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We track our greenhouse gas emissions to monitor progress against our baseline emissions (2019/20) and to help determine how much carbon offsets we need to purchase after we have done all we can to decarbonise.
If we don't measure our emissions we can't tell how we are progressing towards Net Zero.
We track our emissions (Scope 1, 2 & 3) using the carbon accounting platform Trellis. We use invoices from service and utility providers to extract quantities of resources used, such as kW of electricity or kL of water consumed at Council's assets. Trellis applies 'emissions factors' against resources to calculate our emissions. For some resources (e.g. corporate waste, staff commuting) we rely on periodic surveys and audits to measure impact.
Tracking emissions with attention to different resource types and assets (including buildings, fleet, infrastructure and services) allows Council to identify the best opportunities to make a big impact on our emissions profile.
Marry existing data in Unity with Trellis via ID Keys in order to:
Track peak usage to identify opportunities to reduce usage, reduce peak demand and reduce electricity costs.
We are working with Trellis to integrate interval data into our existing reporting platform.
Our Scope 3 emissions include utilities in our leased buildings. We need to quantify these emissions in order to determine which facilities should be prioritised for upgrades such as more efficient heating and cooling, LED upgrades or solar installations. Often these buildings are occupied by community groups, so lower utilities bills will also benefit our community by helping these groups' funding stretch further.
Our utilities and service providers can help us track our emissions by providing invoices in electronic format with all the data we need. In some cases our providers invoices are not compatible with our carbon accounting platform, which causes gaps in our data. Filling gaps of missing data is essential to having an accurate estimate of our total emissions.
UPDATE: As of February 2023, we have full transparency on water and electricity invoices for all of our pools, which are managed by a third party. Pools are amongst are largest consumers of utilities.
Plant and fleet account for a significant part of ISC's emissions.
Converting our most heavily used vehicles and plant to lower- or no-emission technologies will help us reduce our emissions, but first we need to understand our fuel consumption patterns.
Interrogating our fuel invoices to find out which vehicles and plant are consuming the most fuel is only possible with good quality data. We need to assign usage to individual vehicles and understand how much fuel our plant is consuming.
UPDATE: As of February 2023, we have the ability to track large portions of fuel consumption for most of our self-propelled fleet and plant, giving us better resolution on fuel consumption and efficiency data.
Fleet is implementing better tracking technology to better capture usage data (km and fuel).
Goods and services account for a large portion of our emissions profile. We will continuously add new emissions factors to better capture our Scope 3 emisions as Climate Active attains IP.
UPDATE: General Ledger data has been integrated into Trellis from July 2021 onwards, capturing diverse Scope 3 emissions sources such as Plastic Packaging, Construction Contractors, Chemical Use, and Asphalt. Council and Trellis will work to update and apply emissions factors to an increasing range of products and services as they become available.
Council subscribed to Trellis as a result of the 'Carbon Crunching Councils' project by Goulburn Murray Climate Alliance (GMCA).
Update: Our buildings and other assets (including parks and gardens, BBQs and public toilets), goods and service providers (Scope 3 emissions such as Contractors and Plastic Packaging), Fleet and Plant fuel use, printing and paper use, and operational waste are now captured in Trellis.
$11,286 (2024/25 subscription fee) and cost of staff wages.
Unit cost per kWh