Page 901 - Week 03 - Tuesday, 29 March 2011
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green energy will be purchased separately from the general electricity contract. This part of the contract is a key strategy that will lead to a reduction in emissions.
Already the ACT government purchases 32.5 per cent renewable energy, including 17 per cent generated from the landfill gas sites at the tips which is not accredited GreenPower and therefore has no carbon offsets attached. A further 15.5 per cent of the electricity that is purchased is accredited GreenPower energy for which the government can claim carbon offsets. The government will consider the proportion of GreenPower accredited energy within the total energy purchase during the procurement process.
ACT Property Group has also managed energy audits on the major government office buildings to identify short and long-term strategies to reduce energy consumption. The energy assessment of the Dame Pattie Menzies building found it has a NABERS rating of 4.5 stars. However, due to the age of the other government buildings, coupled with the presence of high energy uses such as data centres and trades activities, their star ratings were relatively low.
As members will be aware, smart meters enable building owners and tenants to monitor real-time electricity use and more accurately measure changes in energy use due to tenant behaviour or building management. Smart meters have already been installed at the ACT Health building in Civic, Dame Pattie Menzies House, the Dickson motor vehicle registry and Macarthur House.
Their installation at the Magistrates Court has been commissioned and quotes sought for their installation at the Callam Offices, North Building and the offices and depot on Canberra Avenue at Fyshwick. ACT Property Group is also working with Shared Services ICT and a contractor to enable the data collected by these meters to be accessed by approved staff via the internet. These smart meters will also enable the government to isolate energy consumption attributable to the data centres and more accurately measure the overall building energy consumption.
ICT is an increasingly significant enabler of ACT government business. This will continue as we see greater use of ICT in areas such as health and education and the government’s proactive use of ICT as part of its community engagement activities and its work in e-government. Balanced against this invaluable growth in ICT is the need to maintain our focus on the government’s carbon footprint. In 2007 Gartner, the world’s leading information technology research and advisory company, reported that ICT is responsible for approximately two per cent of annual global greenhouse gas emissions.
Mr Speaker, the motion calls on the government to commit to measuring the environmental impact of its ICT use and to deploy initiatives to reduce its overall environmental footprint. I have already given my support to these actions and do so again today. I make the comment that increasing use of ICT has the potential to reduce even worse environment impacts elsewhere. For example, teleconferencing has the potential to save considerable emissions by negating the need for staff to travel to meetings and publishing information on the internet reduces the need for paper-based publications.
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