Dear WCC Staff,

 

Please accept this email as a submission relating to the WCC Draft Climate Change Mitigation Plan.

 

I strongly support Council’s Climate Change Mitigation Plan.  Overall the draft presents a very good plan, good commitments and good intent, across six action theme areas which I support.   I thank WCC staff and Councillors for their decisions and actions so far in the area of trying to act responsibly to address climate heating.  I must also say that I have found that my interactions with WCC councillors and staff have me feeling more hopeful about the future as they have demonstrated leadership and willingness to work collaboratively, that seems to me to be mostly missing from state and federal government.  Thank you!

 

I have had discussions with others in the Illawarra groups of The Wilderness Society, Renew, and Citizen’s Climate Lobby and I concur completely and support the formal submissions that these groups are providing to this public review process.  

 

I just want to add a few comments of my own, perhaps emphasising points made by others already:  

 

• As WCC has already declared, we are in a climate emergency.  And acting to reduce emissions is urgent.  This means that we need to keep track of how we are going and we need actions in a definite timeline, so that our efforts align with the latest IPCC consensus to target no more than 1.5°C warming by 2050.

• SO to keep on top of how we are going, I request Council recalculates Wollongong’s carbon budget using updated data  (much more recent than Ironbark’s calculations 2013) and then updated every two years aligned with the biennial inventory of emissions.  And targets need to aim for no more than 1.5°C warming by 2050.  

• TO ensure that our actions are in time, please can the proposed actions throughout the document be assigned deadlines.   

• I definitely support the proposed greening strategy (and I note that an additional benefit this is that hopefully it will provide precious habitat for threatened species – ACF has provided a map to help urbanites like us discover threatened species in our area https://acf.good.do/urban_threatened_species/pages/home/).  I also strongly support gas collection and beneficial use at Whyte’s Gully – but with a near deadline. Also I support continuation of the Free Shuttle Bus.

• But I urge that three actions are really urgent as they will likely deliver high GHG emissions reductions (so important to do these early).   

  1. Installation of more solar panels across council buildings, and perhaps WCC could also set up a loan facility for residents who desire to purchase PV for their own properties;

  2. Facilitate a group renewable-power partnership agreement contract – please be ambitious and set a target of 100 MW by the end of 2022.  When I spoke with Cr John Dorahy a little while back, he mentioned the ISJO – and perhaps that group could be involved in this PPA.  

  3. Investigate a PV energy battery storage system for Wollongong LGA – which could support residential/commercial/industrial users.   At a recent REWEW Illawarra webinar, experts informed me that batteries have a small footprint (one standard shipping container for the batteries and a second container for the associated electronics).  As in earlier submissions we estimate that the LGA currently purchases around $150M worth of electricity – but we could keep this within our community and provide time-shifted, cheaper power with less impact on the environment.  In the even of likely climate-change-induced natural disasters, the LGA becomes more self-sufficient for power, and further, local energy collection and storage will stabilise and reduce the load on the grid.   Please can WCC commit to undertaking a feasibility study and options workshop, ultimately putting out a request for EOIs by the end of 2022.  

• I also note, in relation to Theme 6, and specifically in relationship to discussions/partnerships with BlueScope, that recently I attended a BZE webinar outlining  their new campaign ‘The Million Jobs Plan’ (https://bze.org.au/the-million-jobs-plan/).   At that webinar, the BZE researcher Dr Dominique Hes, who has been focussing on Newcastle as a case-study, reported that a company Boston Metal, is looking to make steel made completely from renewable energy (no coal-fired electricity, no coking coal) in Newcastle.  She also had very practical ideas about how to bring people onboard in a coal community, and about enabling people to have confidence in transitioning.  I don’t know where BlueScope is in its thinking related to green steel – but I hope it might also seize the opportunity to transition.  

 

Finally, I am writing as just one individual representing a family of four, and my household has managed to install solar panels, as many as we could on our north-facing roof some years ago.  To reduce our environmental footprint we eat no red meats, only a little seafood sometimes and we are substituting what dairy we can for environmentally friendly plant alternatives.  We are saving to buy an electric vehicle, likely the Nissan Leaf new model soon. But our property is small and our house arrangement is odd and not readily amenable to installation of batteries to charge an EV.  We would definitely like to purchase power from a local battery system, and also to contribute power to such a system.  We want to be part of a community projects benefiting all.

 

Again, thank you for your work so far on this climate change mitigation plan.  And thank you for the opportunity to be able to provide comment.