Keith Orchison writes in Australia’s Business Spectator about the almost totally ignored opportunities to increase the country’s productivity, that lags significantly below the OECD average. This is a good article that brings lessons to all of us.
The deafening silence on energy efficiency
At a point where teeth-grinding over energy policy (or the lack thereof) is more or less audible, it is refreshing to have a serious view published on what Australia needs — but depressing that it has been totally ignored in the public debate.
In February the Australian Academy of Technological Sciences & Engineering (aka ATSE) pushed out a set of perspectives on “Australia’s energy opportunities” to a deafening silence, which is the more odd because the points raised are highly germane.
Top of the pops so far as the academy is concerned is the urgent need to address Australia’s energy productivity (something I point out that Paul Keating led the premiers in tackling through electricity reform 20 years ago, but which has slipped markedly off the political radar in recent years as politicians intervene in the energy markets for other reasons).
ATSE is calling on governments — this needs federal, state and territory attention — to double the nation’s energy productivity by 2030 and to develop a “comprehensive roadmap” for the task within the next 12 months.
You will notice the eagerness with which our political leaders have jumped on this opportunity: not.
Perhaps they are deterred, supposing any of them even noticed the ATSE statement, by the academy acknowledging that “formidable obstacles” must be overcome to realise the potential of energy productivity.
These include strengthening energy efficiency codes for commercial and residential buildings, supporting efficiency retrofits, enhancing minimum energy performance standards for appliances used in homes, offices and shops, more stringent fuel economy standards for vehicles and efforts to increase the use of public transport.
Bruce Godfrey, who chairs ATSE’s energy forum, points out that Australia has now spent two decades ranked at or below the OECD average for energy productivity.
Others have said that we need to improve energy productivity 56 per cent between now and 2030 just to catch up with the OECD average, and this doesn’t take into account gains rival countries will make in this period.
As an example, China, admittedly starting from a very low base, has driven up its energy productivity by more than 150 per cent in the past 20 years and is now level with Australia on this ladder.
Those of a less conservative leaning who still like to hold up Barack Obama as an example, especially after his saintly green performance at “our” G20 meeting, may care to note the doubling by 2030 goal is one of his 2012 re-election planks.
It’s an understatement to say, as ATSE does, that lifting Australian energy productivity significantly and rapidly is “under-recognised” in the national debate.
Godfrey calls for special attention to be paid here to policies affecting long-lived products such as buildings, vehicles and air-conditioners where performance can be locked in for decades. As well as incentives, he argues, a big push for improvement requires raising the awareness of householders and commercial consumers along with a non-partisan policy approach and business leadership.
I find it fascinating, in an unpleasant way, that we can spend a year of heated political argument on how many hundreds of millions of dollars of consumer money should be thrown at supporting a renewable energy target for a market that has far too much capacity and no time at all addressing what the academy rightly raises as a national imperative that can save money and boost the economy.
Not surprisingly, ATSE wants loads more attention and support for R&D to pursue better energy efficiency — but it also offers a second self-interest reason for our doing this. Becoming a leader in (energy efficiency) technology can bring added benefits through sales in Asia, where there is a growing need, say Godfrey and the academy.
There’s room for a considerable discussion about how best to pursue the goal ATSE proposes. But what really gets my goat is that this issue can be raised as a key driver of future business and community wellbeing and just get ignored by politicians, the mainstream media and the multitude of green chatterers who get stimulated easily enough by whatever new ideological toy that can be presented for taxpayer giveaways.
This is an issue where the policymakers of all stripes can point to some efforts of the past and present, even claim that greater energy efficiency is the driver of the current electricity demand slump, but the bottom line, as ATSE makes clear, is that, by international standards, Australian efforts to date are nowhere near good enough.
In another context (the prospect of a shift to using nuclear energy) a contributor to the ATSE “energy opportunities” commentaries calls for a bipartisan vision plus a 20-year planning time frame and asks: “Is this too much to ask of ‘modern’ Australia?”
With respect to the big-ticket issue of overall energy productivity, today’s quite depressing answer is: “It appears so.”
Energy in Demand - Sustainable Energy - Rod Janssen 