I watched the recording of the meeting of the Council hearing of the BSFG Climate Emergency Petition at the Benalla Council Planning Meeting which was streamed on Wednesday September 29th.  It was interesting to see during the meeting there were several questions from Councillors about determining council emissions. Councillor Puna Gunaratne requested an emissions report for the review of the Climate Adaptation Plan 2013-2025.

I was also reassured by the second point of mayor Danny Claridge’s motion at the end of the meeting, ‘That council recognises that climate change is one of the most significant issues that will impact the social, cultural, economic and environmental health and wellbeing of our community and will act accordingly with all policies and programs of the council’.

After approaching Peter Holmes about communicating with council about emissions accounting, I sent an email to all Councillors, the CEO and the Manager Economic Development and Environment mentioning protocols and tools for councils to do a community wide emissions inventory and highlighting work being done both locally and globally by other cities and local governments. Such as Cities Power Partnership (Benalla Council is a Member), ICLEI Internatioal Council of Local Governments for Sustainability, Global Covenant Of Mayors for Climate and Energy, and C40 Cities.

Our Renewable Energy Benalla action group is based on a transition strategy developed through John Lloyd's work with Beyond Zero Emissions (BZE). This strategy provided baseline stationary emissions for a 100% Renewables Benalla by 2028. These emissions are based on the GHG Protocol Standard for Cities, the GPC.  Since producing the Transition Strategy BZE has, with local government specialists Ironbark Sustainability, developed a Snapshot Climate Tool to provide all Councils in Australia with an online emissions profile.

The GPC enables organisations to determine a citywide emissions inventory based on Tier 3 data which is local activity data and locally sourced conversion factors, or actual activity-specific local carbon emissions data. Such data can be time consuming and expensive to obtain.

The Snapshot Climate Tool however uses Tier 1 data which is largely modelled data, with little or no local activity data available (these methods take state, national, or international data, and scale them to the municipality using a relevant metric). The Tool provides a profile not an inventory however the data is sufficiently accurate to provide councils with an insight into community emissions. The GPC also provides guidance on a Council Operations emissions inventory.

My email to Councillors resulted in replies from Mayor Danny Claridge, and Councillors Gail O’Brien, Puna Gunaratne and Justin King each mentioning they were looking forward to working with BSFG. I took the opportunity to reply to all Councillors mentioning Ironbark’s website article on Science Derived Targets for Australian Councils and attached an emissions reduction target for Benalla I had requested from Ironbark.

One Councillor is looking forward to working towards achieving a net zero Benalla although the boundaries for this have not been established. Would it be for council operations emissions, or the city-wide emissions reported by the Snapshot Climate tool? I provided Councillors with a link to the 2021 Australian Local Government Climate Review which provides a comprehensive analysis of climate change actions, barriers and opportunities facing councils and communities.

Despite the unsatisfactory outcome of the Climate Emergency Petition to Council we may now have the opportunity to work with Council to support and work with the community towards achieving a Net Zero Benalla.

Peter Maddock

This article was originally published in BSFG Newsletter #31, November 2021

At last Wednesday's Planning and Development Committee meeting, Benalla councillors wee finally considering a peition, originally received by council in April this year, from 600 local residents to declare a climate emergency, and to develop plans and actions that would enable Benalla to become a net-zero emissions community by 2030.

At the meeting, councillors were addressed by two of the Benalla P-12 College student captains, Jessica Patterson and Lachie Sands.  Benalla GP Dr Gerard Brownstein, and Benalla Sustainable Future Group (BSFG) president Peter Holmes.

Councillors asked many questions of the presenters, and all indicated their acknowledgement that climate change was indeed a threat to our community's future health, social and economic wellbeing.

However, at the conclusion of the discussion, a motion was moved and passed by all councillors that the petition be noted, that the council recognizes that climate change is one of the most significant issues that will impact the social, cultural and economic and environmental health and wellbeing of our community and will act accordingly with all policies and programs of the council, and that council further considers its position on climae change during the upcoming review of the Benalla Rural City Climate Change Adaptation and Action Plan 2013-2025.

BSFG, and no doubt the wider community know that we are very disappointed with this response from our elected leaders.

Despite overwhelming worldwide evidence of the catastrophic climate-related events in recent years, and the most recent IPCC report noting that "this is the last decade the world has in which to drastically reduce greenhouse emissions in order to contain global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius", council's motion contains no indication of urgency whatsoever, and no demonstrable target to work towards in relation to reducing greenhouse emissions.

In fact, the motion, in referring to the review of Council's Climate Change Adaptation Policy, 2013-2025, as its principal document of reference for climate change, basically indicates that council will make plans about what to do "after the hourse has bolted", rather than developing plans to stop the horse bolting.

We need a Climate Change MItigation Plan to be developed, a point that was made consistently by speakers on Wednesday night.

BSFG will continue to advocate vigorously for action on mitigating climate change.

Therefore, on behalf of the Benalla community, we declare that the world faces a climate emergency, and must drastically reduce its greenhouse emissions by 2030, and Benalla must play its part in striving for these emission reductions.

BSFG calls for expressions of interest from representatives of the many key stakeholder groups across the community which will be affected by climate change, to join a community consultation "Climate Change Mitigation" group to develop ideas and plans to lead Benalla towards a net-zero emissions future, preferably by 2030.

To register interest in participating, email BSFG at bsfginc@gmail.com and provide your name, contact details and areas of interest.

Peter Holmes, Benalla