Ann: Company Update, page-16

The article from today's The Aus is showing just an example of the market potential for RNE:
SourceURL:http://www.theaustralian.com.au/bus.../bbf84ca39a40fe629c2013592d488b40Landlord’s energy goes into power solutions
Landlord’s energy goes into power solutions


Vicinity Centres' Chadstone mall in Melbourne. Picture: Aaron Francis

Surging energy costs have become the second-biggest expense for $10 billion retail landlord Vicinity Centres, as the country’s largest proprietors say they can no longer wait for a government solution on power.
Despite the federal government’s announcement on energy security last week, the big buyers of electricity were largely determining their own future, according to Vicinity Centres’ executive general manager of development, Carolyn Viney.
“After wages, our power bill is our single biggest expense,” Ms Viney told the Property Council of Australia’s congress in Cairns last week, noting electricity costs had increased up to 50 per cent.
This was being passed on to retailers at a time when they should be investing that money in their product and innovating their retail offer, she told the conference.
“The concept of getting a 20, 30, 40, 50 per cent reduction in that bill — whether by storage or by other carbon friendly outcomes like solar — makes a big difference quite quickly.”
Vicinity, which owns major shopping centres around the country, including half of Melbourne’s giant Chadstone centre, was rolling out a solar energy scheme across the rooftops of its properties, Ms Viney said.
“The return we are seeing on that program, really makes it a no-brainer,” she said.
Superannuation giant QIC said energy was the largest single contributor to the increase in operating costs for its buildings.
“It makes commercial sense for us to invest heavily in clean energy, particularly in solar power,” managing director of QIC Global Real Estate Steve Leigh told the conference.
“Retail malls are ideally positioned to harvest the sun with their large expanse of roof space,” he noted.
The group has set aggressive goals to become self sufficient in power at least for the common areas of its malls, he said.
Folkestone managing director Greg Paramor told the conference the property industry had been left with no choice except to innovate on energy.
“We have had a total breakdown in terms of both state and federal [policy] around the whole energy system,” Mr Paramor said.
“Here we are one of the biggest gas suppliers in the world, biggest coal suppliers in the world, we provide energy for the rest of the world, we have the best uranium supply in the word ... and here we are with an energy crisis. I think we should be very angry that this has come about. In five years’ time we will look back and say we innovated then because we had to.”
AMP Capital, along with other big electricity customers, had been developing buying and hedging strategies, but was also in a joint venture with CSIRO on a battery storage system, according to chief operating officer, real estate, Louise Mason.
Charter Hall managing director David Harrison said rising energy costs would cut into income from property rents. “We are thinking that a certain amount of our capital for innovation [should be] on renewables,” he said. “It will need to be something that becomes core, not something our innovation people are playing around with.” He said tenants were being hit twice, with their own power costs going up at the same time as their share of the total building outgoings