Sunrise Brekky & Origin Energy: ‘Cool the Globe’
Preparing for the Worst in Regional Tourism
December 11, 2006E-Aus supports small business & local communities
December 13, 2006Challenge: reduce 100,000 tonnes of greenhouse gas by Australia Day 07
What a brilliant idea/marketing! It works for Sunrise, Origin and the community…..in a friendly ‘fun’ way it sweeps households and businesses right across Australia into actively doing something about global warming.
Are you a TV brekky viewer? I am irregularly….. so I have only just learnt about Kochie and Mel’s ‘Sunrise’ becoming Australia’s first first greenhouse friendly TV Show AND how they’ve teamed up with green energy provider Origin Energy to challenge viewers to help reduce 100,000 tonnes of greenhouse gas by 26 January next year!
You are invited to join the challenge by logging on to www.cooltheglobe.com
You are then you are directed to Origin’s Go Green Calculator to identify your volume of greenhouse gas emissions generated by:
- your energy use;
- car & air travel.
You can then choose to offset these emissions by:
- buying carbon credits, or
- signing up to Origin Green electricity & Green gas.
The carbon credits are used to invest in initiatives, such as buying renewable energy, planting trees, plus investing in energy efficiency programs for homes and businesses. Reducing 100,000 tonnes of greenhouse gas is the equivalent of taking 25,000 cars off the road for a year or planting 420,000 trees. Needless to say Sunrise will keep viewers up to date on progress!
See what you think about Tanya Kovac’s views on Sunrise, in New Matilda, where she looks at the show’s interest in community and encouraging people to feel positive in making changes in their lives. She talks about the ROS (Responses of Viewers) wall where queries from viewers are written up on a whiteboard and not crossed off till an expert (including politicians) can be called in to provide an explanation or a solution.
Tanya says “….the popularity of Sunrise reveals that ordinary Australians are motivated by more than just the hip-pocket nerve and self-interest…” This is an article well worth chasing up – about ‘people responsive programming’, ‘values-marketing’ and generally about understanding and reaching a large section of the population…. “by encouraging direct interaction between the show and real-life Australians, middle Australia (is) no longer reduced to an AC Nielsen percentage point” !!!
5 Comments
Very commendable campaign but as a shareholder of Origin I am extremely disappointed that they are not pursuing geo-thermal energy resources, of which Australia has an abundance. Any one of the dry gas and oil wells they have drilled could conceivably be converted to provide geo-thermal energy for power generation. There are a number of companies, Geodynamics and Petratherm in particular, who have projects under way in South Australia but are being frustrated by lack of commitment by both power companies and the Federal Government. Petratherm alone has reserves that can supply EIGHT times the current electricity consumption of South Australia but is receiving no help to bring the project to fruition.
Geo-thermal energy is clean, renewable and operates 24/7. It is cleaner than Solar, which uses as much greenhouse gas in production as it saves in electrity generated for about the first year, and wind is too unpredictable.
Geothermal stations can also be built on a small scale for local communities, for example the Portland Auminium smelter could be powered by Geo energy with enough left over for the township. All at no more cost than solar and much cheaper than nuclear.
If the Sunrise presenters read this, please start questiong our pollies about why they are ignoring this abundant and cheap resource.
Fantastic campaign lets hope our not so clever politicians get right behind you on this.
Response to Mike:
Origin Energy do have interests in geo-thermal energy through its investments in Geodynamics (14.3%) and Contact Energy (51.4%), New Zealand’s largest supplier of geothermal electricty.
(Origin Energy Annual Report 2006)
I think it is great that we are trying to cool the planet and make it greener I try to recycle different things however when you do not have a car and you only have a fold-up walking frame and a shop-rider or gopher with limited carrying capacity yes i do have a disability that does not stop me from thinking about the enviroment and I talk to plants, that probably sounds silly however when i do they grow profuseley and i think that yes if pigs flew the price of bacom would go up whether they are fat pigs or lean pigs. Keep up the good work and I will keep doing my part to try and save the enviroment. barbara
Mr Rudd, please put your money, sorry, OUR money, where your mouth is. By putting the $100,000 income limit on the rebate, you disqualified exactly the people who were most likely to install solar power. People on significantly lower incomes could never consider such a luxury, and those on much greater incomes probably wouldnt be influenced one way or another by the rebate. It’s not rocket science – either you want us to use solar power or you dont!