A world without bottles” about an environmental idea to try and get the fashionista’s of the world onto the sustainability management movement.

Have you ever wondered where your water bottle ends up after you buy it, drink from it, and throw it away? Although some plastic bottles are recycled, it is shocking to know that 340,000,000,000 (340 Billion) bottles and cans are NOT recycled every year! This means that more than half end up in Landfill sites, every year, worldwide.

1 Bottle takes 450 years to decompose.

1 Bottle takes 5 times it’s volume in water just to manufacture.

To demonstrate this huge burden on Mother Natures shoulders, eco-artist, Sarah Turner, has teamed up with Soda Stream to create this amazing plastic bottle sphere, using 562 recycled plastic bottles.

Sodastream’s campaign aims to reduce the amount of plastic bottles people buy, therefore reducing the amount that end up getting thrown away.

British supermodel Erin O’Connor holds the sphere symbolically on her shoulders, recreating the iconic pose of Greek God Atlas, highlighting the burden of the world’s plastic bottle waste.

Let’s hope this campaign touches on at least the fashionista’s of the world, demonstrating that it’s not so ‘cool’ to sip from a tiny plastic bottle, every time you need to quench that little thirst.