By Parker McKenzie
Yarra Valley Water has joined the United Nations’ Race to Zero campaign with the target to generate 100 per cent renewable energy by 2025.
The global campaign aims to rally organisations to take immediate action to halve global emissions by 2030.
Yarra Valley Water Managing Director Pat McCafferty said the company was already powering 50 per cent of operations with renewables.
“Climate change is the defining issue of our time and we’re proud to be leading the way in reducing our greenhouse gas emissions with ambitious goals that go beyond zero,” Mr McCafferty said.
“We’ve achieved this through leading projects like our food waste to energy facility at Wollert which converts about 30,000 tonnes of food scraps into more than 7,000,000 kWh of clean energy a year.”
14 water utilities companies from Australia and New Zealand have committed to reaching net zero emissions by 2050 at the latest.
Mr McCafferty said new projects including the development of a second food waste to energy facility and a floating solar installation would help Yarra Valley Water reach the goal.
“We’ve also installed solar panels at our head office and treatment plants and we’re members of Zero Emissions Water which purchases energy in bulk from Victoria’s largest solar farm,” he said.
“We’re working on how we will accelerate our progress to hit net zero by 2025, and then using the offsets we generate to go beyond zero carbon to address legacy emissions.”
