Place-based case studies

Australian place-based case studies

Research was conducted as a part of the National SME Project to identify a variety of place-based projects across Australia representing these different typologies.

 

King Island Sustainable Futures involved over 30 King Island micro-medium enterprises working to measure, develop and implement ways to improve their business sustainability. On average each participating enterprise reduced operating expenses by $400pa. As a group the annualised savings were 47 MWhr energy, <1 ML water and 23 tonnes greenhouse gas emissions. About 20 tonnes of waste was diverted from landfill. The program was an initiative of CleanBiz Tasmania, King Island Council, National Foods and Hydro Tasmania.

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Energise Business was designed to create an on-going service that would be widely applicable to local governments and their communities of SMEs.  The 2005 Victorian Greenhouse Strategy Action Plan Update reinforced the aim of the Energise Business as to demonstrate “the potential of energy performance contracting to deliver energy efficiency measures for small businesses”.

Of the 40 businesses that received audits in stage 1, 17 went on to implement efficiency actions through the project. Actions included installation of efficient lighting, occupancy detectors, refrigeration controls, and cooling tower fan controls. The project also involved energy source substitution and the installation of flow restrictors in hot water taps – an initiative that will save both energy and significant amounts of water.

Businesses invested $107,875 in energy efficiency measures during the Energise Business pilot program, with expected abatement of approximately 310 tonnes of CO2 per annum, representing an average emissions reduction from stationary energy of 12%, and expected financial savings of approximately $131,000 per annum - a significant gain for a small, regional community.

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Find out more about Energise Business


Additional place-based projects

CSIRO’s Sustainable Communities Initiative (SCI)

The SCI was a program that set out to enable participants to learn and experience how better to work together with communities in order to address pressing sustainability challenges of our times. It was completed as planned at the end of 2009. The SCI’s final report is now available here.

SCI Information Sheet

Download the SCI’s Castlemaine Power case study

Access other SCI case studies here:

http://www.csiro.au/science/Sustainable-Communities-Initiative.html

‘Communities’ learn, plan, do & teach ecological sustainability: it is an education program, developed by environmental educators Vox Bandicoot, that does some important things:

  • It helps participants cut energy and water consumption and waste generation.
  • It saves participants money on their bills.
  • It gives people the opportunity to meet their neighbours and make new friends.

Find out more.

What next for place-based initiatives?

To encourage and facilitate the creation of more place-based initiatives there is a need to:

  1. Develop a national ‘responsible business practice’ strategy for SMEs.
  2. Encourage and foster initiatives through local (place-based) ‘responsible business practice centres’.
  3. ‘Decongest’ the marketplace.
  4. Incentivise SMEs (and other stakeholders) to improve their responsible business practice.

Considering each of these in turn:

  1. A national ‘responsible business strategy’ would:
      * Clearly set out what responsible business practice is (and isn’t)
      * Why SMEs should consider demonstrating more of it
      * Provide directions for state and local ‘responsible business practice’ action plans
     
  2. Creating a number of nation-wide local ‘responsible business practice centres’ would be a strategic and more deliberate way of fostering more place-based initiatives. The Centres could be akin to the Enterprise Connect model or perhaps integrated with this model to include a focus on responsible business practice. Such centres could also be hosted by a local business enterprise centre, council or chamber of commerce.
     
  3. Governments can do more to ‘decongest’ the marketplace by consolidating and simplifying ‘responsible business practice’ resources for SMEs. In reality, this may entail greater use of single web portals (eg The HUB) and greater integration of SME ‘service centres’.
     
  4. There are always opportunities for government to incentivise stakeholders to participate in place-based initiatives. Rebates, tax relief, no or low interest loans, more investment in the local community-all such existing mechanisms can help facilitate creation of more place-based SME initiatives.

 

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Place-based projects from around the world

Here are some examples of international place-based projects:

> Transition Towns
A founding example is Totnes in the United Kingdom: http://totnes.transitionnetwork.org

> Enterprising Places (UK)

> Brighton Business Community Partnership (UK)

> Leicestershire Cares (UK)

> Business Alliance for Local Living Economies (BALLE) (US)

Submit your own place-based case study!

Do you have a place-based initiative you would like to share? If so we have created a brief template for you to fill out- we will review it and if the contents are suitable then we will profile it on the HUB.

Download the place based project template

Email your completed template through to us at rbp@ethics.org.au