Council achieves 44.4 per cent emissions reduction in four years

Waikato Regional Council has reduced its gross emissions by 44.4 per cent since it started measuring the carbon emissions from its corporate activities in 2016/17, well on track to meet its current target of 68 per cent CO₂e reductions by 2030 compared to its 2016/17 base year.

However, new reporting requirements to include significant indirect emissions in the future, such as those from public transport, means the council will likely have to set new targets.

An annual audit of the regional council’s participation in the Toitū carbonreduce certification programme for 2020/2021 has confirmed a 14.5 per cent annual reduction in mandatory emissions from the previous year, resulting in a total of 930 tonnes CO₂e for 2020/2021.

Climate Action Committee chair Jennifer Nickel says this is an awesome result and she applauds council staff for their efforts in helping the council reduce its direct emissions.

“Of course, no floods and no flights over the past year certainly helped us achieve the 14.5 per cent reduction, but we also got efficiencies in electricity and petrol consumption. And that pays, too, because over the last three years we saved $97,000 in electricity alone.”

Emissions from electricity consumption have reduced from 715 tCO2e in the base year of 2016/17 to 226 tO2e in 2020/21, a reduction of 68.4 per cent overall and of 14.4 per cent since 2019/2020.

The council initially set a target of reducing its corporate emissions by an average of 2 per cent every year with the overall intention of achieving a 45 per cent reduction in carbon dioxide by 2030 and net zero by 2050.

But in the 2018/19 year, emissions were 30 per cent lower than the 2016/17 base year, and a new target of 68 per cent CO₂e reductions compared to the base year by 2030 was set.

“Measuring and managing emissions, and setting targets, is an exercise in continuous improvement and change, as new technologies, information and ways of working become available, along with new reporting requirements,” says Cr Nickel.

“To date, we have been measuring and focusing on opportunities to reduce our key corporate operational emissions, such as petrol, diesel and electricity consumption and flights.

“Moving forward new ISO [International Organisation for Standardisation] emission measurement standards will require us to measure and report on additional significant indirect emissions, so those from the goods and services supplied by some of our contractors and suppliers, such as our contracted public transport services.”

“This means it’s likely the council will have to set new targets as we expand the emission sources in our inventory.”

As part of the preparations to transition to the new standards, the council this year included the emissions from contracted public transport services in its emissions inventory, although it is not currently required for programme certification.

“This allows the transport team to understand their emissions so they can start to look at how they can reduce them.

“It's great to be maturing into this broader view of our impact. When emissions from public transport are included in the overall results this year, our emissions are 7.3 times higher than last year,” says Cr Nickel. 

Emissions from public transport (the regional bus service at 6600 tCO₂e and Te Huia train at 410 tCO₂e) contributed 7010 tCO₂e or 88.3 per cent to the total emissions portfolio.

“And for next year, when emissions from public transport will be required to be included in our audit, the emissions will likely be considerably greater because Te Huia will have operated longer than the three months it ran for in the 2020/21 year. 

“However, it’s worth noting that there are many opportunities to reduce public transport emissions through new technologies such as electric buses. Also, increasing patronage on our buses and Te Huia will keep other vehicles off the roads thereby reducing the collective emissions of private vehicles in the region.” 

The council, as part of the Regional Transport Committee and its recently established Transport Emissions Reduction Working Group, will continue its work to reduce Waikato transport emissions.