Is Brisbane City Council really Carbon Neutral?
Sadly, the answer to this question is not really and the Lord Mayor’s greenwashing is hiding the real story on sustainability for our city.
Brisbane City Council’s carbon neutral claim is overwhelmingly based on the purchase of carbon credits. In 2021-22, 90% of BCC’s credits were purchased via disgraced overseas carbon broker Verra.
Plus, the carbon neutral status claim only includes Council the corporation, not the wider City of Brisbane.
Carbon neutral status does not include major projects, tips, households, or the work of Council’s many contractors and consultants. This is the equivalent of BHP measuring their office emissions but excluding their coal mines.
Action one – Council needs to ensure all Council assets, business and services are included in carbon calculations to get a true picture of the City’s emissions AND include households, businesses, and community groups to get a real city-wide measure of carbon emissions. If you are not properly identifying, tracking, and calculating emissions you can’t meaningfully reduce them.
Action Two – no more dodgy overseas offsets – invest in real offsets in Australia as much as possible.
Over the five-year period from 2016-17 to 2020-21, Council’s annual carbon emissions decreased from 644,039 down to 520,075 tonnes.
Even using these worthless carbon offsets in 2021-22, Council’s carbon emissions actually rose to 574,453 tonnes.
So how did BCC actually reduce emissions in 2021-22 via practical initiatives?
- Purchased 44,881 MWH of renewable power
- Installed 388 KW of solar power on Council facilities
- Used recycled asphalt
That’s it.
Action three – we need more practical measures in place to reduce Council, the city and corporation’s, carbon emissions in three key areas development of energy-efficient buildings, investment in renewable energies, and better transport networks. This should include:
- planning changes to ensure all new homes and apartments are water and energy efficient,
- grants or rate incentives for existing households to become water and energy efficient,
- free public transport for school students to reduce car reliance, reduce emissions and improve safety around schools,
- introduce a fortnightly household food to waste (FOGO) recycling service to help reduce waste going to landfill,
- make solar- power (or other renewable) standard for all public space upgrades,
- build more footpaths and bikeways to encourage local active travel,
- acquire and create new green spaces and more bushland to expand the City’s green lungs,
- stop allowing areas of High Biological Diversity and Koala habitat to be removed for urban development,
- investigate more waste to power generation measures for the City,
- invest in renewable energy to power the city,
- invest in renewable energy vehicles,
- purchase more green power rather than dodgy overseas offsets,
- invest more in flood mitigation measures to protect vulnerable areas of the City,
- encourage land use change (rezoning and buy back) in flood prone areas of the city to prevent environmental disasters when poorly located industrial areas flood and cause significant environmental contamination and degradation,
- protect more significant native trees on private property and PLANT MORE TREES on public property.
There is so much more Council could be doing to make Brisbane the City and our community sustainable. Sadly, the Lord Mayor and his ‘team’ are only focused on greenwashing Brisbane the Corporation rather than investing in real and accountable measures to protect and enhance Brisbane’s environment and reduce carbon emissions.
