Submission by City West Water Ltd to the Issues Paper on the Expansion of the Energy Saver Incentive
19 November 2010
Executive Summary
City West Water welcomes the opportunity to comment on the proposed expansion of Energy Saver Incentive (ESI) scheme.
City West Water supports the extension of the scheme to allow participation by small to medium enterprises, as these businesses have an important role to play in the community in improving energy efficiency and reducing the generation of greenhouse gases. City West Water serves more than 34,000 business customers in its service area of the central activities district, inner and western suburbs of Melbourne. Most of these business customers are small to medium enterprises.
City West Water runs a highly successful resource efficiency improvement program with its business customers. In addition to helping relevant customers prepare waterMAPs mandated by the Victorian government’s program for businesses using 10 million litres of potable water or more per year, City West Water also importantly facilitates the implementation of WaterMAP actions that are not mandated under the waterMAP regulations.
Under the Business Resource Efficiency program, City West Water has assisted implementation of over 100 water efficiency projects over five years which will deliver water savings of over 22 billion litres, built an excellent reputation amongst customers and is recognised nationally and internationally for its innovative work.
Significant water use is embedded in the production and use of electricity, particularly in cooling applications at power stations and in end use process applications. The interlinked nature of water and energy means that effective integrated resource management policies should seek to reduce power and water use simultaneously, and policy makers should be mindful of employing strategies which have either a significant water or energy trade off. This submission suggests a strategy which could be employed under the ESI scheme to achieve simultaneous reductions in water and energy use by bringing together government initiatives into a single incentive package for business.
City West Water with its vision to be a truly sustainable water business and track record of delivering resource efficiency initiatives through established customer relationships, is uniquely placed to deliver such initiatives to the small to medium size business sector. Established relationships with over 1500 small and medium enterprise participants across City West Water’s service area have been formed through existing programs: Support Target 155; and the Business Resource Efficiency Program. Proposed regulation to lower the threshold for mandatory participation in the WaterMAP program to five million litres or more from July 2011will increase the number of small and medium sized businesses participating in waterMAPs through City West Water’s Business Resource Efficiency program.
Responding to demand from business customers and in line with City West Water’s Vision and Corporate goals, City West Water’s Business Resource Efficiency Program has been further developed to also assist these customers to implement energy efficiency projects which have a link with water efficiency to address a market failure to service this need. City West Water has found through its interaction with these businesses, that they lack the resources: expertise; knowledge; a trusted source of advice and often financial resources to allow them to make informed decisions about implementation of water or energy efficiency initiatives.
City West Water is a government owned, financially sound, fully resourced business with financial, environmental, engineering and project management skills, that is committed to ensuring the sustainability of its operations, those of its customers and the community in which it operates. City West Water has in place sound relationships with its customers, experienced people and a list of private sector suppliers experienced in facilitating the implementation of effective resource efficiency projects, and tried and tested governance processes and procedures for identifying, assessing and delivering these types of projects.
City West Water doubts that VEECs alone will provide enough incentive for business to identify and undertake the larger, cost effective energy efficiency initiatives
City West Water and its business resource efficiency model provides a potential partner for the Department of Primary Industries, which complementary to market mechanisms like VEECs, can identify and facilitate implementation of cost effective, larger scale energy efficiency projects, addressing a market failure to satisfy business demand for both financial and non-financial assistance to implement these projects. In doing so it will enhance the government’s Taking Action for Victoria’s Future policy to expand the Energy Saver Incentive scheme to successfully deliver its target savings in the business sector.
City West Water explains this proposition and addresses business’ needs in this submission in the background section and in answering specific questions posed by the Issues Paper.
Background
City West Water is one of the three retail water businesses owned by the Victorian Government. City West Water provides water, sewerage, trade waste and recycled water services to residential and non-residential customers in Melbourne’s Central Activities District and inner and western suburbs as a core function of the organisation’s Statement of Obligations. Another principal requirement on City West Water is to implement programs that enable the efficient use of water by its customers.
Figure 1 - City West Water service area within Melbourne
City West Water’s interest in the Energy Saver Incentive scheme for SME’s is true to its Vision to be a truly sustainable water business. City West Water has commenced assisting its customers to implement wider resource efficiency initiatives, especially in energy efficiency through its Business Resource Efficiency Program. See attached Appendix 1 – Business Resource Efficiency Program brochure for further detail.
This program levers off the success of City West Water’s work in helping its business customers to implement water efficiency projects, and in response to their demand that a market failure be addressed. That is, that assistance which is not cost prohibitive and provides practical advice is required by business to identify and implement energy efficiency initiatives.
