Power(full) Savings

By Jean-Marc Ollagnier, Group Chief Executive of Accenture's Resources industry group We resist change. It's human nature. Especially if it inconveniences us, or costs us more money. We push the limits and we wait for a shock to force our hand and then we scramble for a solution to avoid complete disaster. We don't have to reach far back in history to find examples. Let's look at the list of financial crises, political or humanitarian, or terrible accidents such as the Fukushima disaster in Japan. These man-made shocks stirred in us an immediate response. I was in New York last week to join other business leaders, policy makers and NGOs who were trying to catalyse immediate action to address climate change. The UN Climate Summit effectively fired the starting gun on negotiations that will culminate in Paris next year. But we know that international agreements are hard to secure. Energy efficiency is a major way to make progress in spite of the politics. And progress is being made in this area. The United Nation's Sustainable Energy for All (SEforALL) initiative estimates that targeted measures in this area could generate more than $300 billion of savings per year and reduce emissions by 1.5 GT by 2020. In addition to the environmental benefits and the creation of jobs and growth, greater energy efficiency is also a tremendous business opportunity to generate new revenues by using innovation and technology to produce energy and resource efficient products and services. It also supports the UN's other wider goal of sustainably and affordably extending energy to the millions of people who lack it today. It is also a much easier and faster solution than investing in new clean energy production, because we already have the technology, the money, the expertise and the goodwill. In fact, in many places around the world there are already great energy efficiency initiatives taking place. For example, we recently worked with a technology client to help reduce energy consumption in their buildings by 22 percent. In my own Paris office of Accenture, we employed the same energy management solutions using cloud and digital technologies to reduce the building's energy consumption by 14 percent. At the UN climate summit, we heard Mayor Bill de Blasio announce a commitment to reduce his city's carbon emissions by 80 percent by 2050 and retrofit every single public building to be energy efficient in the next ten years – that's approximately 3,000 buildings. And despite Australia's recent u-turn on carbon tax, which brought the country's climate change agenda into question, one of its most populous cities, Melbourne, received a top award for its ambitious climate change initiative, which includes a multi-million-dollar urban landscapes adaptation program to cool the city by four degrees naturally, through tree canopies and green roofs. But the world needs more. Much more. We have all the tools but the problem that we are facing is one of scale and acceleration. We need stronger collaboration at the regional, state and municipality levels, that includes the business and finance community, the energy sector, the technology sector, consumer groups, regulators and policymakers, and NGOs. These stakeholders need to come together and create a much more favourable environment, so that we can do everything that we do today, on a much bigger scale and at a much faster pace. I'll go back to the example of Japan. In one day, that country lost 30 percent of its energy production as a result of the Fukushima disaster. And guess what? The country responded with radical change that demonstrated that energy efficiency can be accelerated and delivered at scale. There was no realistic way to replace 30 percent of a country's energy supply with Japan's limited natural resources, so the country rallied together around a power saving campaign called ‘setsuden'.

This enabled the country to avoid blackouts in the short-term, but more importantly, in the long-term, it raised awareness of energy use and managed to replace half of its missing energy supply through energy efficiency measures that still endure today. But it wouldn't have been possible without the combined efforts of the government, industry, NGOs and consumers all working towards a common goal. This level of energy efficiency savings has made a huge impact in Japan, but it has also made a huge impact on the world. Imagine, if we could reach this level of energy savings globally? The International Energy Agency reported that our global economy could be $18 trillion better off by 2035 if we adopted energy efficiency as a “first choice” for new energy supplies. Japan has shown us all that we can do it. The technology for smart cities, smart buildings, smart grids and smart meters is already here and can really transform the way we consume and distribute energy around the world. Smart meters alone can generate energy savings in the range of 10-12 percent. Investment funds are increasingly moving into the green growth agenda and making finance more readily available. There is commitment and momentum to create enabling regulatory reforms in many parts of the world. The next challenge is elevating this and doing it quickly. And that's exactly what SEforALL is looking to do with its accelerator platform. Its aim is to double the rate of improvement in energy efficiency by 2030 through a more intense program of collaboration and technical and financial assistance, focusing on key sectors, including transportation, energy, heating, cooling and lighting. It provides an opportunity to make a step change in practical action by involving parties on the ground to make a change that is felt around the world. Let's not wait for another disaster to shock us into action. Jean-Marc Ollagnier is Group Chief Executive of Accenture's Resources industry group and advisory board member of the UN's SEforALL initiative, as well as the co-chair for its energy efficiency committee. SEforALL Note: This story was originally published by Forbes and can be found here