The City’s Mayoral Committee has recommended that the City’s Energy and Climate Change Action Plan be tabled for approval at the next Council Meeting in the last week of May.
The Action Plan was supported by all the City’s Portfolio Committees and the Executive Management Team (EMT).
The plan, comprising 43 programme areas made up of 115 projects, forms the basis on which the City can prioritise and budget for, implement, monitor and evaluate its energy and climate change programme. It operationalises the City’s commitments and demonstrates its leadership role in the field.
The City made ‘Energy for a sustainable city’ a key Strategic Focus Area (SFA) in its Integrated Development Plan in May 2008 and a Section 80 Energy Committee was established to drive the new focus area. This commitment to energy security, carbon mitigation and adaptation to climate change impacts is also supported by a range of other City policy documents and activities.
“The Action Plan compiles both existing and proposed City energy and climate change projects across all directorates and departments, organised according to 11 key objectives. These objectives reflect the intention of the SFA and the other relevant City policy documents,” says Alderman Marian Nieuwoudt, Mayoral Committee Member for Planning and Environment and Chair of the City’s Energy Committee.
Some of the key objectives of the plan are: City-wide 10% electricity consumption reduction by 2012, all growth in demand to be in renewable and cleaner energy sources; 10% renewable and cleaner energy supply by 2020; compact resource efficient city development; and more resilient low income/vulnerable communities.
The prioritisation of projects will be completed once the City’s Long Term Mitigation Scenarios (LTMS) project has been completed in June 2010. The LTMS will provide a solid foundation on which effective decision making with regard to priorities and financing of the City’s energy programme can proceed.
Some of the current projects already underway include:
- retrofit of City-owned buildings
- greening of housing developments
- Green Building guidelines
- Smart Living Education campaign
- electricity savings campaign to be launched in July 2010
- sale of Green Energy Certificates from the Darling Wind Farm to the public
- schools education programmes
- retrofit of streetlights and traffic lights for energy efficiency
- Green Goal 2010 carbon offset projects
- City adaptation plan of action (to build greater resilience to the impacts of climate change)
- mass roll out of solar water heaters project
- methane for energy from waste projects
