Element Magazine - July 2014 Element Magazine - July 2014 | Page 15

THE BLUE ECONOMY

Fuel alternatives such as wood chips are an
efficient and lower carbon alternative to fossil
fuels.

Stephen Jones, general manager,
Industrial Energy Solutions at Energy for Industry

To say you’re just “a little bit” sustainable wouldn’t
really stack up in a company’s annual report. But if you look
closer at the current manufacturing and supply chain model
this is exactly how many industries operate.
For years, domestically and internationally, the primary
and consumer manufacturing industries have become
accustomed to playing what might be called ‘partial lifecycle economics’. Somehow adopting the mindset that it’s
alright to ignore the real cost that operations are having on
the environment.
Somewhere in the mix, the end-of-life cost of
disassembly, waste, disposal, and carbon impact related to
operations, have disappeared.
But our past has now caught up with us.
As GM of EFI’s industrial energy solutions – providers
of energy and waste-to-energy solutions for industry – it’s
clear that the shift to a less resource-intensive, resilient
and whole-of-life-based economic future for manufacturing
will require a lot of things to change. Companies can take a
leading role in differentiating their products to consumers
on the merits of lower carbon manufacture and processing
with governments supporting this initiative through a more
transparent carbon pricing model.
Leading businesses are already taking up this challenge
where they recognise the value of the sustainable supply
chain becoming part of their brand fabric. However,
only we, as consumers, wield the power to make this
mainstream and place demands on industry to retool.
A ‘fully priced’ processing/manufacturing chain
model or an ‘Extended Producer Responsibility’ (EPR)
recycling system for the consumer industry including fully
pricing carbon, water and waste disposal and end-of-life
considerations will play a pivotal role in making the vital
transition towards a fair and sustainable system for all.

Further, framing a sustainability model out to 2050 would
see a more representative price of carbon coupled with a
mandatory carbon-reporting regime.
Both such mechanisms send a clear economic signal
to companies and consumers regarding the true price
of the product or service you’re buying. A price that
accurately reflects impacts of production and end-of-life
disposal or recycling costs. We already see fully priced
models emerging in Europe with a cost of disposal of
packaging – for example where the consumer can see a
measurable price directly attributable to the cost of landfill
or reprocessing. This is more transparent than our current
system of landfill and council-levied street pick-ups.
By pinpointing rogue manufacturing practices and
products from cradle-to-grave the system encourages
manufacturers and companies to come up with safer, more
efficient, and more cost-effective solutions. When a fully
priced system works as it’s supposed to, industry and
consumers end up with less waste, less emissions, less
packaging – or, at the very least, systems that are more
environmentally benign, and products that are easier to
reuse, recycle, or compost.
At EFI we are increasingly seeing our partners in the
primary processing and exporting sectors becoming
aware of these shifts in market mechanisms and consumer
demands where bar-coding of supply chain inputs are
now demanded in some markets. But carbon pricing still
has some way to go in terms of it being a meaningful
and transparent mitigating factor in waste reduction and
energy efficiency. The current price and mechanism simply
does not support a trusted or competitive alternative to
lower-priced fossil fuels.
To address this EFI has successfully carved a unique
position in the industrial and commercial energy sector
by designing and delivering energy solutions that meet
our customers’ specific energy needs while transitioning

them towards a lower carbon economy. We provide dualfuel or “co-fired” solutions that displace fossil-fuelled
burners – with modern, more efficient plants and wasteto-energy technologies including harnessing landfill gas,
wood and biomass. Our solutions give our customers
the best of both worlds; significantly reducing energy
costs and environmental impact without sacrificing
security of supply. By investing in plant technology we’ve
also successfully created new energy ‘clusters’, where
neighbouring businesses and institutions share the
benefits of owned and operated energy plants.
But sustainability isn’t a short-term fix. It requires longterm, strategic thinking and commitment. Where we see
sustainability commitment at the board level and willingness
for businesses to look beyond the current 2-3-year horizon
EFI has added significant value at a systems level.
Progressi ٔ