CraigT

Government departments are prolific consumers of paper and enforce paper-based signature and records management processes on themselves, the public and businesses.

A step towards better resource and lower energy use (given the full energy chain required to create and store a piece of paper) would be for government to accept electronic signatures and move rapidly to mandate electronic only document storage.

This approach would also facilitate providing the vast majority of government services online, thereby creating lower cost and lower energy use channels for engagement with government.

A flow-on effect would be for businesses to reduce their own paper use by shifting to electronic communication with government and more efficient direct integration of systems, both reducing energy consumption and reducing operational costs.

At the same time the burdens on new forms of energy need to be reduced, or the burden on existing energy supplies increased such that 30 year old coal and gas-fired power plants are subject to the same assurance and environmental studies as proposed solar towers, wind and tidal farms. If this is not done then the government is effectively providing a regressive overhead on new and emerging energy supplies that supports the ongoing exploitation of highly polluting fuels. Yes this will create pain, but better to create this type of pain then the rising cost of the use of coal as a baseline power supply.

When striving to encourage greater use of the online channel in reducing energy use it is pointless to focus simply on energy consumption and ignore the impacts of energy generation by legacy power plants.

For the record, the 5-15% reductions proposed by the Rudd government are far too shallow. While I agree with the proposal of helping embarrass large polluters into taking action, Australia for our own sake needs to move more aggressively on reducing pollutants. We can become part of the solution rather than remaining part of the problem.