Sunday, August 14, 2011

draft Carbon Reduction plan released


At last Tuesday's meeting Glen Eira's first draft Carbon Reduction plan was released for a 28 day public submission and comment period.

The plan is Item 9.3 in the minutes bottom right of screen.

In moving this motion and welcoming public comment, I outlined in my view the strengths and weaknneses of the draft plan- On the plus side the street light changeover over the next two years (reducing council's emission by 11-14%) is a major step forward with $2m budgeted over the next two year to change to more energy efficient T5 globes.

Other measures articulated in the action plan include the purchasing of hybrid council vehicles, Greenpower for 25% of councils electricity needs, increasing the uptake of the Eco-Buy purchasing program by 10% each year and utilising best practise low emmission manufactures concrete.


The Sports and Aquatic centre (GESAC) at Bentleigh about to come online presents a challenge in managing emmissions. This 24/7 facility will be powered primarily by convential sources ie brown coal- In the design of this facilty there is capacity to transform to co-generation energy sourcing and I will certainly be advocating for this in future years.

The major flaw with the plan as I see it is a lack of targets and vision about where GEs emissions should and will be in future- despite the actions it would seem to be an ever increasing upward trend!- will look forward to comments.


The annual Evironment Community Forum will be held on Wed 31st August 7pm Caulfield Cup room -

1 comment:

  1. Thanx Neil, What is co-generation energy sourcing?

    Glen Eira has become obsessive with it use of concrete. Every park plan seems to involve lavish amounts of concrete.

    It would be nice for council to think harder about using any type of concrete recycled or not recycled or bitumen in the first place. Especially when it is used in parks. Maybe no concrete of any type in a lot of instances is better.

    Sustainable living will be about reducing demand in high energy products.

    People actually walked on the grass for 100 plus years happily in our local park, and then council poured tons and tons of concrete into the park as paths. The paths are not used that much as most people still prefer to walk in a strait lines across the park. Or some people just do not like to walk on concrete.

    There is not a whole lot about identifying areas of council land {no matter how small}that are currently mowed, this land could be vegetated and the fuel emissions and machinery wear would be saved, and the carbon sequestered from the Veg is a bonus. It also will beautify the city too.

    We have to think of more passive ways to achieve things.

    So much of what we do as a community is just false economics or habit. Machinery replacing people for instance, is it always a good thing, maybe maybe not.

    Council officer education is mentioned and that needs to start at the very top. This will give the younger more better educated officers room to practise their craft.

    Council needs a vision of what they are trying to achieve with sustainable living, a statement to that effect would be a good thing, otherwise all this is just tinkering around the edges.

    Having said all that, there are some very worthy ideas and actions looming from this plan.

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