What was the impetus for the founding of the Council?

Energy efficiency is the largest opportunity for carbon abatement over the next 20 years, but it’s been largely ignored. A number of companies identified the need for a dedicated group to advocate for the interests of energy efficiency. The market for energy efficiency has the potential to grow rapidly – HSBC estimated that the global market increased by 126 per cent between 2008 and 2009!

What are some of the most successful energy efficiency products and services the Council has been involved in implementing?

Our members deliver energy efficiency products and services, and our role is to help them grow the market for their products and services.

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We’ve seen the market for energy efficiency in buildings really start to ramp up, and one of the causes is an increased use of ‘integrated energy services’. Increasingly, building owners and governments are looking to hire a single company that can identify and implement energy saving products on their building, rather than directly engaging a range of contractors to carry out separate parts of a project. This means that the building owner has a simple relationship with a single contractor and they can hold that contractor to account for genuine results.

This is linked to a change in the market, where customers are looking for real, measurable energy savings, rather than installing one or two gimmicks

Has the Council been surprised and/or encouraged by the amount of companies seeking to improve their energy efficiency?

Energy efficiency is highly attractive because it typically delivers returns on investment of 20 per cent and above. As a result, a lot of companies in the United States and Europe have invested in energy efficiency, but until recently we didn’t have a culture of investing in efficiency in Australia. We’re seeing this change quite rapidly, and investment in some sectors, like government buildings, is growing really fast.

What are some of the long term goals of the Council?

The main goal of the council is to help Australia reach its energy efficiency potential. In other words, we invest in all energy efficiency opportunities that are cost-effective. ClimateWorks Australia estimates that if we reached our potential, by 2020 we’d save a further $5 billion a year and cut emissions by an additional 50 mega-tonnes a year.

Of course, this is a huge goal! There are a number of exciting projects that we’re starting to work on to make it easier for companies to invest in energy efficiency, but we also need policy change, in particular a national energy efficiency goal, energy market reform and incentives for efficiency and cogeneration in industry and commercial buildings.