Working with iAccelerate resident company Planet Footprint the City of Port Adelaide Enfield has saved over $500 000 and achieved a 15% reduction in energy consumption.

Port Adelaide Enfield Council created an Energy and Water Efficiency Management Plan 2022 that set some key targets:

• Achieve a reduction in corporate greenhouse gas emissions of 23% of a 2009 baseline by 2022.
• Achieve a reduction in corporate energy consumption of 18% from 2009 levels by 2022.

To reach these targets, Council has implemented innovative projects to improve the energy and water efficiency for Council assets, sporting facilities, and street lighting. They have installed solar systems, energy efficient lighting, water heaters and air conditioners along with water-efficient irrigation practices.

Port Adelaide has been working with Planet Footprint since 2010 to track and report on Councils’ energy and water consumption, costs and savings initiatives. Planet Footprint’s online platform is shared and accessed by all levels of Council, and has empowered them to confidently act, often in the response to large, costly anomalies.  When a spike in consumption or billing issue is flagged, staff are notified to follow up the anomaly and quickly find a solution that saves resources and money.

“Planet Footprint saves us in-house resource time and money by collecting and loading all our energy and water data directly from our utility provider into their online platform ready for us to access. They provide a consistent data set that can be easily interpreted by staff at all levels and displayed in a flexible and easy fashion,” says Craig Hughes, Environmental Projects Coordinator.

Council staff can quickly generate one-touch specific reports on:

• greenhouse gas emissions tracking;
• return on investment (ROI) from energy and water savings initiatives and;
• consumption anomaly reports, just to name a few.  

These save staff time and drive action by downloading predefined, up to date reports to share information and insights on Council’s performance with all levels of Council. “The my.planetfootprint.com cloud-based platform provides a wonderful service to the City of Port Adelaide Enfield with updated reports, raw data and dashboard performance icons that provide Council with information that can be quickly and easily interpreted for day to day energy management,” says Craig.

These simple-to-use tools and Planet Footprint’s Quarterly Performance Reviews (QPR) have encouraged behavioural change within Council – a key goal of the Energy and Water Efficiency Management Plan 2022. The QPRs bring different disciplines within Council together every three months to meet with their Planet Footprint Service Manager to analyse performance, highlight opportunities and guide decision making.  Planet Footprint’s independent advice has helped Council achieve their key targets.

Kicking Goals

Since 2009, the City of Port Adelaide Enfield has achieved a 15% reduction in energy consumption, with a total accumulated cost savings of over $500 thousand, surpassing their goal of 8% set for 2017/18. They have also achieved a greenhouse gas emissions reduction of 26%, the equivalent weight of 107 school buses!

“Given the success we have had with Planet Footprint we are looking at alternatives to manage our utility accounts more efficiently and investing in meter logger technology to feed real-time data from building energy & solar production back into Planet Footprint’s platform,” says Craig Hughes, Environmental Projects Coordinator.

Learn more about iAccelerate resident company Planet Footprint here.