The City of Sydney’s challenge is to achieve 50% renewable electricity for the City by 2030. If this target is to be achieved, a better voluntary model to facilitate renewable demand and investment by residents and business is required. The City is looking to maximise the amount of solar power generation within the City of Sydney and models to invest in large-scale offsite renewables.
The objective of the CSP process in the City of Sydney was to develop valid concepts for how the city is able to catalyse more voluntary transfer to renewable energy. The City have since taken forward three ideas discussed at the CSP workshop as a range of market-ready programs and incentives.
The main outcome from the CSP workshop was the commercial partnership struck between the City of Sydney and the local electricity distributor Ausgrid. Both the City of Sydney and Ausgrid have co-invested in a community programme to incentivise uptake of solar energy in some parts of the city. The City of Sydney invested AUD 750,000 towards the AUD 2.25 million program, which is expected to reduce emissions by about 10,000 tonnes per year. The innovative program will also address other demand management initiatives that could avoid costly grid upgrades.
A range of other outcomes came from the multi-avenue approach of the CSP process. The methodology that the City used throughout the CSP involved Sydney reaching out to experts to develop and evaluate the strength of proposed climate solutions. Concepts were tested with networks and subject matter experts for their feedback and input. Another outcome is that the City has funded an internal resource working on how to make the process of community support more streamlined, in response to the C40 Deadline 2020 report.
Finally, the “Zero Carbon Future Club: model solution” is about giving communities the energy that they require along with other incentives. This solution was largely developed as a result of the human centred design ideas created in the CSP workshop.
