The City of Newcastle is seeking to achieve a range of reductions by 2020 across energy, waste, water, liquid fuels and its carbon footprint.

Some of the projects we are currently working on are:

Solar PV Installation of a large scale solar photovoltaic system at the Council Works Depot and a small scale system at Summerhill Waste Management Centre.

Energy, Water and Waste Monitoring and Reporting- Implementation of an online monitoring and reporting system for Council's operations, including the installation of smart metering systems at key Council sites. This will allow Council to accurately track and report on its resource consumption, waste generation and carbon emissions.

Smart Building Dashboards Development of building dashboards for key Council sites that will present data from the online monitoring and reporting system. The dashboards will be displayed on monitors at the relevant sites and also be made available to staff through Council's intranet site.

Water Detailed water audits of our large consuming sites in order to understand water demand and identify consumption reduction measures. These measures will include the development of turf specific irrigation schedules and installation of instrumentation and systems to measure moisture, wind and likelihood of rain. This will result in a change in the irrigation of sports grounds and parks to an as need basis rather than preset intervals.

Waste The roll out of recycling bins across Council's operations in line with the ClimateCam for Council program below.

Liquid Fuels Council passenger vehicles now use an E10 ethanol blend and the majority of our small diesel fleet use a B20 biodiesel blend.  Alternative fuels vehicles currently being trialled in Council's fleet include a Mitsubishi i-MiEV Electric Vehicle, common rail turbo diesel Hyundai i30 and a Holden Omega that runs on E85.

ClimateCam for Council On 1 July 2012 Council will launch a new program to encourage staff to improve their work practices to make contributions to our reduction targets.  The first stage of the program will focus on waste, educating staff to develop their baseline data for waste, implement waste reduction actions, and then to monitor and report against actual reductions achieved.  

Further Information

To find out more, please phone (02) 4974 2549.