Ambitious green targets unlikely to be met by City of Sydney

By Kieran Adair

City of Sydney is not on track to meet its 2030 emission-reduction targets, due to the failure of several environmental initiatives, including the city’s plans for trigeneration power plants, Councillor Linda Scott has told City Hub.

The goal of a 70 per cent emissions reduction target was adopted in 2008 as part of the Sustainable Sydney 2030 plan. Along with emission reductions, the plan also includes targets for meeting 100 per cent of the city’s energy demand locally through a mix of trigeneration and renewable energy. However, according to the Councillor, progress since then has stalled.

“We have strong targets for 2030 which I support but the council is not on tratck to meet them as many of our environmental initiatives have failed.

“We’ve had a budget for tri-generation of $50 million and $10 million of that we’ve spent. For that $10 million we’ve not produced a watt of energy, we’ve not produced a functioning trigeneration scheme. [The money went to] consultants, to feasibility studies, to a range of other exploratory systems. We’ve got lots of reports but we don’t have action to effectively address climate change.”

Trigeneration power plants are a key part of the city’s 2030 sustainability plan. They use local gas-fired power units to generate electricity then capture the waste heat used in this process and use it to run the heating and cooling systems of buildings. It’s estimated that they’re three times more efficient than coal fired power, which is responsible for more than 80 per cent of the city’s carbon emissions.

However, in 2012 the city was forced to defer plans to develop its first major trigeneration project in Green Square. City of Sydney CEO Monica Barone said the project had been undermined by the restrictive electricity network regulations and rule changes removing incentives for the development of trigeneration projects.The city still intends to push forward with smaller-scale trigeneration stations for Town Hall and its aquatic centres.

As Lord Mayor, Clover Moore has championed renewable energy, pledging early and ambitious emissions reduction targets for the city, and playing an active role internationally within the C40 Cities Climate Leadership Group.

During an address to the National Press Club last year, she told reporters “We were the first Australian local government to become carbon neutral in 2007 and our target is to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 70 per cent by 2030.

“We’ve already reduced emissions by 20 per cent since 2006 and projects are underway to achieve 29 per cent reduction in coming years.”

The Lord Mayor went on to outline the benefits of several of the city’s emission reduction initiatives, such as the installation of energy-efficient LED street lights, its building-mounted solar panel project, and the retrofitting of the city’s office buildings for energy and water savings.

According to Stuart White, Director Institute for Sustainable Futures, it is these efficiency boosting measures, not trigeneration or renewables, that will play a central role in reducing the city’s carbon emissions.

“The City of Sydney have voluntarily adopted a stretch target for 2030. If you’re asking if it’s achievable the answer is yes.

“Energy efficiency is the key potential reduction. There has obviously been a lot of discussion about trigeneration and the decentralised energy master plan but energy efficiency [is the important] plan which the City is [still] developing.”