Research conducted by City West Water with its business customers showed that there was widespread need from these businesses for practical assistance to implement energy efficiency projects. They also told City West Water that they were interested in partnering with City West Water to implement energy efficiency initiatives. This was based on the trust built in working with these same businesses to help them implement over 100 water efficiency projects that will deliver over the life of the projects, over 22 billion litres of water savings.
Figure 2 demonstrates this need and the areas where energy efficiency can be improved in these businesses.
City West Water’s Business Resource Efficiency program is founded on a unique set of attributes and resources that enables it to provide a service of this type:
- sound relationships with its business customers generated through in house business relationship specialists and its day to day service philosophy of working with customers and pre-screened private sector service providers;
- established triple bottom line resource efficiency project assessment matrices and procedures to identify and assess energy efficiency projects, both pre and post implementation;
- expert technical staff who understand customer processes and related resource efficiency who can identify resource efficiency improvement initiatives and reduce the administrative burden in doing so;
- access to metering and monitoring equipment to accurately determine resource use in discrete areas of businesses
- a research and development program dedicated to overcoming barriers to improved resource efficiency, including projects with a strong water energy nexus. One project is a steam system efficiency program which has identified significant energy and water efficiency initiatives, some of which have been implemented immediately by customers at no or low cost, but many that will also require incentives to commence;
- expertise facilitating and project managing co-funding of over 100 resource efficiency projects to date which are delivering over 22 billion litres of water savings over the life of the infrastructure;
- established and rigorous financial, project governance and contractual arrangements which support its significant level of co-funding for water efficiency projects; and
- assistance with accessing funding to implement water and energy efficiency improvements.
A number of case studies demonstrating the types of projects in which City West Water has provided assistance to customers are presented as part of this submission as Appendix 2.
Importantly, in co-funding projects, City West Water takes a holistic approach to ensure that in gaining water savings, the implications for energy use and carbon generation are taken into account or mitigated.
A number of energy efficiency projects have been presented to City West Water by customers for assistance, but require external funding to proceed, or bring forward their implementation. This is because many of these projects, although providing reasonable paybacks to the business, in many cases the competition within businesses for capital is such that these projects have lower priority.
We have found in many instances that when City West Water provides support to business to help them identify greater business benefits that will arise from these types of projects, reduces the administrative burden to determine these benefits and contributes, even a small proportion of project costs in co-funding, the business will elevate the priority of the project and allocate its own capital to ensure implementation.
City West Water has certain funds available from its tariff revenue to offer a contribution to funding for projects with customers which deliver water and trade waste efficiency benefits. Projects that deliver only energy efficiency cannot be funded from City West Water’s regulated tariff revenue under its Statement of Obligations from the Government of Victoria. Figure 3 illustrates City West Water’s Statement of Obligations funding arrangements and the types of projects relative to each.
Figure 3: Typical Business Resource Efficiency project types and funding requirements of each as they relate to the regulated functions in City West Water’s Statement of Obligations.
It is City West Water’s view that the Energy Saver Incentive scheme will certainly assist business to improve its energy efficiency, but must address the needs of business, which are a more complex and commercially focused set of criteria with potentially large and cost effective energy savings, setting it apart from the residential sector where simple and relatively inexpensive solutions are prevalent, making decisions by householders simple. As such, the expanded scheme must address these needs to ensure the successful implementation of the government’s policy in the business sector.
Based on its extensive experience with business in identifying, developing and implementing resource efficiency projects, City West Water recommends that a holistic integrated resource efficiency program providing assistance and a range of incentives tailored to business’ needs as part of the Energy Saver Incentive scheme will ensure that the targets of the government’s Taking Action for the Future policy are achieved.
A partnership with City West Water provides the opportunity for the Department of Primary Industries to provide financial incentives such as seed funding and other incentives and resources to business energy efficiency initiatives through a trusted, secure and respected resource efficiency service organisation in City West Water. City West Water has demonstrated its ability to understand business needs and deliver resource efficiency projects and their benefits efficiently and effectively, to ensure lasting results and continuous improvement at low risk to the Government of Victoria in fulfilling its Taking Action for Victoria’s Future policy initiative.
This model, if run successfully as a pilot, could potentially be implemented across Victoria by water utilities.
City West Water will explain in more detail the rationale for this recommendation in answering key questions raised in the Department’s Issues Paper in the following pages.
