Entry received from: Nelson City Council
Category: Collaborative Government Action
It is critical that we all - central and local government, businesses, communities and individuals - take action to combat climate change. To act, we first need to know the size of the problem - in this case, what are our greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions as a region? Stats NZ provides yearly reporting, but a more nuanced breakdown of data was needed to drill down on the source of our emissions and make our climate action more
effective.
A Nelson City Council-led project to provide a detailed breakdown of emissions for the Nelson and Tasman regions was undertaken in-house by a working group of Nelson City Council (NCC) and Tasman District Council (TDC) staff, along with community group Nelson Tasman Climate Forum, and council-controlled organisation Nelson Regional Development Agency.
The project has set the baseline GHG emissions for Nelson and Tasman and provided a comprehensive picture of our regional emissions profile. The project enables us to identify the most effective strategies to reach net zero carbon emissions and track the effect of decision-making, policies, and actions on emissions. Using the baseline data provided for the project and a tool developed by Palmerston North City Council, NCC has developed a City Carbon Model which projects emissions out to 2050 and models the impact of emissions reduction policies, such as boosting
public transport.
The project received pro bono support from KPMG to develop the carbon accountancy, and from McHugh & Shaw via a NZ Certified Carbon Auditor to conduct assurance of the community carbon footprint. Local and central government organisations such as Stats NZ, the Ministry for the Environment, and Port Nelson also supported the project.
Thank you to our category sponsor