During June 2010, Planet Footprint spent time with its subscribed Councils in Tasmania. The following is a summary of how each Council is using their Planet Footprint Service to drive environmental improvement. 

Launceston City Council - using Planet Footprint to raise greenhouse awareness among Councillors

Launceston has one of the most driven sustainability teams we’ve come across at Planet Footprint. They were a CCP council and are actively communicating their performance and advocating their stance on corporate social responsibility both internally and externally to their community. The sustainability team has invited Planet Footprint to present to their Councillors in 2010 to engage them in the Council’s sustainability journey by discussing  the tools and services that are available to effectively manage Council’s energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions. Jim says, "We're really excited about Planet Footprint presenting at our Council meeting. We know that engaged Councillors means we, as sustainability staff, can forge ahead and act on what the Planet Footprint data is telling us".

The sustainability team at Launceston City Council want their Councillors to be aware how their main properties are performing, both environmentally and financially. They are determined to create a culture of energy conservation and accountability for energy use across their entire Organisation, starting from the top-down. 

Glenorchy City Council - identifying utility accounts that have not transferred cleanly to state government control

Glenorchy City Council wanted to identify those accounts that were still being paid for by Council, but were supposed to be transferred over to the State Government as part of the recent water and sewer restructuring.

As was the case across the state, Council was no longer responsible for operating the City's water and sewer supply, and through Planet Footprint's data capture direct from their energy provider, were able to assist their asset team identify those accounts that were no longer their responsibility.

Council and Planet Footprint will also be merging a range of information on Council’s assets into Planet Footprint's database, to link data such as the electricity consumption and electricity costs of each individual asset. This will effectively close the loop between who pays the bill and who is responsible for the operation of the asset. Closing this loop will go a long way towards building awareness for how much money is spent on energy use, and where Council can start to focus attention on improvements.

Kingborough Council - using Planet Footprint to track performance against targets

Kingborough Council was a CCP Council which until recently had been developing its greenhouse gas inventories in-house in collaboration with other Councils in the area. To save time and effort, Council engaged Planet Footprint to ensure their resources were dedicated to better managing their assets and reducing costs and consumption.

As part of their base subscription, Planet Footprint will be merging Council’s CCP reduction targets into their Planet Footprint reports/data extracts, so they are now able to quickly and effectively see how they are tracking against these targets.

This move is central to building organisation support for greenhouse programs in Council and for reminding staff that performance is being monitored and that they all have a role to play in conserving energy throughout Council buildings.

Derwent Valley Council – now knows the State of Play of each of their properties

As with many of Planet Footprint's Councils, Derwent Valley Council is a very small Council. And like all small Councils, have little time to dedicate to greenhouse reporting and driving sustainability outcomes (although it is still an overall goal of the Council to report emissions and improve performance). To assist with this, Planet Footprint will go further than providing the standard quarterly reports, but will also develop tailored State of Play documents interpreting Council's data and 'telling the story' about their environmental performance.

This State of Play report summarises anomalies in consumption (such as unusual consumption patterns), improvements in energy use, financial savings, identifying areas of priority or that require urgent attention. As well as this, Planet Footprint will provide an example list of explanations as to why a change in consumption has occurred (by offering a selection of explanations as to why an account may have increases in consumption compared to the same period in the previous year), prompting staff members responsible for different accounts to think about what might be happening at their site, and respond appropriately. Through the quarterly State of Play reports, Planet Footprint intend on providing Council staff everything they need to know to address issues relating to their area of responsibility, quickly.

Glamorgan-Spring Bay Council – property profiling tool identifies clear savings

Glamorgan-Spring Bay Council wants to conduct vehicle by vehicle analysis of fuel consumption. They’re also interested in property profiling and how it will help them identify what is going to be the best option for new Council buildings. They want to use the profiles developed by Planet Footprint to find out what the most energy and cost efficient lighting, heating and cooling systems are in other Council buildings similar to theirs.