City West Water response to specific questions in the Issues paper
1. An Increased Target
What is the nature and impact of barriers to optimal energy efficiency in the SME sector?
Through its Business Resource Efficiency program and its underlying research, City West Water has identified a number of barriers inhibiting the implementation of energy efficiency initiatives. These barriers include:
- other priorities – the employees of most SMEs are fully occupied by their regular roles. Without direct encouragement, resource efficiency may simply never become a priority;
- lack of expertise to identify energy efficiency initiatives – most SMEs would not know where to start. Few employ suitably qualified or experienced people to identify, cost, develop business cases and implement energy saving initiatives;
- who to trust – City West Water’s research shows that businesses which are keen to take action may fail to do so because they do not know any analysts/consultants they can trust
- lack of financial resources to implement larger cost effective energy efficiency initiatives – although Victorian Energy Efficiency Certificates are an absolutely appropriate incentive to “pull through” low cost initiatives such as light globe and showerhead exchanges these will deliver only small incremental changes to energy efficiency in business premises by comparison to those efficiency improvements that can be delivered by capital intensive initiatives such as energy efficient air-conditioning and heating, cooling tower motor drives (see Olex Cables case study in Appendix 2) and light technology changes such as LEDs in exchange for High Pressure Sodium lighting systems in warehouses. Most businesses working with City West Water have reported that although paybacks are reasonably satisfactory, available capital is the biggest single barrier to implementing these type of initiatives which have the potential to deliver significant incremental energy efficiencies. See Figure 2 in background section above.
Where capital is made available through their business or external grant or loan schemes the administrative burden to build a business case or seek a grant is significant and often results in a lack of appetite from businesses to pursue capital.
City West Water’s experience in removing the administration burden associated with seeking funding support for water efficiency improvement, resulted in the time taken to engage in efficiency measures being reduced and the implementation rate improving significantly. City West Water is presently helping a number of customers to seek external seed capital, shielding them from the administrative burden of these funding programs for energy efficiency improvements.
Other specific barriers related to water efficiency programs, which will also relate to energy efficiency programs in SMEs have included:
- language barriers in selected businesses, notably hospitality businesses where staff often use English as a second language. When the information is presented to them in a culturally sensitive way, behaviour can be changed relatives quickly;
- computer literacy (a number of small business don't have computers, particularly in the cafe, restaurant and accommodation sectors).
Which energy efficiency measures should be included under the Energy Saver Incentive Scheme for SMEs?
Large energy savings can be achieved by capturing the “low hanging fruit" associated with hot water efficiency initiatives, as demonstrated by the ESI residential program. Information suggests that consumption of energy by industry associated with the “industrial” use of water is at least as large as residential energy use for water1. Opportunities for improving hot water energy efficiency within the business sector are significantly more varied than those available in the residential sector. For direct equipment replacement these include:
- water efficient shower heads;
- water efficient pre-rinse spray valves in hospitality premises;
- high pressure hoses in hospitality and manufacturing premises;
- efficient dishwashers;
- efficient washing machines; and
- efficient bed pan flushers in hospitals.
Opportunities for simultaneously reducing water and or energy usage through equipment modifications, requiring specialist knowledge to implement include:
- steam systems in industrial, hospital and other manufacturing premises. City West Water is currently running a steam systems efficiency project with its customers which to date has identified savings of 35ML/yr of water savings and 56,000GJ/yr of energy savings across 15 customer sites;
- Variable Speed Drive installation on cooling towers – Olex Cables is an example.
- initiatives such as those outlined in Figure 2 should be considered as high priority improvement initiatives and so should also be included in the scheme.
These and other custom water and/or energy efficiency projects are unique to particular business which would be suited to project based customised deeming of VEEC values. However, City West Water understands through its customer relations, that VEECs alone will not be enough to improve business cases or provide upfront capital to implement these initiatives. Examples of such projects which City West Water has assisted in implementing through co-funding are illustrated in the case studies included in Appendix 2 of this document.
Business would also benefit from sub-metering of electricity and gas usage to assist in understanding energy use, and identifying system inefficiencies. Steam and boiler efficiency assessments at selected City West Water customer sites found around half of the sites surveyed had insufficient metering to accurately quantify the energy savings available through system improvements. Sub-metering of water use areas is offered free to businesses participating in the Business Resource Efficiency Program to assist in implementing water efficiency, which while not producing directly quantifiable savings has often demonstrated the maxim "you can’t manage what you can’t measure".
