Minimising our environmental footprint
Treasury is committed to conserving energy and minimising waste in and around our workplaces – where we work and how we work.
This year, we finalised our ClimateSmart Management Plan, which addresses all of our water, waste and energy management responsibilities and ensures we meet and exceed, wherever possible, legislative requirements. A review process aids continuous improvement in our climate smart management practices. We aim to foster an organisational culture that goes beyond compliance and achieves a 'business as usual' approach to minimising our environmental footprint.
The plan provides guidance on:
- waste management and recycling practices
- energy reduction and associated emissions
- water conservation
- vehicle and fuel efficiency
- purchasing guidelines
- ecologically sustainable building design.
Treasury is committed to contributing to the national target of a 60 per cent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2050.
Environmental sustainability on the road
We use the GVG Greenhouse Rating as the benchmark when selecting our vehicles. Under QFleet's ClimateSmart Policy, the minimum greenhouse rating for passenger vehicles is 5.5. All Treasury vehicles are compliant with a rating of 5.5 or above and this has helped reduce our carbon emissions.
At the bowser, we choose E-10 ethanol-blended fuel whenever possible.
Greenhouse gas emissions
Queensland Treasury supports the Queensland Government's Toward Q2 – Tomorrow's Queensland target to cut Queenslanders' greenhouse gas emissions by one-third by 2020. This includes implementing the Government's environmental and climate change strategies, such as ClimateQ: toward a greener Queensland.
Six gases have been identified under the Kyoto Protocol as the main greenhouse gas emissions that need to be reduced:
- carbon dioxide
- nitrous oxides
- sulphur hexafluoride.
As part of standard emission measurement practices these gases are mainly reported as carbon dioxide equivalent emissions (CO2-e).
The Queensland Government has established minimum greenhouse gas emissions reporting requirements for departments covering their main greenhouse gas emitting business activities: namely those linked to vehicle use, electricity consumption and air travel. These activities are sources of direct and indirect greenhouse gas emissions.
Comprehensive reporting of greenhouse gas emissions is sometimes limited due to the complexity of departments' operational boundaries within the public sector, especially where shared services providers are used.
While the best available data has been used, in some instances estimates are reported due to the limitation of data collection processes or systems. For example, in Government-owned office buildings with multiple government agency tenants where electricity usage cannot be solely attributed to any one agency, the electricity usage by the tenanted agencies may be proportioned based on the floor area they occupy.
Any attempted comparison of emission levels between reporting periods must first ensure that all the relevant parameters are exactly the same and have not been affected by changes such as: differences in the configuration and make-up of the department's building portfolio; changes to building functionality and/or occupancy levels; or changes to the emissions conversion factors used (which can vary each year as published in the Australian Government's National Greenhouse Accounts Factors Workbook).
- Air travel includes all flights recorded by Queensland Government Chief Procurement Office (QGCPO) during period 1 April 2009 to 31 March 2010, specifically:
- international air travel on commercial airlines
- domestic air travel on commercial airlines
- QGCPO calculates kilometres flown from data provided.
- Kilometre figure is divided by 100 and multiplied by an industry average number of litres of fuel burnt per passenger per 100 kilometres.
- A factor of 5 has been used for all air travel (sourced from International Civil Aviation Organisation).
- This method gives the average litres of fuel burnt for a flight, per passenger. This figure subsequently converted from litres into kilograms and then from kilograms into tonnes, before being multiplied by 3.157 (which represents the amount of CO2 tonnes produced by burning one tonne of aviation fuel sourced from the International Civil Aviation Organisation).
- Emission offsets figure for air travel relates to purchased national Greenhouse Friendly™ certified carbon offsets.