By Tyler Wright
Yarra Ranges Council has teamed up with the Sustainable Australia Fund to offer Environmental Upgrade Agreements (EUA) to small and medium-sized local businesses.
EUAs allow building owners to access financing specifically dedicated to funding environmental building upgrades, including solar panels, energy-efficient lighting, improved heating and cooling (HVAC) equipment, as well as water conservation and wastewater management systems.
Owner of Ramarro Farm in The Patch, Oliver Shorthouse, installed a 9.6k watt solar array with a 10k watt battery at his business in June 2020.
Mr Shorthouse said he will pay the scheme off over 10 years on a quarterly basis, with savings expected to amount to “hundreds of dollars a month” once the amount is paid.
“We had already put in solar into our house and we could see that energy bills were something that was going to be a thing of the future. And with our farm, it was around the time we were getting a lot of blackouts as well; three or four days at any time of the year without power,” Mr Shorthouse said.
“We thought that that problem wasn’t going to go away in the hills that soon…we saw it as an opportunity to do something that we believed in terms of reducing our carbon footprint.”
What sealed the deal for Mr Shorthouse, he said, was being able to operate his business when the grid went down.
“That’s more valuable than anything because it can continue to operate our water pumps, it can continue to operate our cool rooms,” he said.
“We might have multiple thousands of dollars worth of stock in our cool room, and if the cool room goes down for two days, then we lose all of that stock.”
Yarra Ranges Lyster Ward Councillor, Johanna Skelton, said EUAs are a great option for businesses wanting to fund environmentally friendly upgrades while saving money and reducing their environmental impact.
“It is a straightforward process that can offer great benefits, and we already have some local businesses like Ramarro Farm in Monbulk, Four Pillars Gin and Aurrum Aged Care who have seen significant savings on their energy costs after installing solar panels,” Cr Skelton said.
Mr Shorthouse said between business resilience, the environmental impact and cost savings, the EUA agreement is “very convincing” for businesses.
“We feel pretty good that when we grow vegetables and we use a very low horsepower machinery on our farm, that we’re pretty much carbon neutral, if not better than that,” he said.
“We feel pretty comfortable with the way we farm and the way we grow things as well; the organic methods that we use and the fact that we sell our product locally to Melbourne restaurants… it brings down the food miles.”
For more information on how to incorporate sustainable practices into your business, visit: www.yarraranges.vic.gov.au/Environment/Sustainable-communities/Sustainable-business.
