Melbourne's Green Ambitions: The City Racing Toward Net Zero

Melbourne's sustainability ambitions, expressed through the City of Melbourne's Zero Carbon strategy and the state government's renewable energy commitments that have driven Victoria to the world's leading position in the per capita installation of rooftop solar and the establishment of the offshore wind industry that the Victorian coastline's wind resources are the target for, reflect the alignment between the community values of the Melbourne electorate and the policy commitments of the state and the local governments whose constituencies support the renewable energy transition and the net zero carbon goal that the climate science demands and that the Melbourne community has embraced as the imperative that the next decade of the energy and the transport policy must deliver. The Melbourne CBD's renewable energy commitments, the corporate and the government building operators whose energy procurement choices and the on-site solar and the green power purchases reduce the carbon footprint of the commercial buildings that the Melbourne skyline represents, create the large-scale renewable energy demand that sustains the investment in the renewable energy generation that the Victorian electricity market is directing to the offshore wind and the large-scale solar that the state's Renewable Energy Zone planning supports.

The Melbourne cycling infrastructure, the expanding network of the protected bike lanes and the off-road paths that the City of Melbourne and the metropolitan councils have invested in to create the safe cycling environment that sustains the modal shift from the car to the bicycle for the short trips within the city that the cycling distance and the cycling safety create as the viable alternative to the car for the inner Melbourne commuter who is willing to cycle but who needs the protected lane that separates the cyclist from the motor vehicle traffic that the unprotected lane fails to provide for the risk-averse cyclist who will not use the road without the physical separation. The bike share program and the bike hire infrastructure that the Citi Cycle and the competing bike share operators have deployed in the Melbourne CBD and the inner suburbs create the accessible cycling option for the visitor and the occasional cyclist who does not own a bicycle but who wants the cycling alternative for the short CBD trip that the city's flat terrain and the cool climate sustain as the comfortable cycling environment for most of the year.

The Melbourne urban forest strategy, the City of Melbourne's commitment to doubling the urban tree canopy from the current coverage to the target that the heat island mitigation, the biodiversity corridor, and the amenity value of the tree canopy create as the sustainability rationale for the investment in the street tree planting and the park expansion that the urban forest strategy coordinates across the city's streets and the parks, reflects the growing recognition that the urban tree canopy is the most cost-effective and the most immediately deployable urban cooling intervention that the city can deploy in response to the urban heat island effect that the Melbourne CBD's hard surfaces and the heat-absorbing building materials create in the extreme heat events that Melbourne experiences more frequently as the climate warming advances. The individual tree tracking database that the City of Melbourne uses to monitor each of the city's 70,000 trees, and the email-your-tree program that the community engagement initiative sustains, creates the citizen attachment to the urban tree that the municipal tree policy sustains as the public engagement tool that Melbourne has used as the model that other cities have adopted.

The Port Phillip Bay coastal management, the response to the sea level rise, the beach erosion, and the water quality challenges that the bay's enclosed marine environment and the 2-million-person metropolitan population create for the coastal management that the state government coordinates through the Port Phillip Bay Coastal Management Program, addresses the environmental pressures that the recreational use, the stormwater pollution, and the sea level rise create for the bay's ecology and the coastal infrastructure that the bayside suburbs' property values and the recreational amenity depend on the maintained shoreline and the sustained water quality to sustain. The bay's dolphin population, the bottlenose dolphin community that the bay sustains in the urban marine environment, provides the biodiversity indicator that the bay's ecological health supports and the community connection to the marine wildlife that the dolphin watching from the Mornington Peninsula and the Williamstown foreshore creates as the wildlife encounter that the million-city's bay delivers for the nature lover in the urban waterfront environment.

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