MELBOURNE UNI

WHAT WE'RE ASKING FOR
So, basically Melbourne Uni purchases 5% green energy and the energy contract isn't up for renewable until 2008 or 2009. So what we've done is lobby the university to purchase RECs (Renewable Energy Certificates) from the non-profit organisation 'Green Switch'. This way they can effectively purchase green energy on top of their existing contract, and it is actually cheaper as AGL and Origin charge extra for green energy whereas Green Switch only charges a minimal admin fee, as it's non-profit. As far as we are aware, when you buy green energy from AGL or Origin, etc, they just buy RECs on your behalf - so we are effectively side-stepping the middle-man. Please advise us if you think we are wrong on this!!

WHAT WE DID
We (the Climate Change Collective, a group of about 6 to 8 students) have taken our proposal for the uni to buy around $2 million worth of RECs (about 80 giga watt hours, the equivalent of what the uni uses in one year) to the VC. He basically said, "I will only listen to you guys if you get your proposal approved by the uni's Environment Advisory Committee". So we took it to them (we have an undergrad student rep on the committee and support from the postgrad rep and a staff member). They pretty much said "no - you think this is the magic bullet for reducing carbon emissions but we need to take a 4-step approach which includes reduction in energy, education and culture change, carbon abatement and purchasing green energy and blah blah blahdy blah".
So... bascially they were all talk and no action! They think buying green energy isn't the most cost-effective method of reduce the uni's carbon emissions.
They also were a bit confused and didn't really know what RECs were and how they worked.

WHERE TO FROM HERE...
The next meeting is in 2 months and we are hoping to work on the members of the committee individually to try to explain the proposal to them and get their support. We have a commitment from a main guy on the committee to ring Green Switch and discuss it with them.
There is some energy in collective to do a general awareness campaign of climate change amongst students, so hopefully we can take that on as well as all the committee stuff.
We would also like to focus on the union building and see if we can get them on side, and maybe try to target colleges on campus.
We have been having stalls and getting students to sign a petition saying they support clean energy on campus. We have also been giving out badges and brochures about our campaign. Hopefully by the next Environment Advisory Committee meeting we will have a groundswell of student support. We are also currently redrafting our proposal to answer some of the concerns that the committee had.
The main problems we are coming up against are that the committee thinks buying green energy is too expensive and money would be better spent on retrofitting buildings to reduce energy use. We are unsure how to overcome this.

Hope that wsn’t too detailed for you. Hope it was useful.
Ellen