How progress was tracked
This page summarises what public reports say about how the earlier Carbon Neutral Adelaide program measured its progress. It is a record of history, not a current report, and the figures belong to the bodies that published them.
The action plan
The joint plan for 2016 to 2021 set out 104 actions to be shared between the City of Adelaide and the state government, grouped under five pathways towards carbon neutrality. A final report on the plan was due to follow the City's June 2022 update. According to the City's June 2022 progress update, 82 actions were delivered or had become standard practice, 16 had been overtaken by other initiatives with similar aims, and 6 would not go ahead because they were no longer feasible or state priorities had changed. In other words, 98 of the 104, roughly 94 per cent, were finished, absorbed into normal work or superseded.
Measuring emissions
The City prepares an inventory of emissions for the whole city area every two years, following an international protocol for community-scale reporting. Its June 2022 update recorded a 21 per cent fall in community emissions between the 2007 and 2020 financial years (about 1.25 million tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent down to about 0.99 million). The same update reported a 52 per cent fall in the council's own operational emissions between 2019 and 2021. The City also modelled the road ahead and concluded that business as usual would not deliver carbon neutrality by 2025, because buying enough offsets to cover the gap would have been very large.
| Measure | Figure | Reported by |
|---|---|---|
| Actions in the 2016-2021 plan | 104 (98 completed, continued or superseded) | City of Adelaide, June 2022 |
| Community emissions, 2007 to 2020 | Down 21 per cent | City of Adelaide, June 2022 |
| Council operational emissions, 2019 to 2021 | Down 52 per cent | City of Adelaide, June 2022 |
| Partner organisations | More than 175 in 2019, more than 200 by 2022 | City media release 2019; progress update 2022 |
What happened next
In June 2024 the City's council endorsed its Integrated Climate Strategy 2030, which folded the Carbon Neutral Strategy 2015-2025 and several other plans into one document. The same month a local news report described a shift to a “net zero ready” approach and an end to the council's purchase of carbon offsets. The timeline lists the main milestones.
Sources: City of Adelaide, Carbon Neutral Strategy 2015-2025 progress update, June 2022; City of Adelaide Integrated Climate Strategy 2030 consultation page; InDaily, 7 June 2024.
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