Page 3317 - Week 09 - Tuesday, 21 August 2018
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believe the running costs of these vehicles will stack up very well economically and ultimately these vehicles will be available to the community to purchase second-hand.
The ACT budget is also investing nearly $2 million over three years to support the implementation of the ACT climate change adaptation strategy including over $577,000 in 2018-19. Adaptation is about identifying risks posed by climate change and preparing for them. Taking adaptation actions now will have both direct and indirect savings for the community by improving overall resilience to extreme weather events or climate-induced natural disasters.
The adaptation strategy has the primary goal of supporting the community, our city and the natural environment to become more resilient to the impacts from climate change such as extreme heat and increasing severe weather events like storms. I think it is important to reflect here that the government does have strong strategies in both spaces—mitigation and adaptation—and, in plain English, that means both trying to stop climate change but also preparing to cope with the climate changes that are already embedded in the system.
Interestingly, and I think beneficially, sometimes these policy areas deliver on both fronts at once. Things such as green infrastructure, which we are looking at very closely, will both help absorb carbon as part of the mitigation strategy but also ensure that as, for example, hotter weather strikes us the infrastructure will have a cooling effect on the city. We are certainly looking for those kinds of synergistic opportunities to make sure that we are getting the best value we can and having the greatest impact with the funds that we have available.
When it comes to the carbon neutral goal of the ACT government, the government continues to lead by example in the community, both nationally and internationally, in seeking to reduce emissions from our own operations. The carbon neutral government program has already achieved $2 million per year of savings in energy costs and an 11 per cent reduction in ACT government emissions since 2014. This has been achieved through mitigation actions like large-scale energy efficiency upgrades and the transition to 100 per cent renewable electricity.
The 2018-19 budget allocates a total of $1.897 million to implementing and strengthening the carbon neutral government program, which includes funding a dedicated team of policy, project and energy specialist officers, as well as allowing the carbon neutral government fund to support further emission reduction projects across government. This initiative will allow the government to refresh the carbon neutral government framework, target government emissions from natural gas used for space and water heating, investigate reducing emissions from the government corporate vehicle and bus fleets and investigate innovative emission reduction technologies.
The budget also provides more than $3 million for Actsmart to continue its programs which provide free information, tools and advice to assist households, schools and businesses to improve their sustainability. All local schools are signed up to the Actsmart program, with many fantastic sustainability projects underway, as well as
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