Planet Footprints’ aim is to help them identify what efficient technologies are going to work best for them, based on the property profiles that other councils have provided, showing upgrades to improve performance.

Further, a property profile developed by Planet Footprint for their main Council Chambers  found that in the last 12 months, Council has reduced their electricity usage costs by $2000 - which is more than the cost of their annual Planet Footprint subscription! Council were not previously aware the savings they had made

Break O’Day Council – forecasting costs so there are no rude shocks at the end of each quarter

Break O’Day Councils’ Finance Manager is using the Planet Footprint service as a forecasting tool to determine how much Council might expect to spend on electricity up to the end of the financial year before the year has ended. He is also using the Invoice Detail Data (raw billing data) from his reports so that his finance staff can enter the data straight into their database, rather than look at each individual invoice and enter it manually.

Environment staff are keen on using the new State of Play reports and communication tools at their first Community Sustainability Fair in September.

As part of their base subscription, Planet Footprint is developing an engaging summary of Council’s performance to show community members at the Fair that Council is acting on environmental issues as well as how it is performing against other councils.

The Sustainability Fair will be in the town hall, which is one of Council’s subscribed properties for individual site monitoring, reporting and benchmarking. Council is keen to showcase their partnership with Planet Footprint and they will display a large poster with the Planet Footprint and Break O‘Day Council logos stating that the building is independently monitored for energy consumption, costs and emissions.

Break O’Day Councils’ Assets Team is also keen to merge the Planet Footprint data with their asset register and is interested in keeping track of how much each property is spending on electricity and what the priority areas are for upgrades/attention. Planet Footprint is working with them closely on these areas.

Devonport City Council – measuring reductions from an energy efficiency project

Devonport plans to use the Property Footprint Report for their administration building to track the improvements and reductions made as a result of a lighting retrofit trial in June.

In a recent Anomaly Report, Planet Footprint identified an anomaly in electricity consumption at the Devonport Pool, where consumption was higher during winter 2009 compared to winter 2008, when the pool was closed. Council is currently investigating what was in operation over this period that didn't need to be.

Central Coast Council – corporate plan and reductions targets driven by Planet Footprint data

Central Coast Council recently developed a Climate Change Action Plan focusing on corporate reductions in energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions. Council's corporate plan was developed based on the information provided by Planet Footprint (across electricity consumption, street lighting, fuel use and corporate waste). One of the key ‘actions’ in their plan is to have continual and independent reporting on the emissions associated with Council operations.

Council is yet to set emission reduction targets, but Planet Footprint has offered to assist Council in the establishment of these. Planet Footprint are also encouraging Central Coast Council to look at property specific reduction targets as part of their overall objective. This way they can track the performance of their larger assets, which make up around 80% of their expenditure on energy each year. By setting individual property specific reduction targets (which will be in line with planned works to improve efficiency, and of course, budget allocations) Council can chip away at their overall objective and track their improvements more closely. 

Meander Valley Council – using Planet Footprint to verify energy reductions claims

When approached by a consulting firm or engineering company, Meander Valley wants to know which other subscribers have contracted that company and whether the savings they have proposed have been achieved.

As part of Council’s base subscription, Planet Footprint offers a validation and verification process, which is helping Meander and other subscribers determine if the reductions made by contractors, consultants and technology providers have actually been achieved.

In the case of Meander Valley, they have been considering the use of power optimizers on their buildings. Council wanted to know if the reduction claims could be verified independently. Planet Footprint is going to track the progress of the power optimizers on the other Council’s buildings and report back to Meander Valley so they can make an informed decision about whether to invest in this energy efficient technology.

Once the technology is installed, Planet Footprint can verify whether the proposed reductions are being achieved.

To have an independent source verify and validate new technology quickly and accurately is of enormous value to Meander Valley, which doesn't need to dedicate as many staff hours to researching and verifying claims.