2023-01-08
The configuration of the Perth Metro Area contributes to its high level of greenhouse gas emissions, but it does have the potential to achieve net zero emissions
By Hon Brad Pettitt, MLC, Member for South Metropolitan
In 2022 the Net Zero Perth team showed how Perth is a city characterised by high emissions but also by its extraordinary potential to transform itself into a net zero city.
The evidence is that Perth is one of the world’s worst-performing cities for emissions and its people are the highest emitters of all Australian city residents. A major reason is decades of suburban sprawl have seen Perth become one of the longest cities in the world. For many sandgropers, this means enduring long drives to work, to the shops, and even to our children’s schools. Catching public transport, walking, or riding is often unviable. Unsurprisingly, this makes Perth a largely car-dependent place that has the highest car ownership of any Australian city. In Western Australia, per capita transport emissions increased by nearly 11 per cent between 1990 and 2020. Every day around 4.2 million private car trips are made in Perth, and two-thirds of these trips are less than five kilometres. This crisis also presents an opportunity.
Perth is also the Australian city with the biggest houses and the city with the lowest tree canopy cover. New suburbs containing big houses squeezed onto small blocks with no leftover space for trees can be up to six degrees warmer than suburbs with high tree canopy cover. We are in danger of creating suburbs a long way from anywhere, that are air-conditioning-dependent heat islands.
Perth has access to some of the best renewable energy assets in the world, plentiful sun, wind and lots of land. Perth households with solar enjoy the lowest cost of electricity in the OECD and almost a megawatt of solar is added each day to WA’s main grid, the South West electricity grid. That is an extraordinary 350 megawatts a year on rooftops and only less than a third of potential roof space has been used. There is sufficient unused roof space in Perth to meet all their energy needs several times over using rooftop panels, with storage.
In 2023 we want to take Net Zero Perth into the community to get their ideas on how we can best speed up the low-carbon transition. We want to communities ideas on questions like:
What kind of communities can we build if low-carbon design is at the heart of our thinking? What if we demote the private car and place people, public transport, and cycling at the top? How can we get our city powered entirely by wind and sun? How do we make buildings cheaper to run? How can we embed nature and greening back into our suburbs to make them cooler?
Perth might be an unsustainable city at present but it is a city with a unique opportunity to lead the net zero transition with the right, research, leadership, and imagination. It is also going to need community pushing – with the Greens WA and my office – the McGowan Government to go harder and faster on climate.
We expect a draft report for discussion – with some flash new graphics from former Senator Scott Ludlam – but we need your help to get it out into your community. If we can arrange a presentation in your area, which could be as small as your lounge room or as a big as the local town hall, please get in touch.
Only with your help can we make Net Zero Perth a reality.
Header photo: Perth and suburbs, viewed from West Perth. Credit: WA Department of Planning, Lands and Heritage