Successfully ‘Farming The Sun’ In New England

Farming The Sun’s success in achieving its goal and in being ‘Highly Commended’ in the NSW 2011 Community Sustainability Award is due to collaboration between the community, businesses and government says Adam Blakester – coordinator of the project along with Elizabeth Gardiner, both described as ‘community members’.

Farming the Sun – Starfish Enterprises Network

Starfish Enterprises Network is a network of community entrepreneurs who collaborate on initiatives that contribute to the great shift to sustainability through community enterprise, inclusive planning and strategies for social change.

Its ‘Farming the Sun’ project is a community-scale solar and sustainable energy initiative.

Based in New England’s high country, this initiative is Australia’s largest community solar project.

It has been operating since November 2008 and in a little more than two years, without any external funding, it has delivered $6.5 million worth of solar technology at significantly reduced cost to the community.

It has been a significant contributor to the massive uptake in solar energy in the New England Region and it achieved its ambitious goal of installing 400kW of new solar power systems in the region in late 2010.

By this time the initiative had expanded to include:

• evacuated tube solar hot water
• solar power tracking systems
• high-technology solar thermal heating and cooling

The ‘Farming The Sun’ Story

Keeli Cambourne of the SMH tells the story:

Rural groups are adopting a collaborative approach to clean-energy initiatives. Living in regional NSW is not an impediment to sustainability innovation. In fact, without access to the latest technology or ideas, many regional environmental advances have been made on the back of community commitment and enthusiasm.

The Farming the Sun project by Starfish Enterprises is a prime example of what a community can achieve with passion and vision alone and is one of the reasons it was the joint winner, with Charles Sturt University, of the inaugural Regional Sustainability Award..

The project was co-ordinated by two community members, Elizabeth Gardiner and Adam Blakester, whose work involved thousands of conversations and emails with other community members, the negotiation of legal contracts with suppliers, community planning forums, government briefings and negotiating partnerships with local stakeholders and installers.

Plans are in place to adapt and transplant this model in several other regions throughout NSW, demonstrating that real people power can lead to clean power.

The New England project is now working on a community wind farm, seeking to build on the momentum from solar and establish an eight-turbine facility providing enough electricity for 10,000 homes.

Blakester says its success is due to collaboration between the community, businesses and government.

Wendy Goldstein, a lecturer in sustainable development at Macquarie University’s graduate school of the environment and a judge of the Green Globe Awards, says Farming the Sun “is an inspirational example of how our society can be and develop when energy production is decentralised and you have some amazing people stimulating a collaborative way of working together”.

“The project excited me for the changes induced to provide electricity, heat water and heat homes in this colder region … it also developed the skills of about 48 people in solar energy systems – at no cost to them – creating green jobs in rural Australia.”

Although a much larger organisation than Starfish Enterprises, Charles Sturt University (CSU) has been committed to sustainability for a number of years and has been working consistently to reduce the impact of its operations. It’s a leader in engaging staff, students and the wider community to reduce their own environmental footprints.

CSU has campuses at Wagga Wagga, Bathurst, Albury-Wodonga, Orange and Dubbo, as well as a number of smaller sites.

Since starting its sustainability program in 2006, the university set itself a number of targets, including reducing its energy and water use by 25 per cent and becoming carbon neutral by 2015, using 20 per cent of university land to increase biodiversity and reducing its solid waste by 70 per cent.

In the past year, CSU has implemented several projects to achieve these ambitious targets, including the Wagga Campus Energy and Water Saving project, which involved upgrading lighting, introducing timers to prevent boiling water units from operating after hours, installing energy-saving modules on airconditioners and flow-control devices on showers and taps.

Its water-reduction targets were achieved by restricting irrigation, planting gardens that required less water, installing flow-control devices in basins and showers and fixing leaks identified through water audits.

It also established vegetable gardens on the Albury campus, which are being managed by students and are also used to host composting and permaculture workshops with local residents.

Goldstein says Charles Sturt University has been incorporating sustainability into its built environment and operations for some time. But its “boundless enthusiasm” for all environmental measures, from strategy to reporting on progress and finding better ways to reduce water and energy use, gave it the edge in this year’s submission for a Green Globe Award.

The university also impressed the judges with its aim to continually develop its courses to provide students with an understanding of financial, social and environmental sustainability.

“While [the university has] not arrived at that yet, [it] showed evidence of a commitment and steps to support faculty in teaching,” Goldstein says.

What a model for collaboration and leadership!