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I'm sorry Earth Hour, you've been a good movement, but now it's time to
die. There was a time when we needed a rallying point away for the silent majority to demonstrate,
yes, we're prepared to take action on the climate change. Now though, the message that
if you turn your lights off for one per year is going to save the planet is so simple that
it's wrong and it's holding back the real work of energy efficiency. We need a new message.
Now that you've got their attention, let's give them something to work with. Let's give
people the skills and the confidence to make changes in their own life that reduce their
energy use and then we'll save the planet.\ This is really a story of my engineering career
through the hard-nosed world of cost-effective, energy-efficiency calculations to the rosined
epiphany that energy efficiency is not a destination, it's a process and that process can be enriching
and deeply rewarding. Here's the poo we promised.\ My story starts with Sydney Water, the massively
Sidney utility. In that little time, we managed the electricity use of 1100 sites, just a
tick under 2% of all the energy used in New South Wales. The really interesting part though
was their bio gas program. \ This is a 16 cylinder twin turbo engine converted
to run on bio gas. It used to be in a ferry. Bio gas is created by separating the sewage
solids, the poo, from the waste stream and they start in a digester rotated to human
body temperature and the bacteria we have given it kept digesting the food, bio gas
comes out. It's captured and you burn it through an engine and make electricity.\
The largest one of those went in at North Head Treatment Plant in Sydney right on the
coast. When North Head was built in the late 1960s, we have really different ideas about
how to treat sewage. So the main sewage treatment then was a filter that removed the beer cans
and shopping trolleys and the rest of it goes out to sea where the mechanical action of
the waves and the currents disperses it. It actually works quite well but it doesn't sound
that flesh.\ But once you install the bio gas engine, they
have a strong incentive to improve that solids capture. The more poo they get out of the
waste stream, the more electricity they can make. If you make more electricity, you make
more money. So they have set up a system that they earn money by improving environmental
outcomes. This is what we like to call a co-benefit, the nice things that come with energy efficiency
projects and these can be significant.\ This is the message that was reiterated constantly
in my next role in the Department of Resources Energy and Tourism as a technical adviser
on a program called Energy Efficiency Opportunities. EEO compels large energy uses to report their
energy use and then look for opportunities to reduce it, but the programs really directed
at lowering information barriers. We know there are cost effective opportunities to
reduce energy use out there but companies aren't pursuing them for a whole bunch of
reasons. That's the information barrier, they don't know what to do. They don't know how
to keep records. They don't have leadership in their organization and they don't realize
that, often, they already have the people in their business that can save energy.\
EEO sets to embed energy efficiency as a culture so that they can engage all of those things
and start to put some runs on the board. This was the fascinating role. I got to look at
lots of things from the inside. See what energy efficiency looks like in thousands of business,
thousands of exaggeration, 500. I saw a lot of sewage treatment, I toured just about every
type of power plant in the country including the worst which is the worst in the world
and the best coal burning power plant in the country.\
The story that really stuck with me, the message that I really liked hearing was from a little
company in Western Australia making titanium dioxide. Titanium dioxide is the white powder
that gives toothpaste, sun screen and the M's on M&M's their whiteness. The process
of making it involves vast quantities of high temperature steam and chlorine, meaning an
energy-intensive and potentially hazardous process.\
Energy efficiency for them partly is about stopping leaks. Thousands of kilometers of
pipe transports steam and chlorine around the plant. Reducing those leaks, reduces money
out the door. So they get on top of it, they introduced an incentive program for their
staff to identify leaks, quantify them and then prioritize them. At the same times that
they did this, they had a big retrofit in the plant with up to 500 contractors working
on site for 18 months. It's a lot of people on a hazardous site.\
During that 18 moth period, they did not record one last time injury, an astonishing result.
I spoke to management about it after. I said, "How did you do this? You're on a safety program?"