These incentives are all complementary to any future carbon price as a tool to improve efficiency as their implementation in the SME sector is often prevented, not by pricing signals, but lack of sufficient information on the advantages and procedures for implementing efficiency measures. Accordingly, their implementation constitutes as additional under Point 1 of the COAG Complementarity Principles: measures for where the price signals provided by the proposed Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme are insufficient to overcome other market failures that prevent the take-up of otherwise cost-effective abatement measures.
What is the nature and size of savings (from the activity and total potential across the sector) of the energy efficiency opportunities for SMEs?
City West Water’s experience to date has been mainly with closely related water and energy efficiency initiatives. Those initiatives where we have been able to estimate or quantify savings are outlined in Appendix 3.
What are the most critical barriers to their adoption?
These programs or individual projects which City West Water has undertaken with its customers have all required assistance and or incentives for business to implement changes, whether it was a showerhead or a variable speed drive in a cooling tower.
The barriers City West Water sees as most critical include:
Information gaps regarding the identification and implementation of opportunities prove a critical barrier to the adoption of efficiency projects. Business lack information to:
- assess the quality of various products or solutions on the market.
- identify available efficiency opportunities. For instance around half of the business audited through the City West Water steam and boiler system opportunities had condensate return opportunities that had not been previously identified;
- access opportunities that require expert knowledge for their identification. For example to identify a faulty steam trap, inefficient lighting system or air-conditioning system;
- use metering data to identify how much energy is being used in various processes. Increased metering within process operations will not only empower business to assess efficiency options, but will also assist in identifying key energy use areas, use trends and areas where energy is being wasted.
Administrative barriers – City West Water’s business customers continually reinforce the need to remove or reduce the administrative burden on business as an incentive to improve resource efficiency including energy. This should include the whole process from identification of improvement initiatives through to verification of savings for customized deeming of VEEC values. Through its existing programs CWW has built a reputation amongst the business community as a provider of low administration business resource efficiency services and advice.
Available capital is the most critical barrier influencing energy efficiency improvement according to City West Water’s research – see Figure 2.
Prescribed activities with a deemed VEEC abatement value providing installation free of charge or at a subsidy improves access to efficiency measures for businesses which lack either time, resources or capital to perform or finance the installation of equipment themselves. These “walk in and retrofit” initiatives will certainly be attractive to business for appropriate activities.
Where capital intensive equipment is required, available capital is a barrier to implementation of initiatives which can provide significant efficiency improvements in efficient one-off installations. Competition for capital within businesses is intense and in most cases the available capital within a business is directed at the most apparent productive activity. It is not until a business is presented with facts that show investments in energy or water efficiency will produce positive bottom line improvements that it will direct its capital into these activities. Even more so, if it is offered, co-funding or revolving loans with attractive terms to provide seed capital for its projects, this in most cases helps to generate a co-commitment from the business to implement the initiative.
City West Water’s Business Resource Efficiency program although filling the information gaps and reducing other barriers to energy efficiency, is unable to provide co-funding from City West Water tariff revenue to energy efficiency improvement projects that are not closely linked to water efficiency (eg steam systems).
A partnership of the Department of Primary Industries (DPI) and City West Water that brings together DPI’s responsibility for energy efficiency, and City West Water’s resources encapsulated in the Business Resource Efficiency program, will help to facilitate delivery of the many energy efficiency projects City West Water’s customers require this type of help to implement. These include a lighting project that will deliver 2350 MWH of energy savings equivalent to 28,000 tonnes of CO2-e emissions.
2. Scheme Scope
Would site based eligibility set at 40 or 160 MWhs annual consumption be appropriate or acceptable?
City West Water believes this threshold range for SMEs to be too narrow. This would exclude a large number of businesses in the 160MWh to 28,000 MWh range which are not covered by any existing programs (28,000 MWh being the threshold at which the Environment and Resource Efficiency Program (EREP) triggers participation for businesses). This is also a sector where significant 'quick wins' exist, so typically larger savings can be achieved at a lower cost. Unlike larger businesses covered within the EREP program, these businesses rarely employ dedicated environmental staff and often lack the knowledge and resources to implement improvements, so the City West Water business resource efficiency model as part of the Energy Saver Incentive would be of great benefit to these businesses and the delivery of targets in the government’s policy.
