An internal investigation has uncovered a rather inconvenient truth – that Logan City isn’t as ‘carbon neutral’ as we once thought.
When a local councillor was tasked with finding the bang-for-buck of international carbon credits, which have cost ratepayers millions of dollars over the last three years, he came up empty handed.
It seems not one tree was planted, nor one item of landfill removed from our oceans.
“The money we’ve spent overseas on carbon neutrality doesn’t do anything to enhance our natural areas or improve the quality of life for people in Logan. Worse still, we couldn’t confirm how the funds were being used,” mayor Jon Raven said.
The council says it spent a total $3.1 million on national and overseas carbon credits since 2022 to keep the city officially ‘carbon neutral’.
The credits are a requirement of Logan maintaining its carbon neutral certification, which was issued by Climate Active (administered by the Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water) in 2023.
But now council says it will stop buying the credits, meaning the city will lose its certification.
The mayor argues the money can be better spent here at home.
He said the upcoming council budget would re-allocate $600,000 of the $1.5 million reserved for carbon credits to fund local green initiatives.
“While council has significantly reduced the carbon emissions we produce every year, I believe it’s more important to invest in our natural areas than to send $1.5m overseas for a certificate,” Cr Raven said.
“We will achieve some fantastic outcomes for Logan with that funding, including improving the health of our local rivers and waterways, maintaining our bushland areas and controlling weeds, purchasing land for environmental purposes and providing educational activities and grants to the community.
“The budget we’ve had over the past few years to purchase carbon credits will return to our environmental levy reserves and other carbon reduction projects, which will save ratepayers money.”
While ratepayers can expect another increase to their rates this 25 June, the mayor said the council was focused on ensuring rates were as low as possible.
This has meant slashing funding to several proposals, projects and services.
According to the mayor, these include an $8.3m proposal to increase staff, $2.6m for Scrubby and Slacks Creek Catchment recovery work and $2.5m for lighting upgrades to new technology.
The full list is even longer – ranging from cutting off-leash dog compliance checks and reducing library resources, to hits to landscaping and infrastructure maintenance.
Internally, the council has agreed to reduce how often mobile phones are upgraded, reduce IT contractor and external law firm spending, slow down its “expensive” digital transformation project, reduce professional development and catering for staff events, and more.
“When we hand down the Budget on June 25, we’ll be focused on keeping rates as low as we can and supporting initiatives that the City of Logan needs, instead of sending money offshore,” Cr Raven said.
Ten per cent of the $3.1 million was allocated to Australian carbon credit units, which council claims are less available to purchase and cost $40 to $48 per tonne, while 90 per cent was used for international credits, which cost $5 to $9 per tonne.
