Building links with Council
At our planning meeting in June 2011, one of our priorities was to build closer links with the City of Newcastle (our local City Council). Over the years Council has introduced some innovative programs to reduce the Newcastle's energy use and of course there are many opportunites to do more.
Recently we met with Council's Environmental Advisory Committee to discuss some of our current projects and to encourage Council to have a greater focus on Peak Oil, and also made a response to the Draft Carbon and Water Management Action Plan.
In our submission we wanted to emphasise that we supported Council taking leadership in addressing climate change and commended Council for their progress to date. At the same time we urged Council to:
- Place a greater focus on peak oil and the potential impact of an oil crunch (short term interruptions to supply and dramatic spikes in the price of oil) in the current Plan, and in its planning and operations more generally
- Commit to being carbon neutral by 2020
- Recognise the benefits of developing strong partnership with community groups such as Transition Newcastle and Climate Action Newcastle.
You can read our full submission in the attched file.
We hope to continue discussing with Council ways of working together, explore ways in which we can enhance each others work, and encourage Council to address peak oil.
Through our submission we want to emphasise that we strongly support Council taking leadership in these very important issues and commend Council for the progress to date. We urge Council to:
1. Place a greater focus on peak oil and the potential impact of an oil crunch[1] in the current Plan, and in its planning and operations more generally
2. Commit to being carbon neutral by 2020
3. Recognise the benefits of developing strong partnership with community groups such as Transition Newcastle and Climate Action Newcastle
[1] An oil crunch is when global supply fails to meet demand and starts to drop. There is the likelihood of short term interruptions to supply and dramatic spikes in the price of oil.
| Attachment | Size |
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| Response to Carbon MAP.pdf | 69.18 KB |
