Urban Grind

I am no expert on this one. I only hope to start a discussion about it.

Help us get the jump on climate change

So reads the brochure I received in the mail last week. From $10-$50 you can save up to 4 months worth of environmental impact as caused by driving your car. Cool, even Energex gets that global warming is a real issue, and they have actually had this program in place for about 8 years. Good on you energex, but wait, if I choose the $50 option aren’t I increasing my bills by $200 a year?

Last year Energex reported an annual profit of about $636.6 million. Energex profits from dirty energy and instead of using that profit to it’s full extent (I acknowledge that they do see to have initiatives in place) they want us to pay for their good intentions. In short the maths doesn’t work in my head. It is like Energex is saying, “We have money that we could use, but we would rather use more of yours.”

What Energex could do:
Report a lesser profit next year. Take that income and show people that they really care about the issue. Surely an extra 500 million could have an impact. Think differently… why isn’t Energex putting renewable energy in place before we do as individuals. That way they could still control it, they could still charge us by the wattage, but this way instead of programs to get us to reduce our energy use they could in a sense encourage us to use as much as we like. Why not?…

ENERGEX – Go hard! It’s GREEN.

What you can do:
Choose to send your $50 to an organisation that has the idea of Offsetting at it’s core. For example www.climatefriendly.com. Keep the money in your pocket, invest in your own renewable energy, and decentralise energy itself. As I have tried to show above, Energex actually has an opportunity right now to be even more profitable. If Energex won’t provide it, provide it yourself. They will be sorry they took their sweet time about it. Although if Energex do wise up, don’t forget that there are actually really good reasons for decentralisation. Lack of control over people is one of them, another is system based. Right now if energex fails the whole thing fails – it is centralised.

Till we have abundant green energy ‘live on less’ still applies.
Check out www.earthschoice.com.au for more info.
Here is a link to Energex’s 2004/05 Annual Report