Climate Change: A Business Opportunity - Traralgon

Keynote Speaker:  Paul Gilding

Chair: Helen McAdam Acting Manager, Gippsland Office, EPA Victoria

Climate Change is taking centre stage in our newspapers, our boardrooms and in public debate across the globe.  Regional Victoria is already experiencing the direct results of a changing climate and the need to act now on mitigation, as well as adaptation, is paramount.

To help understand the science, impacts, government and business response to this global issue, as well as the opportunities they present, EPA Victoria and Gippsland Climate Change Network hosted this Carbon Innovators Network event.

Keynote speaker Paul Gilding has 35 years experience in sustainability issues as an activist, advocate, entrepreneurial businessman, CEO and now adviser and thought leader. He has helped CEOs and executives around the world, deepen their understanding of sustainability issues, particularly the relationship to business value and strategy and how to drive change in response.

The event presented a regional perspective on climate change.  Representatives from VECCI and local businesses including Burra Foods, Australian Paper and Century Inn spoke about how climate change is impacting their businesses and what measures they are taking in response.  

See below for a short summary of the day and links to the presentations.

Scott Ferraro Gippsland Climate Change Network

Scott Ferraro, Executive Officer of the Gippsland Climate Change Network welcomed attendants to the event. The Gippsland Climate Change Network is a not-for-profit organisation that brings government, business and community together in a forum for action and discussion about climate change. An example of a project they are working on is the mapping of climate change activities in the Gippsland region and the document detailing this will be available shortly.

Clare Cowdery Department of Sustainability and Environment 

Clare provided the context for the Gippsland region. She began by stating that the climate change debate was no longer needed. Whether people believed that climate change was man-made or cyclical, changing weather patterns are occurring and there is a need to adapt accordingly. She went on to say that by simply focusing on climate change there is the potential to forget other important environmental issues such as population growth, development pressures particularly on agricultural land and degradation of natural resources. She emphasised that the Gippsland region’s natural resources such as energy, forestry, mining, fishing, water and agri-business were strongly correlated with its economic base. With increasing shortages in the supply of natural resources, the Gippsland region needs to diversify its economic base away from commodities towards services.

Paul Gilding

Paul introduced himself by detailing his long and varied career working on a range of environmental and economic issues in many different settings. This has shown him that in order to achieve change all sorts of people in all sorts of places need to act. He agreed with Clare that climate change is not the issue; it is a symptom of our addiction to quantitative economic growth and he asked how long can this continue. We are at the limits of our resources, using the equivalent of 1.2-1.3 earths to feed our current economy and with projected economic growth of 300% as well as a rapidly growing population, this could mean approximately 15-30 earths would be required. Paul summised that we have 3 choices:

1. To not change – which is our current strategy of conference after conference of indecision and lack of real actions being taken – which will result in the system crashing.
2. Stopping economic growth including leaving those that are poor to continue suffering.
3. Change the nature of and the way we run our economy – and this isn’t just about efficiency – its doing things completely differently.

According to Paul, Option 3 is our only way forward and it is achievable because we can change quickly if the desire is there. The bad news is that it often takes a crisis in order for quick change to occur, e.g. World Wars 1 and 2.

The opportunities are there though and already being utilised. For example, there are many new technology ideas with considerable funding being put behind them.  However there is no techno-fix for stupidity - technology and cultural shift will need to work together. It is individuals and communities that do and will need to lead the way though and you can only expect governments and business to follow. Therefore there is a need for communities to be more empowered.

Liam Henderson VECCI (Grow Me The Money) and Kevin Campbell Manager, Century Inn, Traralgon

Liam Henderson from VECCI has worked with Kevin Campbell of Century Inn for over 2 years now, through the Grow Me The Money program, a business sustainability program for small to medium businesses. This relationship began when Century Inn attended a Grow Me The Money resource efficiency workshop in Traralgon and through this they learnt the importance of measuring their resource use. Not long after the training, Kevin began to look at Century Inn’s water bills and noticed there had been a spike in usage. As a result he measures out of hours water usage and found that they had a massive water leak accounting for approximately 40% of their water use or approximately $7000 per quarter, which was promptly fixed.  This encouraged Century Inn to embark on their sustainability journey and since then they have implemented many further measures to reduce their footprint such as sensor lighting, flow restrictors and recycling of food waste. They built a new wing which doubled the number of rooms they had and by using environmentally sensitive design, have only increased their overall electricity bills by 10%. Although Century Inn have seen financial and environmental benefit from the work they have and will continue to do, one of the greatest benefits has been a cultural shift amongst staff who now feel empowered to act for the environment and take this home as well.

View the presentations:

Setting the Scene in Gippsland - Clare Cowdery Department of Sustainability and Enviroment

Karl Wild Burra Foods

Stephen Hawkins Australian Paper, Smorgon Steel

List of attendees

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