What we are doing

Greater Wellington is committed to climate action. These two action plans guide our mahi. 

The Climate Committee

We have established a new Council committee for the 2022 triennium, the Climate Committee, to put climate action front and centre of Greater Wellington’s governance and activities. The purpose of the Committee is to oversee and inform the development and review of Council’s strategies, policies, plans, programmes and initiatives from a climate change perspective. 

Our current work

We’re already taking climate action through much of our current work outlined in our 2021-31 Long Term Plan, for example:

• Flood protection
• Investing in electric buses (decarbonising public transport)
• Protecting wetlands
• Restoring the biodiversity of our regional parks to build their resilience to climate impacts such as coastal
  erosion, fire and storms
• Partnering with the city and district councils around the Region by providing technical support such as
  climate science and natural hazards expertise.

The role of the committee is to scale up this work in order to benefit responding to climate change.

Electric vehicles

In December of 2023, there were 108 electric buses operating within the public transport fleet, with aspirations to achieve a completely decarbonised bus fleet by 2030. Planning for a fully decarbonised bus fleet by 2030 is underway.

We are supporting electric vehicle use in the region. 

Greenhouse gases

In conjunction with the district councils of the region, we have just published a new regional greenhouse gas inventory for the period 2001-2022. This is key to understanding what the key sources of emissions are for the region and therefore where we need to place our efforts to transition towards a low carbon economy.

Find out more about greenhouse gas emissions.

Organisational greenhouse gas emissions

We update our organisational greenhouse gas inventory (‘carbon footprint’) annually to track our progress and manage our own emissions. We’re working on ways to accelerate our transition to a low carbon organisation by funding projects that reduce our emissions through the sale of emissions units given to us by the government. This reduces the rates impact of this work. 

Greater Wellington is committed to climate action (PDF 64 KB)

Greater Wellington Group carbon emissions -  (PDF 248 KB) sources and reduction opportunities