Plant and Fleet

Council has a lot of roads, bridges, fields and open space to maintain. This requires a range of gardening equipment, cleaning equipment, mowers, utility vehicles and heavy vehicles which all contribute to Council’s greenhouse gas emissions.

In the year 2023/24 Council’s plant and fleet accounted for 49% of Council’s tracked emissions. Council is taking steps to reduce this, including looking at opportunities to transition parts of its plant and fleet to electric.

Starting with small plant and equipment, such as chainsaws and brush cutters, Council has begun to transition to electric models. Whenever a piece of small plant or equipment reaches the end of its life and a new one needs to be purchased, Council conducts a side-by-side analysis and favours the electric model where it is fit for purpose and represents value for money.

Council is also taking proactive steps with larger plant and fleet. In 2024 Council replaced one of its diesel ride-on mowers with an electric mower as part of a transition trial. This will save approximately 15 tonnes of CO2-e per year. If the trial proves successful Council will look to transition more mowers in the future.

In 2025 Council installed electric vehicle charging stations at the Council Administration Centre and replaced two of its petrol fleet vehicles with electric vehicles. The electric vehicles are run on 100% renewable electricity, produce no tailpipe emissions and are also more economical to run. The purchase of these vehicles and installation of charging infrastructure was made possible by funding from the NSW Government’s Electric Vehicle Fleets Incentive Kick-start Funding Program.