Council unanimously resolved to support its Climate Change Advisory Committee’s recommendation to convert electricity consumption to green energy in an effort to promote more sustainable energy usage.

“The Shire is working to cut greenhouse gas emissions to reduce impacts of climate change, and one of the ways has been to adopt green energy,” said the committee’s chair Annie Mayo.

The Shire has committed to an additional 25 per cent loading per energy bill for electricity supplied to all of its metered localities from February 2008 under Synergy NaturalPower.

NaturalPower is a program where a percentage loading of an energy bill is added to each energy bill at a cost of 4.4c/unit.

Synergy provides three options for converting to green energy: Synergy NaturalPower, EasyGreen and EarthFriendly.

“Converting your energy bill to utilise green energy is an easy and efficient way of contributing to an increase in the use of renewable resources for energy consumption,” natural resource management officer Yvette Caruso said.

“The Council has taken the initiative and I would hope that people in the Denmark community are inspired to follow suit.”

The switch to NaturalPower is one of the many activities the Shire of Denmark is endeavouring to accomplish in an effort to mitigate the impacts of climate change.

An attempt to start a small wind farm at Ocean Beach was rejected by the community several years ago because it spoilt the coastline views.

The community wanted the wind turbines located inland.