Reducing carbon emissions at the City of Darwin

: an evaluation of battery electric vehicles

Abstract

The introduction of the Australian Government’s Clean Energy Future Legislation 2011 coupled with community expectation is placing pressure on councils liable under the carbon pricing mechanism (such as the City of Darwin) to reduce its carbon footprint. One carbon mitigation option is to replace fossil-fuel powered passenger fleet vehicles with battery electric vehicles. This thesis makes a contribution to understanding the challenges associated with implementing this activity in the City of Darwin’s fleet, and does so from a triple bottom line (financial, environmental and social) perspective. A possible implementation scenario is outlined which includes a three phase program, where the initial phase includes the purchase of a Mitsubishi i-MiEV as an additional fleet vehicle. The second phase suggests procuring three electric vehicles (Nissan Leaf x two and Renault Fluence Z.E.) as a trial. The third phase is a gradual battery electric vehicle roll-out across the passenger fleet. The research reported in this thesis applies three complementary program planning tools (program logic models, the Cynefin Framework and community-based social marketing theory) to the implementation scenario. It is shown that they are methodologically complementary and in combination, could be used to increase the likelihood of success of the implementation scenario. This thesis shows replacing existing fleet passenger vehicles with battery electric vehicles will reduce City of Darwin’s carbon footprint while using program planning tools will increase the likelihood of success of vehicle replacement, both from a planning, management and staff behaviour change perspective.

Date of Award	Dec 2012
Original language	English
Supervisor	Penny Wurm (Supervisor) & Romy Greiner (Supervisor)