Sydney Water Cost of Carbon Abatement Tool

As the federal government moves closer to putting a price on carbon, Sydney Water, with assistance from its energy partners (Energetics and Worley Parsons), has developed a Cost of Carbon Abatement Tool (CCA Tool) to compare opportunities that reduce greenhouse gas emissions in the water industry.

Business cases weighing up the pros and cons of various carbon abatement opportunities are easier with this Excel-based tool. WSAA funded further development of the tool for wider use under licence by its members. To date, Sydney Water has licensed the CCA Tool to nine Australian utilities across NSW, Victoria, South Australia and Western Australia.

In July 2007, Sydney Water committed to making its operations carbon neutral by 2020. It became more important than ever to develop a dynamic decision support tool to standardise and simplify the assessment of carbon mitigation opportunities. The objectives of the CCA project were to: identify and assess carbon abatement opportunities, and for each opportunity calculate the potential emissions reductions and the cost per tonne of carbon emissions reduced; and develop a strategic decision support tool to standardise and simplify the assessment of carbon abatement opportunities.

The CCA Tool includes a standard data input template to simplify the investigation of carbon reduction opportunities, the ability to vary inputs based on scenarios and a CCA curve or graph. The main output from the tool, called the CCA Curve, plots the cost per tonne of emissions reduced and the total emission reduction potential for each carbon reduction opportunity. The CCA Curve can be presented in a number of different ways depending on user needs.

According to Phil Woods from Sydney Water’s Sustainability Division: “This tool enables us to easily identify the most cost-effective ways to reach our carbon reduction targets. The other great thing about it is that, with the click of a mouse, we can test various future scenarios such as changes to electricity and carbon prices.

“This helps with comparing and prioritising carbon abatement projects. In Sydney Water’s case the new opportunities cover a range of energy efficiency, demand management, waste heat capture, greenhouse gas capture/destruction, and alternative low- or zero-emission energy sources.”

For more information on the CCA Tool, including how a utility can become an authorised user of the software, please contact Phil Woods at philip.woods@sydneywater.com.au.