Hepburn Shire is Victoria’s first Z-NET community, planning for a transition to net zero energy by 2025 and net zero emissions by 2030. The main towns in Hepburn Shire are Clunes, Creswick, Daylesford, Glenlyon, Hepburn Springs and Trentham.
The Zero Net Emission Transition (Z-NET) project aims to satisfy energy needs from renewable locally available sources in a way that is competitive with the current system (including price, quality, reliability and security of supply).
Due to the community-owned Hepburn Wind farm the Shire was already well along the path to renewable electricity. Hepburn decided to extend the zero net energy goal to reach for zero net emissions. This means taking action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from agriculture, transport, waste and land use change.
Hepburn Shire’s baseline emissions in 2018 were 262,041 tonnes of carbon. The Community Transition Plan (CTP) explores how the population of 15,000 residents will meet the zero net energy target by 2025 and then zero net emissions by 2030.
The pilot aims to act as an incubator for locally appropriate best practice actions and strategies to meet a target of zero-net emissions, then to take strategies from pledge to action and implementation.
For more information, visit: https://z-net.org.au/hepburn/
