Critics of programs such as the federal Energy Efficiency Opportunities program and Victoria’s EREP scheme are really just asking to be “left alone” to pursue their “own narrow interests”, says energy efficiency expert Alan Pears.
Pears also outlined a strategy to allow the government to act more quickly on energy efficient appliances and criticised energy market rules for hampering the deployment of cogeneration.
No perfect solution
Critics such as ExxonMobil who claim government energy efficiency schemes are simply crude interventions in business processes “are really asking to be allowed to be left alone acting in their own narrow interests as a global business, rather than acting in Asutralia’s or the environment’s,” Pears told CE Daily.
Pears, adjunct professor at Melbourne’s RMIT University and co-director of consultancy Sustainable Solutions, said emissions trading and carbon taxes could also be described as crude interventions.
“There is no perfect intervention,” he said.
If companies were fully on top of energy efficiency they would have comprehensive energy management and monitoring systems in place, he said.
“Many of them do not.”
Pears said energy efficiency programs need to be retained and accompanied by government measures to help risks of lost production associated with implementing innovative technologies.
“For many businesses, because energy is 1% to 3% of costs, to innovate to save energy leaves them open to much larger risks if something goes wrong.”
Industry needs support to test new equipment to minimise these risks, he said.
‘Overhaul needed of appliance energy efficiency regime’
Pears said current government efforts to ensure appliances sold in Australia are energy efficient are woefully inadequate.
It takes “several years” for it to dawn that products such as digital televisions or set-top boxes are a problem, and then several more years before Minimum Energy Performance Standards (MEPS) are implemented, he said.
By that time a whole generation of energy-inefficient products are in Australian homes, he said.
Pears called for a system along the lines of safety approvals procedures which would require those wanting to import or manufacture appliances for sale in Australia to provide a statement indicating what they have done to ensure the appliance is energy efficient.
If international benchmarks exist for the product, the statement could reference these.
If there are no standards, the importer or manufacturer could set out how they have attempted to make the appliance efficient and provide data on matters such as its standby power consumption.
This would provide feedback to the companies that energy efficiency is a key concern and would also provide the government with useful data on appliance energy consumption, Pears said.
Cogeneration setback
Pears added that the deployment of cogeneration in Australia, which produces useful power and heat and consequently far lower emissions of greenhouse gases than conventional generation, had been massively stymied by existing energy market rules.
“If you don’t have the right mix of heat and electricity requirements to match what an on-site cogeneration plant could generate you have to start selling across the boundary,” Pears said.
“And as soon as you do, you start to hit problems” under current energy market rules, he said.
“I think energy market structures are one of the biggest barriers to energy efficiency and emissions reduction that we have,” Pears said.
Pears also called for an overhaul of the first homebuyers scheme to favour purchasers of energy efficient, smaller homes.
Trading not yet ‘well-proven’
In a submission to the Garnaut Review, not yet on the review website, Pears cautions that emissions trading is not yet “well-proven” as a policy response to climate change.
“On this basis, it should not be treated as a replacement for a comprehensive range of policy tools, but as one element of a suite of responses. As we learn more over time, we will gain confidence and competence and its actual role will become clearer. A premature shift away from existing policy tools and measures is a very high risk strategy.”
“Closure of existing [energy efficiency] programs bsed on the hope or belief that emissions trading will replace them would involve a serious loss of momentum in response,” Pears says in the submission.
The submission says businesses are “typically far from optimal in their use of energy and resources”, partly because of information barriers “within and between organisations”.