It is also noteworthy, that despite EREP obligations, this scheme may also be of benefit to EREP obligated businesses. For example, pre-rinse spray valves installed by City West Water at a number of businesses participating in the EREP program, delivered energy savings to that business that, although not of significance in the business’s overall energy profile, were of an equivalent, sometimes greater magnitude than many of the SMEs’ total energy consumption by these appliances combined. Thus there were two benefits accruing:
- capturing quick wins that might not be addressed otherwise; and
- delivering added energy efficiency with lower administrative effort
City West Water recommends that the expanded scheme at least extends to businesses with an annual energy consumption of 28,000 MWH or equivalent petajoules and allows participation for EREP obligated businesses for energy efficiency opportunities which are not subject to mandated implementation requirements.
What entities should be included or excluded? (i.e. should public-sector entities such as schools and local government offices, or corporations coved by the Energy Efficiency Opportunities scheme be included?)
Schools, local government and other public sector entities present many opportunities to improve energy efficiency that can contribute to the overall energy efficiency improvement across the State as well as reducing the entities’ costs. City West Water has not discriminated participation in its water efficiency programs for business customers and works with schools, government departments eg Health, Justice, local government and others to improve water efficiency to deliver a community benefit. City West Water would support a similar approach to energy efficiency under the ESI scheme expansion.
What is the best way for government to ensure that an enterprise wishing to participate in the Energy Saver Incentive is eligible to do so?
The scheme must be flexible enough to ensure that businesses with cost effective energy efficiency opportunities are presented with appropriate levels of assistance to participate. Eligibility criteria can be set for businesses, however this may not leverage participation unless appropriate assistance is provided for those businesses – most in the SME sector, that do not have resources readily available to identify and implement the most efficient improvement opportunities.
3. Energy retailer liability for the scheme
City West Water has no specific comment on this section of the Issues Paper.
4. Assigning Abatement Values
In expanding the scheme to SME what are the benefits and risks of establishing:
a set of specified activities, each with a simple “deemed” abatement value (as per the current scheme);
City West Water acknowledges and supports the proposition that simple deemed activities like in the residential scheme reduce administration burden and make it easy to deliver activities on a wide scale. In many cases in the business sector this methodology may be appropriate for simple activities such as exchanging light globes.
However an accurate deemed abatement value is more difficult to establish for business than for residential activities, as the diverse nature of business operations make it to difficult to make accurate assessment of savings. As an example, the business shower head exchange by City West Water has occurred across a range of business sectors with very different water usage patterns - from sporting clubs where showers are used once a week, hotels where they are used once a day, to hospitals where they are used several times a day. The difficulty in making generic assessments of water and energy savings is exacerbated by a lack of reliable data on energy (and also) usage breakdowns within Australian business.
It also important that activities selected for simple deemed abatement activities are chosen so that the product selected would be fit for purpose in as many businesses as possible to broaden the reach and efficiency of the deeming process to pull through efficiency improvements for these simple activities.
a project-based deeming approach to activities; or
Including activities where abatements are deemed on a project by project basis allows the scheme to deliver on initiatives with much larger efficiency savings. The magnitudes of savings that can be achieved through site specific projects, particularly within the manufacturing sector are demonstrated in attached case studies in Appendix 2.
A drawback from project based deeming activities is that the diverse nature of projects makes them difficult to administer and verify savings. City West Water has experience and established governance procedures for administering water efficiency projects that could be applied to energy efficiency initiatives.
In the residential ESI scheme, many of the improvement opportunities are funded from the VEEC certificates generated by the activities undertaken making financial decisions by householders easier.
Most of the projects likely to arise in SMEs under an extended scheme will not generate enough “capital value” from VEEC certificates at current market values to improve business cases by making capital available or reducing outlay. For this reason these projects are unlikely to proceed. Further incentives are required to make capital available upfront or reduce business outlay to bring about implementation of many energy efficiency initiatives that will provide savings in large incremental steps. This could be in the form of grants or attractive loans that business could not generally obtain from their normal financial sources.
Verification of energy savings in projects is best achieved through direct measurement related to production or business activity levels.
Having a minimum certificate threshold would significantly restrict projects where technical assessment is required to identify savings, as the quantum of efficiency improvement is often unknown prior to assessment. For instance, in steam systems assessed by City West Water in its current Steam Systems Efficiency program, a reason savings have often gone unrealized is because businesses are unaware of the magnitude of the savings available. Therefore, creating a minimum threshold may prevent businesses from investigating opportunities which, prior to assessment, they may assume to be small.
a combination of simple deemed and project-based deeming?
