With a renewable energy target of 100% by 2020, it won’t come as a surprise Canberra just scored a major award for its efforts.
The Carbon Disclosure Project’s (CDP) “Best Renewable Target For An Australian City” award went to Canberra, which was accepted by the ACT’s Minister for Climate Change and Sustainability yesterday.
CDP is the only global disclosure system for companies, cities, states and regions.
“We motivate companies and cities to disclose their environmental impacts, giving decision makers the data they need to change market behavior,” says the body.
During 2016, 533 cities disclosed environmental information through CDP. 71 states and regions throughout the world now measure their environmental impacts through the project..
The ACT’s program has been so compelling and popular that even the Canberra Liberals eventually got behind it, and more power to them for doing so.
“The ‘Davids’ are showing the ‘Goliaths’ how it is done,” said an obviously chuffed Minister Rattenbury about the award.
“We cannot wait for the Prime Minister of Australia, or the President of the United States to decide that the long term interests of our communities, our economy, our Pacific neighbours or our environment are more important that the interests of the coal lobby.”
Mr. Rattenbury stated there had been keen interest in the ACT’s success in using reverse auctions at the recent Conference of the Parties (COP22) in Marrakech, Morocco.
The Minister said the ACT had attracted $1.5 billion in renewable energy and infrastructure investment to date and has seen 400 percent growth in renewable energy jobs over the last five years.
Canberra was also named the renewable energy capital of Australia by the Climate Council in September this year.
The ACT isn’t done yet – it also wants to be Australia’s leader in home battery storage; with an initiative that will see the installation of more than 5,000 battery systems in households and businesses that already have solar power systems installed.
In September, Energy Matters was announced as one of the companies selected to install heavily subsidised smart battery storage in homes and commercial premises across Canberra.
The CDP’s Australian Climate Leadership Report 2016 can be downloaded here (PDF) – we also noted that Dexus Property Group scored a couple of guernseys for its carbon reduction efforts. Energy Matters installed a commercial solar array for the company in April 2012.
Top Right Image Credit: BigStock
