Cities for Climate Protection Program
In December 2007 Kempsey Shire Council joined the Cities for Climate Protection (CCP) Australia Program and became one of over 200 Australian local governments to make a formal commitment to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in Council operations and in the community.
Commitment to the CCP Program represents Kempsey Shire Council’s intention to:
- Establish an inventory and forecast for key sources of greenhouse emissions for council and community at Milestone 1.
- Set an emissions reduction goal at Milestone 2.
- Develop and adopt a local greenhouse action plan to achieve emission reductions at Milestone 3.
- Implement the local greenhouse action plan and quantify benefits at Milestone 4.
- Monitor and report on greenhouse gas emissions, and implement actions as a continuous improvement cycle at Milestone 5.
Since joining the Program Council has progressed through the first two milestones of the program, by successfully completing an inventory and forecast for key sources of greenhouse emissions and more recently setting emission reduction goals. At its December 2008 meeting Council agreed to endorse the setting of medium and longer term emission reduction goals as follows:
- Medium Term Goals: reduce per capita Council greenhouse gas emissions from 2005 levels by 10% by 2014 and per capita community greenhouse gas emissions from 2006 levels by 5% by 2016.
- Long Term Goals: reduce per capita Council greenhouse gas emissions from 2005 levels by 20% by 2020 and per capita community greenhouse gas emissions from 2006 levels by 15% by 2020.
The next step in the Program will be to commence preparations for the development of a Local Greenhouse Action Plan designed to coordinate activities to help Council and the Community to achieve the adopted emission reduction goals.
Current Council Activities to Reduce Greenhouse Gas Emissions
As the above preliminary work is being undertaken, Council is always looking at options to reduce electricity use and thus greenhouse gas emissions, by improving efficiencies, or switching to renewable forms of electricity generation. For example, low wattage lighting, solar walkway lighting and water saving shower heads have been installed at a number of Council owned caravan parks. At the main office building in West Kempsey, the air conditioning has been upgraded to a more efficient system and investigations are underway to upgrade the lighting in the library to more efficient models. The kerbside recycling program has now been in operation for over 2 years, and along with further waste separation activities conducted at the main landfill site, has significantly reduced greenhouse gas emissions from this source. To help reduce emissions from the vehicle fleet Council have introduced a number of smaller, more fuel efficient vehicles into the general fleet, including one running on LPG and are currently benchmarking the greenhouse performance of the entire fleet against other NSW Councils.