Given the absence of any other accessible grants in the energy efficiency space both project based deeming (perhaps as a grant or revolving loan to provide capital to allow implementation of the project) and simple mechanisms would need to be included in the Energy Saver Incentive Scheme to access the most cost effective energy efficiency opportunities amongst business. Such an approach would bring increased administration requirements to the scheme, which City West Water believes it is well placed to assist with.
What new activities would be best suited to project-based deeming assessments?
- Activities where specialist investigation is required to identify opportunities. These include boiler and steam system improvements, lighting systems eg conversion to LED technology. Figure 2 provides a list of activities that would require project based deeming assessments;
- Activities where site conditions dictate specialised equipment such as in the case of high pressure hoses, and variable speed drives in air-conditioning systems;
- Site specific activities not listed in this submission. Examples of such projects are demonstrated in the case studies attached in Appendix 2.
How can project-based assessments be efficiently and effectively regulated?
This question can be addressed by extending the established governance procedures employed by City West Water to improve water and trade waste efficiency, and in addition, forming partnerships that will broaden the reach of established programs.
City West Water has robust assessment procedures to determine project suitability for co-funding. A Triple Bottom Line assessment matrix is used to determine efficient projects in terms of: water savings and their cost to City West Water and the proponent; and administration in implementation.
Post project evaluation is undertaken on all projects to verify savings and incorporate lessons into future projects.
A strategic approach to identify and select these projects would be required, but the government’s waterMAP process could be considered as a potential model.
For SMEs are there any special circumstances or sectors which would benefit from a different approach to certificate generation than that used in the residential sector?
The varied nature of efficiency opportunities means that specialist knowledge is required to implement many projects. In the small manufacturing sector, or businesses with steam and boiler systems, access to trusted specialist knowledge at subsidised cost would assist business in identifying improvement opportunities. This assessment process could include an assessment of the equivalent certificate value of efficiency improvement opportunities identified within the business and the need for and type of additional incentives which might be required to bring about implementation.
What other methods of assigning abatement values should be considered?
Employing expert assessors to undertake process efficiency assessments could be used to identify efficiency opportunities and quantify abatement values. Such a procedure has been successfully employed by a number of existing programs including the Plastics and Chemicals Industry Association’s (PACIA) Carbon Solutions program and the City West Water steam system efficiency project operating under its Business Resource Efficiency program.
The importance of employing trusted and experienced professional assessors is the differentiating factor between successful programs and less successful programs. City West Water maintains a list of service providers which have been sourced through a rigorous expression of interest process to determine capability across a range of water efficiency initiatives. Customers can use this list as a starting point to choose an assessor on the understanding that those on the list have had their capability level assessed.
5. Communication
What types of consumer communication would stakeholders expect Government to deliver on the Energy Saver Incentive? What strategy would support accredited businesses to engage with consumers on the program?
Harmonisation with existing programs
A number of existing programs exist to assist business improve its resource efficiency, including but not limited to:
- PACIA Carbon Solutions
- AIG Carbon Assist
- Grow Me the Money
- City Switch
- CarbonDown
- Sustainability Victoria’s Resource Smart Business program
- Support Target 155
- CWW Business Resource Efficiency program
Using the established communication channels of existing programs would provide an efficient means of delivering information on the ESI. The opportunity exists to build on the success of these programs in promoting energy efficiency awareness and importantly the achievements of like businesses in delivering energy efficiency, especially to improve their bottom line. For instance, City West Water reaches over 34,000 business customers at least 4 times per year through its billing channels. This provides a promotional opportunity to DPI to promote the ESI scheme.
Direct Engagement
Small and medium size business are often time and resource poor. City West Water has found employing direct customer engagement and reducing the administrative burden has proved the most effective means of gaining business participation in voluntary programs.
Support materials
In the delivery of the ESI activities the opportunity exists to promote the opportunities for low or no cost behaviour change and maintenance procedure activities concurrently. Examples of the type of information that could be provided are demonstrated in Appendix 4 which shows information on efficient kitchen and cleaning techniques promoted through the City West Water pre-rinse spray valve program.
Customer promotion
City West Water has found offering opportunities to business to promote their improvement initiatives to be a key catalyst for businesses to participate in programs. This has the dual benefit of spreading community awareness of energy efficiency. Through the Support Target 155 program business customers were offered the opportunity to show case their achievements through a range of publications including a customer magazine - Liquid Assets, case studies, and billboards (in selected instances). Stickers and a participation certificate was also made available to business to display their commitment to the program.
Signed for and on behalf of
City West Water Limited by:
Geoff Gardiner
General Manager
Service Sustainability