They said, "Well, safety has always been important to us." But the thing that really got us moving
was the leak reduction program that we found that staff were more engaged with their environment,
they identified hazards earlier and they fixed them. So they implemented an energy efficiency
project and they got safety at the same time.\ Since then, I've left government and worked
for a private consultancy. We talked to government about how to think about energy and talked
to companies about how to deal with government which is hard. The last example is for one
of our clients. The mixed frozen vegetables. Frozen peas and pea season is a big deal in
the frozen vegetable game. They ran their plants flat out for eight weeks. So energy
efficiency is the second they were concerned. Mostly, they want the plant to run and they
want quality control.\ One year though, the peas were coming out
in huge lumps. This is something that customers have complained about in the past. Energies
got it fixed on the run but thought about it more in the off season. This is not a problem
they want to happen again. Their solution was a new type of refrigeration called the
fluidized bed tunnel freezer. The peas comes through on a belt that's got holes in it and
all the peas are suspended in a stream of cold air so they spin without touching each
other, much like the puck on an air hockey table.\
Because they're not touching each other, they freeze faster. Because they freeze faster,
it uses less energy, 40% less energy in this case. So they bring in a process control solution,
fixes their quality control and they lower their energy use at the same time. What about
the value of keeping their clients? How much does it worth to keep a customer happy? Can
you put a cost on that? Maybe we can. Maybe you can cost everything. Maybe in the sewage
treatment example, the value is what it would cost to reverse environmental damage of dumping
sewage in the ocean.\ Maybe in the tie waste example, the advantage
is an engaged work force, more people at work more often, lower insurance premiums. Then
the last example, how money peas does a customer buy throughout the next two to three years
that you've managed to keep them happy? But does this work in a house? Large energy uses
have large energy bills and if you've got a big bill, you've got a bigger opportunity
to reduce it, but there's a big transaction cost with the big users. You've got to convince
the board, you've got to convince your colleagues that you're not going to wreck their stuff.
You've got to move all of these machines into place and get things moving. In your own house,
you are the board, you decide the value. You can do whatever you want. We did.\
Five years ago, we moved into agave, a three bedroom college in the north of Canberra.
When we moved in, it had an energy efficiency rating of zero. The house is really bad in
Canberra. When we moved out about six months ago, it had an energy efficiency rating of
four. We did the normal things. Leak reduction, insulated the sealing, insulated the walls,
changed the curtains inside for honeycomb blinds, put blinds on the outside of the house
to reduce heat going in summer and then we replaced every single piece of glass in the
house.\ The leak reduction probably paid itself off
in that afternoon, the materials are incredibly cheap. The curtains, blinds, insulation I
think in the order of two to four years depending on how much you heat. The glass probably closer
to 25 years but again, none of that takes into account the niceness that we got for
it. If I have to think about it, what's the value of not having to wear a down jacket
to the toilet in the middle of the night? What's the value of not hearing the heater
roar into life at 5am so you can physically get out of bed in the morning? How much is
that worth to you? \ Saving money is nice, I don't disagree with
that, but how many are the decisions in their life do you make based purely on cost? If
you're going to buy a car, you go out and you want to bid a fuel efficiency, that would
be nice but you're probably thinking safety, comfort, handling, can you fit three child
seats across the back? Thinking about the other way around, if you are going to make
decisions based on cost, you should attempt to cost everything. \
So we're in a new house now, we bathe in their six months. First thing we did was to put
a new ceiling through out an R5 insulation, one of the best things we've ever done. We
put in a state of the art heat pump heater working in parallel with the existing fireplace.
Fuel costs for the heat pump looked like they're going to be about the same as the fireplace
but that doesn't count half an hour of my time every running day to make the fireplace
work and at my rights, that blows it out of the water. \
We changed all the lights over to LEDs and they will pay off in two to four years depending
on how often we use them, but again what's the value of may never be burning a hole all
the way through my pillow with a reading lamp ever again? Quite a lot. So what is it worth
to you? What would it be worth to you to go to the petrol station once a fortnight rather
than once a week? $10, $20, I don't like petrol stations. What about coming home from work
and seeing that there's no food on the fridge but knowing that you can go at the back and
pick [silver bay 00:10:14] and get eggs and make a meal? What's that worth to you to not
to go to the shops?\ So I'm asking Earth Hour. Let's advance the
message. The message that energy efficiency is going without has not been my experience.
Energy efficiency, for us, has been our riding our bike to work, coming home to a house that's
a perfect temperature all the time. Giving out chicken's food scraps and they give us
eggs and then getting a beer from a fridge that costs less to run than a standard mobile
phone. A low energy use life is glorious and I strongly
encourage you all to try it. Thank you.