Surprised and humbled – that’s how Parkes’ mayor Ken Keith OAM was feeling after he was named an ambassador for his work on the climate change front line.
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Cr Keith took home the Cities Power Partnership Ambassador Award on Thursday in recognition of his fierce commitment to the public climate debate.
The inaugural awards, held in Kiama as part of the Climate Council’s Cities Power Partnership National Summit, recognised the unsung work of climate heroes in local governments across the country, who are quietly transforming Australia’s energy landscape.
“[I was] surprised and rather humbled because there’s so many people that were in the room that have been great promoters of renewable energy and I felt a bit embarrassed that I was singled out as an ambassador,” he said.
“But it was a wonderful recognition and a great privilege to showcase what Parkes has been doing in the renewable energy space and how we’ve been promoting that in our community.”
Parkes has been involved in a range of renewable energy projects, ranging from a household solar buying scheme to using solar on public buildings, including on the Parkes Library and in part to heat the Parkes Pool.
“I think back five or six years ago we probably had the highest uptake of solar energy on rooftops in Australia per population,” Cr Keith said.
A solar farm has also been built at Parkes, with another two solar farms being proposed, and Parkes Shire Council has installed solar energy at its new $100 million water and sewerage treatment plants to help fuel the cost of pumping water.
“Because we have to pump water 30 kilometres, the cost of our electricity is a $1 million-plus,” Cr Keith said.
“We put renewable energy on both the sites for the water treatment plant and the sewage treatment plant to help drive down the cost of energy for those treatment plants but also therefore reduced the cost to our ratepayers.
“We have all those range of different areas where the community sees council being involved in that renewable energy space and sees savings for them and they think it’s a good investment.
“We’ll get a payback period of about 10 years then we’ll start to be in front and make savings for them.”
Cr Keith said people living in the bush in particular were seeing and understood the effects of climate change.
“In a rural environment we see the effects of climate change happening on a day-to-day basis,” he said.
“We had two one-in-100-year flood events within three weeks in Parkes last November-December and now we’ve had a drought in a non el nino year.
“I think we want to see some leadership from higher levels of government that actually tackle climate change, we’ve got to look after the future of this country.
“It’s important to get the message out to the community.”
Cr Keith is proud the Parkes Shire became an early adopter of solar.
“Parkes is a founding member of the Cities Power Partnership, which plays an important part in my ongoing commitment to championing renewable energy,” he said.
“I’m even more pleased to be able to share our learnings and experience on council and community solar projects with Centroc, a collaborative collective of Central NSW Councils, to encourage these councils to embrace ambitious renewables targets.”
Director of the Cities Power Partnership – Australia’s largest local government climate alliance – Alix Pearce said the range of climate solutions coming out of Australia’s councils was staggering.
“The local climate solutions on display at these awards are tangible proof that Australian communities are rising up to meet the challenges of climate change,” she said.
“From supporting local schools to save thousands on their power bills through solar energy through to developing Australia’s largest floating solar farm, Cities Power Partnership councils are leading the way with practical local climate solutions.”
The Cities Power Partnership Awards celebrated outstanding work from local governments in the fields of renewable energy, energy efficiency, sustainable transport and community advocacy, as well as individual climate champion awards.
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