What we are doing

Greater Wellington is committed to climate action. These two action plans guide our mahi. 

The Climate Committee

We have established a new Council committee for the 2022 triennium, the Climate Committee, to put climate action front and centre of Greater Wellington’s governance and activities. The purpose of the Committee is to oversee and inform the development and review of Council’s strategies, policies, plans, programmes and initiatives from a climate change perspective. 

Our current work

We’re already taking climate action through much of our current work outlined in our Long Term Plan, for example:

• Flood protection
• Investing in electric buses (decarbonising public transport)
• Protecting wetlands
• Restoring the biodiversity of our regional parks to build their resilience to climate impacts such as coastal
  erosion, fire and storms
• Partnering with the city and district councils around the Region by providing technical support such as
  climate science and natural hazards expertise.

The role of the committee is to scale up this work in order to benefit responding to climate change.

Electric vehicles

As of September 2025, there are 122 electric buses operating within the public transport fleet, with plans in place to achieve a completely electrified bus fleet by 2038. New battery electric trains to replace the remaining diesel lines are due in service by 2030.

We are supporting electric vehicle use in the region. 

Greenhouse gases

In conjunction with the district councils of the region, we have just published a new regional greenhouse gas inventory for the period 2001-2024. This is key to understanding what the key sources of emissions are for the region and therefore where we need to place our efforts to transition towards a low carbon economy.

Find out more about greenhouse gas emissions.

Organisational greenhouse gas emissions

We report our organisational greenhouse gas inventory or, ‘emissions footprint’ annually to manage our own emissions and track our reduction progress. The 2025 financial year report is available below with a summary illustration in the pie graph. We are actively working on ways to accelerate our transition to a low emissions organisation and achieve our climate positive 2045 target. Detail of how is in the emissions management and reduction plan, and the infographic below provides a summary of how we are tracking and projecting. 

Greater Wellington is committed to climate action (PDF 64 KB)

Greater Wellington Group carbon emissions -  (PDF 248 KB) sources and reduction opportunities

Emissions Management and Reduction Plan

Read more here

date_range Published 15 May 2024

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