Governance, Audit & Risk

In August 2022, an environmental management audit was conducted focused on Council’s policies, processes, and controls to manage and monitor climate change mitigation initiatives at Council. The audit report made five key recommendations and was provided to Council’s Audit and Risk Committee in December 2022. Recommendations have been captured in CAMMS and are being implemented alongside other priority areas for action.

Reporting

In the previous update, the governance structure and membership of Council’s’ new Net Zero Steering Committee was provided.

In the last 6 months, Council’s Senior Leadership Team were briefed, and provided with tools and resources to guide emissions reductions in the areas where they have operational control. Departmental action planning commenced and granular actions were developed by each manager and captured as part of service planning. 112 actions have been identified, with the majority focussed on supporting Priority Area 4 of the CEERP: Transforming Council Operations (Appendix 2). While awareness of Council’s Net Zero goal has increased across the organisation, the sophistication of actions is still rudimentary in some areas and interdependencies and opportunities to collaborate have not been fully realized. Some teams, however have committed to making a meaningful contribution to Council’s target. Council’s Net Zero Steering Committee will review actions and determine next steps, as there is an opportunity to increase the impact of individual team actions through more joined-up, strategic action.

As foreshadowed in previous updates a range of challenges are beginning to emerge:

Not all teams across Council are equally engaged on implementation of localised team-based initiatives. A balance needs to be maintained between the work our CEERP officers are undertaking to assist Council emissions reductions when balanced against the existing work the officers are doing on further combatting community emissions.
Businesses are becoming increasingly difficult to directly engage with, and a focus on a smaller number of bigger businesses is being considered.
Detailed, cross organisation energy management should be increasingly enhanced with greater resources now provided into operational areas, who are responsible for building management.
More challenging decisions are now being presented to Council that represent financial, environmental, or reputational risks when considering the CEERP outcomes around emissions reduction (eg. holistic whole of life considerations on larger new building projects, or the sourcing of materials for Council events).