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Two years ago, Metcash Trading set itself the goal of becoming more environmentally sustainable. Today, this leading distributor of food and fast moving consumer goods is piloting energy and water-saving programs that could save the company millions of dollars in the cost of doing business.

Louise Rhodes is the company’s Group Sustainability Manager and leads its sustainability strategy across four business groups. Her appointment was motivated by a desire to better measure and manage the company’s energy use and carbon emissions.

“Environmental sustainability is taken seriously at Metcash,” says Rhodes, who says it is viewed in the same context as risk management and business continuity. Indeed, Metcash CEO Andrew Reitzer chairs the company’s Environmental Sustainability Committee whose members include senior management.

Metcash recently adopted CarbonSystems’ Energy & Carbon Intelligence System to manage, track and evaluate its environmental initiatives. ECIS is an enterprise software solution that streamlines the capture, reporting and management of environmental data such as energy, fuel, water and carbon emissions.

Metcash has begun using ECIS to assess the impact of new capital works designed to shrink energy and water use at its nine heaviest consumption sites. It will also use ECIS to track energy and cost savings from a new lighting modification pilot at one of its Campbells Cash and Carry stores. The lighting pilot anticipates annual power use savings of 72,266 kwh, or 58.75 tonnes of Co2-e. It is expected to slash $8670 from the store’s annual power bill and achieve payback within 3 to 4 years.

“If the pilots prove successful, Metcash will consider rolling out a national capital works program that could save us millions of dollars in lower power and water bills each year,” Rhodes says. “Our key focus is to make energy savings because electricity represents a majority of the company’s carbon footprint”.

Lower energy use will also reduce the Metcash group below the participation threshold of Energy Efficiency Opportunities. More immediately, Louise Rhodes and the Metcash executive team are using the powerful ECIS platform to track and generate near real-time business reports on power, fuel, water use and carbon emissions across all 75 Metcash-owned business entities.

The web-based platform has several business benefits, says CarbonSystems’ Managing Director, David Solsky. “ECIS reduces the time and cost of managing environmental data and delivers financial-grade compliance and business reports that summarise energy, emissions and other key environmental data,” he says. “This means companies like Metcash can verify the impact, payback period and return on investment of efficiency and environmental initiatives that are essential for business transformation in the low-carbon economy of the near future.”

Metcash also used CarbonSystems’ ECIS platform to meet its reporting obligations under the Australian government’s National Greenhouse and Energy Reporting System. NGERS is being mirrored by economies around the world that are seeking to mange and reduce their greenhouse gas emissions. “CarbonSystems took the hard work out of reporting to the National Greenhouse and Energy Reporting System,” says Louise Rhodes. “We like their technology and their service, and ECIS will be invaluable for assessing the payback on our operational and strategic energy-efficiency programs.”

CarbonSystems is a global provider of energy and carbon accounting software assisting companies to drive cost savings through energy and carbon efficiencies. Its core technology platform was developed in 2004 to read electricity smart meters. Today, ECIS is being used by dozens of organisations across more than 7,000 locations around the world.

Media contacts
Dan Gaffney, +61 411 156 015
Tanya March, National Business Development Manager, CarbonSystems, +61 409 114 414