Energy efficiency policy
A pioneer of energy efficiency policy in Australia, Senior Industry Fellow at RMIT Alan Pears AM, said a nationwide approach was long overdue to reduce the impact of climate change.
“Energy-related activities are responsible for around three-quarters of Australian climate impact,” he said.
“These activities include electricity generation and use, provision of heat (mostly using fossil gas), transport and ‘fugitive’ emissions (leakage of gases from coal mines, oil and gas production and supply).
“The International Energy Agency describes energy efficiency as ‘the first fuel’ because, beyond cutting energy bills and climate impacts, it provides many benefits such as improved health, productivity and savings on energy supply infrastructure investment."
However, he said Australia lagged behind most developed countries in this area.
“There are many exciting opportunities for Australian business and households to cut emissions from energy use while saving money and improving productivity and quality of life, but it’s a tragedy that Australians are missing out on these benefits,” he said.
Urban planning and development
Changing the way we live and move about in cities presents a way to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions, according to Associate Dean of Sustainability and Urban Planning Andrew Butt.
“In Australia’s two largest cities of Sydney and Melbourne over 40% of car commutes are less than 10km, but many other commutes are long and becoming longer in distance," Butt said.
To change this, we must tackle the form and structure of our cities, as decades of urban planning and urban development have locked in a dependence on long car commutes and an ever-growing suburbia.
“Planning systems need to recognize the role urban development and planning plays in climate change mitigation, not just adaptation,” he said.
To reduce our growing car dependence, he said, people needed to be able to access work, locally, across our largest cities, and at a national scale.
Planning for growth in areas beyond a few large metropolitan cities should be a priority, and for this jobs and infrastructure were needed sooner rather than later.
"The benefits of increasingly ‘living locally’ and of solutions to car-dependency and long commutes can not only provide positive social and health outcomes, but an all-important reduction in greenhouse gas emissions."
Story by: Diana Robertson
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