Strong year for sustainability

There has been a lot of work and emphasis on sustainability and climate action in Hepburn Shire over recent years.

We adopted our Sustainable Hepburn strategy in August 2022 and have made strong progress since then. There are almost 70 actions in the strategy, with 85% on track.

The Z-NET Hepburn community-council collaboration is now into its fifth year and has led to significant outcomes, along with the day-to-day work of many community organisations, residents, businesses and regional partnerships that focus on climate mitigation and adaptation.

In terms of tangible outcomes on greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions reduction, the Z-NET Hepburn annual electricity audit showed a solid 24% reduction in community-wide GHG emissions resulting from electricity use in Hepburn Shire since 2018, with renewable energy generation contributing 35.8% of electricity used during that time.

Council’s corporate emissions reduced 29% on the baseline year of 2021, with a reduction of 18% on the previous financial year 2021/22. Our decarbonisation efforts included the replacement of all streetlighting with highly efficient LED lighting, the purchase of clean renewable electricity, the addition of two electric vehicles into our pool fleet and other energy, emissions and cost saving measures. Along with the reduction in GHG emissions, we also had a reduction in energy and fuel costs across Council assets of 24% and energy consumption was down by 27% on 2021/22.

Throughout 2023 Council successfully delivered a range of projects to improve outcomes across the four areas of Sustainable Hepburn. These included:

• Established the governance structure for delivering the Sustainable Hepburn strategy and action plans, including a Steering Committee, Project Control Group, internal technical working groups, and the Community Advisory Committee.
• Offered the Solar Savers program, which supports pensioner households to install quality, affordable solar systems with no upfront costs. In June 2023 we reached the milestone of 100 Solar Savers households in Hepburn Shire. At the end of 2023 this number is now 102.
• Developed a Circular Economy Toolkit for businesses and hosted the first of a series of Circular Economy Business Breakfast workshops in Creswick.
• Led Climate Adaptation Workshops for the Grampians region in Creswick and Ararat.
• Offered workshops and training programs as part of the Healthy Landscapes (Regenerative Agriculture) program in partnership with Macedon Ranges Shire Council and City of Greater Bendigo.
• Commenced the Community Carbon Pilot, which aims to sequester carbon through tree planting and provide home-grown carbon offsets for use in our net-zero efforts in future.
• Finalised a neighbourhood battery initiative project called Community Sparks with the Central Victorian Greenhouse Alliance and Hepburn Energy and commenced a new project to develop a business case for a battery installation in the Shire.
• Installed solar and battery power back-up systems at two sites in Trentham and Daylesford, critical for our emergency management team activities in the event of climate impacts such as storms, floods and fire.
• Continued the collection of food and garden organics in Clunes, with processing occurring at Creswick Transfer Station in in-vessel compost units.
• Council approved a weekly food and garden organics collection for townships to commence in early 2024 as well as drop off sites at each transfer station.
• Continued to work closely with Djaara on caring for country and climate action.
• Partnered with Hepburn Energy and Chargefox to install electric charging stations in Creswick, and Hepburn Springs, with more to come at Clunes and Trentham.
• Commenced staff facilitation training for climate adaptation prepper tool, The Adaptation Game.
• Established a Sustainable Hepburn e-newsletter to inform the community of our work in this space.
• Completed biodiversity assessments of five major townships to inform township structure planning and general biodiversity management.
• Conducted several presentations to community and agency groups around the Bright-eyed Brown Butterfly as a flagship species for community-led land management, weed control and climate adaptation in the Shire.
• Commenced planning the development of a Roadside Conservation Plan for the Shire.
• Improved our Transfer Station Resource Recovery Shops (a.k.a tip shops) and as a result recovered 550 e-waste items for test and tag to allow resale.
• Supported the roll-out of the Victorian Government’s container deposit scheme, which started on 1 November 2023. There are now three sites across Hepburn Shire. Council is servicing the Creswick Hub site, which in just one week over 110 people visited depositing almost 10,000 containers.

This work will continue to strengthen in coming years as we continue to implement a range of Sustainable Hepburn actions to improve sustainability and regenerative outcomes in partnership with our local community and stakeholders.