Climate Change Challenge

Another day when the sun is up and plenty of energy is floating around us - and freely available for all. Anybody?



A dear friend of mine from Amsterdam invited us to join the Greenpeace's '7 step Efficency Campaign' which I invite you all to join in!



It is about implementing a few changes to reduce your energy use - and hence reducing the total emissions from fossil energy sources. As you probably guessed, the first step will be ( hold your breath....) - changing the light bulbs. Boring as it may sound, it has many merits, one of which is the benefit to your wallet - saved energy usage equals reduced cost. So ok, you say you have done it already. Then here is a real challenge for you - convince someone else in your family or in your network of friends or colleagues to do it - someone who hasn't done it yet. And apart from changing the bulbs, you should also remember to turn them off if you don't need the light...



Talking about not using lighting. My company ikko participated this year in the EarthHour along with tens of thousands of other businesses and turned off all lights. Anybody who was in Sydney city area during that night experienced something special - the symbolic shutting down of lights from a huge amount of office buildings, people's homes and even the Harbour Bridge showed that when we want to pull together to achieve a common goal - we can. Millions of Australians turned off lights at their homes and many hosted candle -lit dinners to celebrate Earth Hour. And it wasn't only people in Sydney, or in Australia who took part - it went global. The results in energy savings from the night were amazing - 13% for Christchurch ( NZ) , and probably to Sydneysiders annoyance the Melbourneans raced to save c.10% compared to Sydney's 8.4%...well, it only means that we can rally up next year to break two digits again.



Key point is that we need these amazing energy savings more than just during one hour, during one special day of the year. So the real challenge is to keep it going for the other 364 days of the year as well. Over to you!

on the go - vol I

Whoohaa,



This is my first blogspot posting in this forum. This will be brief as am in the middle of testing the new ikko website and trying to contact some suppliers, writing 'to do' list for the rest of the week, and making dinner. Multi tasking, ball juggling - call whatever you like, but sometimes it just feels like one big circus ( or chaos if you want to use the other 'c' word...)



Interesting news from this week was the deal between AGL and Westpac where AGL has sold Westpack the right to emit 10,000 tonnes of carbon at $19 a tonne. ( One source to check for media coverage details:ABC World Today). This to me is a prelude of a much bigger change about to happen in the Australia - the introduction of the 'official' carbon market which the Government is working towards, and which is due to launch 2010. It will be interesting to see how many other 'private' sales will happen before the system is in place to handle the trad in bigger scale.



The carbon market is inevitable, but I still think that we should aim to reduce our carbon footprint first before 'buying our way out'. It's the small changes we as individuals - be it people or organisations/businesses - can make that contribute towards the bigger changes. It's the community wide changes and iniatives we can take part into that will count in the end. How did you think we go here where we are today? The named few Big Bad Wolfs blew out all the CO2 into the air? Think again.



Anyway, back to work now. See you later.