There is no single thing in my view. But if it had to be one thing, I'd start with building a high speed broad network that truly had national coverage.

Without the foundation of high speed broadband, all the great applications to eliminate or reduce conventional processes will remain as great ideas. I think the "unlocking" will occur once it becomes business as usual to use high definition video conferencing, virtual meetings & field force management solutions, teleworking, online processes, mobile banking, etc, etc.

It is early days in the uptake of the low-carbon solutions like the ones I mentioned above. It reminds me of when we started to use email in the early nineties - you'd have to phone people up to get their email address. Now you email people to get their phone number!

Turlough Guerin
http://www.nowwearetalking.com.au/blogs/green-files

Personaly I think the money could be better spent subsidising the cost of solar and wind systems for people to install on their houses. Even without government subsidy a system to provide 120% of a houses power needs is $30-40 000. In most states the power companies will pay to owners of such systems for feeding power back into the grid. As well as powering your house a home PV system can be beefed up to also provide power for your family car, weather it's creating hydrogen for your fuel cell car, or storing the power in NiCd storage cells to charge your car up at night.

virtualy every bit of waste that come out of a house can be turned into fuel. Wether it's garden or regular waste being turned into gas which in turn is used to generate power is a plant very similar to the one near Lucas Hights sucking methane from the local tip to generate power.

While telecomunications are important in keeping CO2 emisions down in the future, they are not ready now, and will require years to build, however there are things we can do today that can make a bigimpact on carbon output than waiting for the NBN to be built.

Tony, I'm not advocating you'd build a high speed broadband network for emissions reductions reasons only.

We need it for economic, social, individual/convenience, and environmental reasons.

Also, we are alreaady seeing emissions reductions at the organisation level through adoption of telecommunications technology. Companies are slashing travel budgets and re-investing this spend into high definition video conferencing (http://www.telstraenterprise.com/productsservices/enterprisecommunications/conferencingcollaboration/Pages/ConferencingCollaboration.aspx). I can think of a few companies that are doing it now or have commitments to do so eg CISCO: http://www.nowwearetalking.com.au/blogs/green-files/breaking-the-virtual-meeting-barrier

I wanted to raise a couple of things.
It's all well and good to talk about off-setting with a cost on carbon and such - but are we doing any real good? Are we going to reduce carbon, or just make money from it?
Also, how are we off-setting this carbon? Bamboo actually absorbs more CO2 over it's life time than trees, takes a shorter period to grow, is easier to grow and has as many uses as trees. If this is the case, why aren't we off-setting with Bamboo?
What about corporate direction? Google are a favourite example of mine. They cover their buildings in solar panels. Google even went so far as to lodge a patent for a self-sustaining, ocean going data centre. This would reduce their footprint (effected land), reduce their need for electricity from conventional sources (reduced emissions) and gives them monetary benefits: No land tax or power costs. Australian Telco's have a lot of infrastructure and costs tied up in data centres. And, as we grow, in an online sense, this demand is going to grow as well.
What are Australian companies doing like this? Anything?
Please don't misunderstand me - I'm only a little ticked off we don't do more. But there are companies who are doing more because IT'S THE RIGHT THING TO DO.
Is this not the best reason? Not to feel better about all the fuel we use or lights we leave on? Shouldn't we be doing these things to conserve energy, reduce waste and save our natural environment because we need to? Because we have to? How can we put pressure on businesses to be more aggressive in environmental issues, even when it's not "cost effective"?

Luke, offsetting carbon in plants at the very best it is carbon neutral because when the plants decay in the ground or is burnt the stored carbon is released back into the atmosphere. This does not take into account energy used to maintain, harvest and transport it the carbon needs to be put back where it came from, i.e.. the ground. we need to fill the underground cavities left after pumping oil out with high carbon minerals such as lime or long chain oils or waxes derived from plants, leaving it there for all eternity. There is no reason we can't continue to use hydrocarbons from plants (e.g., canola oil for trucks and ethanol for cars as these absorb CO2 from the air to make the fuel which is then re released to be reabsorbed. cycles are fine, but what we have been doing with oil and coal from the ground is releasing back into the atmosphere CO2 that has been locked underground for millions of years.

Luke -

There is a great deal going on across corporate Australia for compliance, ethical but most importantly for business reasons. If there is no margin there can be no mission so I strongly believe environmental initiatives must be to help our business to keep in business otherwise these initiatives will in the long run be ineffective.

I'd like to ask you some questions: What can you do in your work place? What influence can you have in your work group? How can you integrate environmental thinking into your part of your business? Focusing on the opportunities in your own work area is a good place to start.

If you are in Telstra, send me an email to turlough.guerin@team.telstra.com and I'll ensure you get an invite you to join our EcoChampions, a network of more than 350 engaged Telstra staff members who are helping to make a difference in their own work places.

Cheers,

Turlough