By Tracy Sorensen
In August, Tim Cornwell received the 1992 National Energy Award from resources minister Alan Griffiths. In September, he got the sack for pursuing the energy efficiency initiatives that won him the award.
For five years, Cornwell was the marketing manager of Murray River Electricity in Albury. His problem was his novel approach to his job: instead of trying to sell more electricity, as a good marketing manager might be expected to do, Cornwell was intent on selling less.
Cornwell's predicament illustrates how the federal government's greenhouse gas reduction goals are being cancelled by the realities of the power generation and distribution systems at state and local government level.
Cornwell's particular interest was in promoting low energy housing in the Albury area.
He told Green Left on November 2 that the idea rapidly caught on. When he started out five years ago, none of the display homes in the area — about 12 of these are built in any given year — featured energy efficiency. By this year, in response to public demand, eight display homes were sporting energy efficiency features, and these were now "selling like hot cakes".
A display home built by Murray River Electricity in collaboration with Cornwell won the 1992 Home of the Year Award.
Cornwell explained the main features of the energy efficient house at a Greenpeace press conference on November 2. Builders make use of passive solar techniques, the most important of which is north-south orientation.
"Ideally the home should face north, with all the living areas on the north. There should be no windows on the east or west sides, and a considerably smaller proportion of glass area on the south side.
"You insulate the walls very well, you insulate the ceiling very well, and you weather-seal the windows and the doors. The whole idea is to try to reduce the number of air changes to less than one per hour under normal operating conditions.
"You build on a concrete slab, and then fine-tune the home by balancing the amount of north-facing glass, which generally causes a heating effect, with a certain amount of internal masonry, which has an internal stabilising effect."
The balance between mass, insulation and glass used to maximise eating in winter can be "tuned" differently according to different climates and lifestyles; the whole thing can then be "fine tuned" by the use of technology such as reverse cycle air conditioning.
Cornwell points out that the majority of Australian houses have outside hot water systems, allowing a massive amount of energy to simply go off into the atmosphere. Bringing hot water systems inside the house, or at least insulating them well, can reduce this pointless waste.
But Cornwell's success in impressing such points on the population of Albury made his employers nervous.
While his initiatives had been encouraged for a time by "young, enthusiastic" Murray River Electricity chairperson Bob Crawford, when Crawford left the position it was "back to the old, very conservative attitudes. There were a lot of murmurings.
"I thought that by being highly successful, taking out these awards, that at least they would be shamed into keeping me. I thought I'd be able to continue doing what I believed in, albeit with difficulty. But I miscalculated.
"There was a meeting about a month before I was sacked, where I faced the whole county council about my programs: why wasn't I selling more electricity, what was going on?"
Cornwell outlined the long-term benefits to customers, the environment and Murray River Electricity. The next day he won the national energy award. Four weeks later, he was told there had been a reorganisation, and his job no longer existed. Cornwell was the only person made redundant: "It was a reorganisation of one".
The basic problem, suggests Cornwell, is that state governments have an interest in making good their current investments in coal-fired power stations.
"They've got a huge interest bill to pay to finance the building of those power stations, and there is pressure on the distribution authorities and on Pacific Power [formerly the Electricity Commission of New South Wales] to return a greater amount of money to the state government."
The state government's Performance Review Committee requires each county council to draw up a business plan between itself and the energy minister, in which the focus is on "return on assets, reducing costs, reducing inputs, improving profitability and so on. These are all economic factors. There are no environmental issues in there."
An entirely different approach, and one that could be incorporated here if Australian governments were serious about energy efficiency, was outlined by another power company e Greenpeace press conference.
Richard Spellman, who works for the Central Maine Power Company, USA, said that the ideas promoted by Cornwell — and many more — were at the heart of his company's strategy: "We are actually paying our customers to let us come into their homes and businesses to install a lot of these things".
This is known as "demand side management", and is based on the reasoning that if power demand continues to increase, then new power utilities will have to be built. Alternatively, the same amount of money can be invested in keeping demand down, using the money saved by not building the next power station.
A whole range of encouragements for energy efficiency are used. One of these is that Maine Power Company employees' salaries are contingent on how well they go about doing what would be anathema to the average US salesperson: selling less.