19 December 2012 — Since its inception in 2010, Low Carbon Australia, which will soon merge with the Clean Energy Finance Corporation, has contracted investments worth more than $84 million, making more than $200 million in new finance for available for energy efficiency in the marketplace.

One of its latest projects has been with Australian energy services company Mojarra, an accredited vendor for the Energy Smart Finance program – a partnership between FlexiGroup and Low Carbon Australia to provide affordable solutions to businesses wanting to save money through energy efficiencies.

Mojarra provides small to medium enterprises with turn-key solutions to reduce their carbon emissions and to minimise rising electricity costs.

Chief executive officer Chris Hay said Mojarra’s consultants and engineers performed a free assessment of a business site which resulted in a series of recommendations about the energy efficiency and related cost savings opportunities.

Mr Hay said one of the solutions was voltage optimisation systems.

“In Australia, average voltage supply is 247V but the majority of a customer’s electrical equipment only requires 220v,” he said.

“This over-voltage supply means higher than necessary energy use and higher costs for business.

“Voltage optimisation stabilises the incoming voltage supply to the level that the site’s electrical equipment requires and therefore delivers costs savings, extends the useful life of electrical equipment and reduces maintenance costs.

“The simple concept

of stabilising in-coming voltage to allow commercial equipment and appliances to operate more efficiently can help higher energy using businesses save thousands of dollars per annum.”

Another firm benefitting from Low Carbon Australia, through finance for an industrial refrigeration upgrade, is Australia’s largest pork producer and exporter, Rivalea.

Low Carbon Australia has financed two-thirds of the $846,000 refrigeration upgrade project which received Australian Government grant assistance through the Clean Technology Food and Foundries Investment Program.

Rivalea’s managing director Paul Pattison said the refrigeration plant, at Rivalea’s Corowa pork abattoir in NSW, would be upgraded, creating ongoing energy cost savings and directly benefiting the business’s bottom line.

“Refrigeration is crucial to pork production, so identifying ways of reducing refrigeration costs is good for business,” he said.

“This improvement to our refrigeration will help us reduce greenhouse emissions at our largest facilities at the same time as reducing costs.”