SECCCA has made a submission to the Victorian Government’s Gas Transition Roadmap which is producing a strategic framework for decarbonising natural gas in Victoria.

In response to the Federal Government’s Technology Investment Discussion Paper, the Victorian Greenhouse Alliances call for a strategy that advances climate change action with substantially more urgency and magnitude.

Local governments are on the frontline of two monumental challenges; the Corona Virus pandemic and Climate Change. Tackling both challenges at the same time is as important as ever. Luckily, implementing local climate solutions can significantly boost pandemic recovery efforts.

Working with the building industry to achieve net zero carbon homes, we have observed that the overwhelming response from builders is that improvements to energy efficiency are affordable, available and achievable, and only limited changes to their building systems are necessary.

Victorian Greenhouse Alliances led the development of two sector-wide submissions to the Australian Energy Regulator (AER) in response to the 2021-2026 Victorian Electricity Distribution Price Review (EDPR). The AER have ruled in favour of the Alliance-led submission, which will assist councils across Victoria to avoid over $10.7M in OMR charges over the next five years, plus a further $19.8M out to 2046. Both submissions to the the regulatory process can be accessed below:

The majority of volume builders take a compliance only approach to building homes to meet the minimum NatHERS 6 Star requirement. Home purchasers, on the other hand, lack the knowledge and opportunity to make educated decisions on what is in their best interests from an affordability, comfort and health perspective.

Climate change presents a multitude of challenges including significant financial, infrastructure and repetitional risks to local government, and socio-economic wellbeing of their communities. Climate change is much more than an environmental issue, it poses risks for every part of council business.

In response to the key role of local government in addressing climate change, most Victorian councils now have greenhouse emissions reduction targets and objectives for their own operations (corporate emissions). This includes 25 councils with ‘carbon neutral’ target.

Local government plays a key role leading the transition to zero carbon and supporting communities to be more resilient to the impacts of a changing climate. The transition brings challenges and also exciting opportunities for local governments and its communities.

Emissions reduction targets are crucial to Victoria meeting its climate and clean energy commitments with an aim to limit global temperature increase to not more than 1.5°C and prevent the worst impacts of climate change.

A long term emission reduction goal for Australia beyond 2030, backed by policies and programs that deliver the emissions reduction, is essential. It will signal to the international community that Australia is committed to contributing to global efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Dynamic support control should be implemented. This is a device on inverters/smart meters that enables power distributers if required to manage feed-in power loads from behind the meter solar systems or batteries. This will ensure that solar and home battery storage systems can be used by the network.