Auckland's progress on climate change 'insufficient', big changes needed – report
A bluntly worded report has spelled out the scale and the urgency of turning around Aucklands rising carbon emissions to deliver the cuts promised by councillors. The report, by council officials, said only 100 months remain until the 2030 threshold by which Auckland has pledged to halve carbon emissions, which requires a 64 per cent cut in transport emissions . Progress had been insufficient and major hurdles, such as staff workload and a shortage of committed funding, were standing in the way of devising and achieving the big changes needed in Aucklanders lives , the report said. Auckland Council has already declared a climate emergency and set the goal of being carbon neutral by 2050. READ MORE: * Electric cars, high density housing not enough to hit Auckland emissions targets: Report * Auckland transport plan tweaked but carbon emissions barely fall * Climate change: Bigger Auckland plan won't reduce emissions by 2030 A reference group has started work on a Transport Emissions Reduction Plan (TERP) to achieve the goals. Between 2016 and 2018, Aucklands emissions rose by 2.5 per cent, and the report said the upward trend continued. Urgent and innovative change was needed, it said initial modelling used by the group showed 60 per cent of the greenhouse gas cut required had to come from shifting commuters out of cars. The scale of the challenge is enormous, but so too is the significance of the moment. To meet the target, Auckland cannot rely on incremental change, it needs transformation, the report said. If council does not invest in walking and cycling, modelling shows that the public transport system would need to carry over 10 times as many trips per year . It would likely be impossible in the timeframe available to develop that much public transport infrastructure. It noted Auckland had the fifth-highest rate of car ownership per capita in the OECD, and one of the highest rates of transport emissions per capita in the world. The report said the Governments own work on an emissions reduction plan, which sets 2035 as its interim date, left too much change until after the councils 2030 interim deadline. The projections for [electric vehicles] by 2030 are only around 8 per cent, which is still too low to have a significant impact, it said. Another risk to creating a plan and delivering it was the absence of funding to bring in external expertise, the report said, and it might need funding that was not in the councils new 10-year budget. The report said some lower-cost approaches might be needed to make an early start on local projects, such as re-allocating road space for cycling and walking. The councils normal planning methods and processes to deciding on investments would need to change for improvements to roll out more quickly, it said. A wide-ranging stakeholder group has been set up and progress on the emissions reduction plan will be reported back in March 2022, with final decisions by mid-year on.