News
| Forget mandatory energy efficiency, just show business the savings | 20-06-06 |
Although the Australian Greens failed recently to persuade the Federal government to make new energy efficiency measures mandatory for the country's top 250 companies, the outcome carries a hidden positive.
The Greens proposal, backed by Labor and several minor parties, called for tough new parameters and a compulsory view of the program after five years. Instead, self-assessment will take place with no penalty for not meeting targets.
This might sound like a potential horror story for most tiers of business, but there is a hidden bonus in this outcome, particularly since late last year when parliamentary secretary Mr Warren Entsch declared that $975m would be saved in one year even if half the recommendations were taken up.
These 250 companies are said to consume a massive 60% of total business energy in Australia, so to define their own targets and then meet them is of huge economic benefit to each of these organisations.
Gone are the days when Australian companies ignore environmental advancement within their own industries because now it is worth a lot of money to them to save rather than waste.
Because we have been involved in providing energy saving solutions across many sectors of Australian industry and business, we have witnessed signs of positive usage outcomes emerge in relation to all energy types.
Eximo prides itself in being Australia's only nationally integrated ducting products and systems supplier. As ducting systems run on electrical energy, we deal first-hand with the energy issue and has seen much importance is now placed on energy efficiency rather than avoidance of responsibility.
We have designed and installed ducting systems in tunnelling projects, mines and quarries, food manufacturing plants, energy installations, and in general manufacture engineering.
Therefore, from our experienced viewpoint we strongly believe that the top 250 companies will be lifting their game to silence the argument in parliament.
To Eximo, the first true sign of this industry development appeared when we introduced our Optiflow technology -- technology focused as much on energy-savings as performance efficiency.
Industry could have chosen to ignore Optiflow, instead there is a huge surge of interest not only because the dollar savings are immense, the latest generation of plant operators and company managers are also genuinely showing a shift towards ecological sustainability of our resources.
How Optiflow is working for industrial companies keen to protect environment is through a simple negative pressure concept. Instead of running high-pressure vacuum power throughout the entire ducting system, most of the larger items - which normally require most energy to be removed - simply drop onto a moving conveyor in a negative pressure chamber which requires much less energy to run.
It is logical, and it saves money and power, and when you think about all the different types of Australian businesses that have outdated extraction and ducting systems in place already, the monetary incentive to save energy is perfectly clear.
Parliamentarians can argue all they like about setting parameters and penalties. The simple answer is to give big business technologies for viable economic alternatives that also produce energy efficiency and positive environmental outcomes.