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As an energy company, we encourage energy efficiency across the community. We place a special emphasis on assisting vulnerable Australians by pursuing initiatives that deliver sustainable change.
The Warmth in Winter initiative is our way of assisting those Australians who may not enjoy the comfort and security of a warm home each night.
Warmth in Winter seeks to make a contribution to support homeless Australians by inviting crisis accommodation services in New South Wales, Victoria, South Australia, the ACT and Queensland to apply for a cash rebate, based on their previous year’s winter energy bills.
Our contributions allow these organisations to channel funds to other services that directly benefit their clients.
Warmth in Winter is available to all crisis accommodation services in the States in which we operate, regardless of whether they are an AGL customer.
In 2008/09, AGL contributed over $204,000 to the energy bills of 171 services across 68 organisations, funding the equivalent of over 83,000 warm winter nights for homeless Australians. The reduction in the number of warm winter nights funded compared to 2007/08 (over 145,000) was due to AGL receiving fewer applications for funding as a result of less active promotion of the program in 2008/09. More active promotion of the program in 2009/10 is expected to lead to an increase in the number of interested participants in the program.
AGL also provided the opportunity for employees to personally deliver funding cheques to homeless service recipients. Many of our employees already have strong community relationships and we found that personal delivery is an effective way to strengthen and build relationships within communities.
In continuing our goal to deliver sustainable change within our community, Warmth in Winter also offers a number of energy audits for homeless accommodation providers.
Entering into its fourth year, AGL again partnered with CarbonetiX, a Melbourne-based service to conduct high-level energy audits at six emergency accommodation facilities in regional Queensland, South Australia, and the Sydney metropolitan area. AGL also funded the installation of energy efficient appliances at each audited facility, such as energy efficient lighting; low flow showerheads and heating system changes.
To check if facilities were able to achieve the energy savings identified though the audits and arising from the installation of more efficient appliances, each facility has provided copies of energy invoices for the years before and after the audit so that AGL can measure the resulting energy, cost and greenhouse gas savings. The results from the 2007/08 audits of 12 facilities based in metropolitan Melbourne will be available to AGL in late 2009.
