100+ Australian Councils Now have Access to Google’s Environmental Insights Explorer
Post authored by Alexi Lynch, Business Manager, Ironbark Sustainability
As Australian councils and communities would know from our webinar last year on all things Snapshot, Ironbark and Beyond Zero Emissions have been working with Google to help Australian councils and communities access more accurate, affordable community emissions data.
Last year the big news was the incorporation of Google’s transport data into Snapshot. The Snapshot team worked with Google for over a year to develop the first community emissions profiles in Australia to incorporate granular transport emissions insights — from real traffic activity data.
One In All In
While last year was big, we also pointed out that this was just the beginning! We’re working with Australian councils to build a broader collaboration through Snapshot that will only deepen in the years ahead. We’re incredibly proud of Snapshot — it is still but a year or two old and there’s a lot more to come. Underpinning it all is that sourcing, analysing and understanding community emissions data needs to be a collaborative approach and available to all councils and communities.
When the team at Ironbark and Beyond Zero Emissions started talking to Google a few years ago, we didn’t just ask for data related to the councils or community groups we were working with or councils that had engaged us, but wanted to make sure we were working to support Australian councils at large. Everything we do is about collective action; it’s no longer OK to work on just sourcing data for your council, your community or region. An improvement for one council, region or state is not enough. We don’t have time and we need to move to climate action.
So we asked for Google’s estimated emissions data for all LGAs in Australia and brought a scalable solution. They happily obliged. And we put it all into Snapshot.
Google Showing Other Data Providers How To Assist
Google has been a great partner on this journey to understand the bigger picture. Australian energy data providers and gatekeepers take note — it’s important for other organizations to follow Google’s lead and start making more information available for public benefit in the fight against climate change.
A new treasure trove of climate data is now publicly available for 100+ Australian councils on Google’s Environmental Insights Explorer (EIE), which includes building emissions, transportation emissions and solar offset potential. EIE is a free online tool that harnesses Google’s comprehensive global mapping data to help cities to measure, plan and reduce overall carbon emissions and pollution. Councils can access and download data to develop on climate emergency action plans, support community engagement efforts, understand solar potential, and, most importantly, bolster the capacity of councils to target action and resources in their communities.
EIE’s release in Australia means councils now have access to a much richer landscape of tools to help source, report-on and of course reduce emissions. Again, that’s 100+ Australian councils that are now live. Jump on, scroll down to the interactive map, find your city and have a play!
It’s Still Just the Beginning
Beyond Zero Emissions and Ironbark will continue to work closely with Google to integrate data and intelligence as smoothly as possible. Integrating Google’s transport data into Snapshot and now publishing 100+ councils on EIE’s website is a great start, but we have bigger pans for the future.
In the next few months we’ll have more data and insights coming your way. The original list of councils will grow as we move to a second tranche and will soon have insights covering close to 200 councils. We’re also working behind the scenes on incorporating multi-year data. And as always, when we improve the data, knowledge and insights for one council, we’re aiming to improve broader knowledge for the entire sector.
Finally a shoutout to our funders and partners along the way. The Lord Mayors Charitable Foundation embraced our vision, seeded our endeavour, and continues to support us generously; Sustainability Victoria (SV) jumped on early to look at how to improve agriculture and emissions for regional councils; and the Department of Planning, Industry and Environment (NSW) helped ensure profiles were developed for all of NSW. More recently the Department of Environment and Science (Qld) and the Local Government Association of Northern Territory (LGANT) supported us to ensure their states and territories were at the table. And in South Australia, a group of 18 councils essentially crowd-funded the inclusion of SA councils on behalf of all 68 SA councils.
Our data and methodology, available for all to view, has been peer-reviewed and checked by Renew, SV, ICLEI Oceania and Google as compliant with international reporting standards. Over the next few months we’ll also start putting the call-out to see how you can get involved in this national collaborative effort.
