Darebin’s emissions data Snapshot for 2020/21 has been released and there have been some notable wins over the past year.

Since 2019/20 the Darebin community has reduced greenhouse gas emissions from:

• Residential electricity use by 3%;
• Commercial electricity use by 13%;
• Industry electricity use by 3%;
• Transport emissions by 12%; and
• Industry processes emissions by 6.5%

With an overall reduction in emissions of 5.6% across Darebin in the past year, that’s a reduction of 80,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide (CO2e) in one year, which is the equivalent of 17,241 cars off the road. This is an exciting achievement and one to be celebrated!

While we didn’t see any further reduction in emissions from waste this year (both landfill and wastewater), waste emissions make up only a small percentage (3%) of overall emissions in Darebin. With the majority of these emissions coming from landfill, continuing to reduce our waste to landfill will see this number decrease in the future.

One area that has seen an increase in emissions this year however is gas, with both commercial and industry gas emissions increasing this year by 4% and 6% respectively. While residential gas emissions were slightly reduced this year (by 1.6%) they are still 7% above emission levels from two years ago. This increase can likely be attributed to changes due to COVID, with so many of us working from home over the past two years and heating our homes with gas heaters. As people start making the switch over from gas appliances to electric, we will start to see these numbers come back down.

Similarly, with more and more renewables entering the energy grid each year, and by replacing inefficient gas and electric appliances with new efficient electric appliances, we can expect to see a decrease in electricity emissions in the years to come.

For more insights into Darebin’s emissions profile over the past three years, visit Snapshot Climate.