Speaker: Dr Martin Blake, Executive Director, The GreenAsia Group
Date : Thursday, 19 January 2012
Time : 3:30pm to 5:00pm
Venue : ESI Conference Room
29 Heng Mui Keng Terrace
Block A #10-01
Singapore 119620
Please send us your name, organisation and email address via the ESI website here. For enquiries, please contact Ms. Jan Lui at 65162000.
About the seminar:
In Singapore, the industrial sector -- mainly the refining, petrochemical, pharmaceutical and wafer fabrication industries -- accounted for about half of the country’s total energy use in 2005. Energy is currently a cheap commodity and even with smart energy procurement most organisations could be wasting up to 40%. However, energy costs are likely to increase dramatically over the next few years.
Chief Finance Officers now have the vital task of reducing energy (carbon) costs whilst managing cost volatility and meeting government targets and reporting requirements. The challenge is to build cost reduction strategies based on the right quantitative and qualitative data that enable them to make informed investment decisions with an appropriate return on investment.
Evidence needs to be provided that demonstrates how investments in corporate sustainability will create tangible returns. However, all too often investment opportunities get missed when soft business cases are presented without the correct energy data, as well as solid forecasting and financial modelling which reveal the true investment potentials.
The Royal Mail in the UK is one of the biggest property owners, employers and logistics & distribution companies in the world. In 2006 they embarked on an energy transformation journey that saved them £35m a year, reducing their energy bills by 45%. Dr Martin Blake, then head of Sustainability for the Royal Mail Group, took a radical net zero cost approach to finding external investors and developed an innovative gain-sharing investment
approach.
Marginal Abatement Cost (MAC) curves, which have been around for some time to assess government policy and national energy investment strategies are a comparatively new technique for use in a corporate setting. They require access to energy and investment data, technical informational and risk & costs modelling. When skilfully developed, a MAC curve is an extremely informative investment tool that allows a company to evaluate projects accurately and balance return on investment with carbon reduction, regulatory and financial targets.
About the Speaker:
Dr Martin Blake, recently named one of the top 100 Global Sustainability Leaders for 2011, is an international sustainability expert, chairman, company director, visionary, strategist, speaker and mentor. He holds a working portfolio of board directorships and advisory roles encompassing Asia, Australia, the USA and Europe. He is the Founder and Chair of Carbon Zero Solutions, an Executive Director of The Green Asia Group, a Non-Executive Director of IndustryRE, Sabien Technology, Ecologic Transportation, and Amida Recruitment, as well as a strategic advisor to both CarbonSystems and Global Scene Environmental Solutions.
Dr Blake chairs and advises a multitude of strategic groups, all focused on the development and deployment of low carbon infrastructure. He is an Adjunct Professor of Sustainable Business Development at both Griffith University and the University of Southern Queensland, and is also a Visiting Fellow at the Business School of the University of Hull in the UK.
Dr Blake is internationally recognised as having designed and deployed one of the most successful energy and carbon management programmes in the world, saving millions of pounds and winning multiple National and International awards.
(His full profile is available directly on LinkedIn.)
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