Greater Wellington Regional Council — Corporate carbon neutral plan

Corporate Carbon Neutral action plan

As an organisation we have declared a climate emergency and formally established a target to become "carbon neutral" by 2030.

We aim to:

Be carbon neutral reducing and offsetting the organisations' greenhouse gas ("carbon") emissions
Reduce our net emissions by 40% by 2025
Introduce 5-yearly carbon budgets
And be carbon negative (producing more carbon credits from our land than we need for offsetting) by 2035.

Introduce a carbon reduction policy for the organisation. Decisions must consider what impact they will have on the carbon target(s), with a strong bias towards those options that will avoid, reduce or absorb emissions. The carbon reduction policy will be reflected in procurement policy.
Allocate responsibility for corporate carbon emissions and attainment of the targets to the chief executive, with an associated performance indicator.
Work with the Boards and executive of CCOs, in particular CentrePort Wellington to align their level of ambition and programmes for reducing emissions with that of GWRC.
Sell down the free allocation of carbon credits (NZUs) GWRC received for its pre1990 forests to create a 'low carbon acceleration fund' to reduce the rates impact of this programme of work. The measures in this plan will be developed further but identify our immediate courses of action and major areas of work needed to achieve our targets and live up to the expectation created by declaring a climate emergency.

Investigate securing renewable electricity supplies for GWRC operations including via procurement, partnerships and/or direct investment.
Accelerate the implementation of an electric bus fleet in the region by 2030.
Adopt a target of a fully-electric corporate vehicle fleet by 2030 (if mature technology is available).
Investigate and evaluate options for off-road and high performance electric vehicles including through conversion, joint procurement or partnerships with manufacturers.

Allocate resources to accelerate reforestation planting in regional parks, plan future phases, secure external funding where possible and develop agreements with DOC regarding acquiring carbon credits associated with planting in Queen Elizabeth Park.
Review the future of grazing leases in regional parks as part of the review of the Parks Network Plan and options to use this land for native reforestation where appropriate to earn carbon credits.

Updated October 18, 2021 at 1:59 PM