Ecoliving project update - July2010
Use Electricity Wisely
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A very high quality and precious resource: But isn't electricity cheap, and don't we have 300 years of coal supply in the Latrobe Valley?
Yes, it does come relatively cheaply to the householder, while the digging up and infrastructure maintenance to transmit it around the state is still being subsidised by cheap oil.
As the coal resource becomes deeper and more difficult to extract, and extraction costs increase with fuel costs, we can expect electricity to become substantially more expensive. Electricity production from brown coal already creates enormous environmental cost with CO2 emissions and sulphur contamination over Gippsland.
Solar panels, wind farms, and hydro in Victoria will never replace the quantity of power that the Latrobe Valley produces. We will simply have to do better with less.
Catch and Store Water
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Regulations that require the water supply to public buildings to be chlorinated, combined with the relatively low water use of these buildings, made the cost/benefit of plumbing these buildings in to their own tank supply to be marginal.
However tanks have been installed to both buildings, at present for outside water use only.
David Arnold
