By Kylie Fiddy, ALIA Chief Operating Officer
In 2021, the ALIA Board issued a Climate Change Statement committing ALIA to a target of “Carbon neutral by 2030”. The current Board revisited this commitment in late 2024, allocating resources in the 2025 budget to engage a consultant to measure baseline carbon emissions and set up a framework for measuring ongoing emissions as well as offsetting emissions with carbon credit purchases.
In early 2025 we engaged Evalue8 Sustainability to help us measure and report on our baseline carbon emissions. This involved using Evalue8 custom software to categorise our costs and where possible to use actual data such as flight kilometres travelled to more accurately capture emissions. Once all the data was captured within the software, it produced a report with a calculation of the number of tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent emissions for the calendar year 2024.
ALIA’s total emissions for 2024 was 347.59 tCO2-e which is much lower than the industry benchmark for office-based businesses of 439.41. It was even lower than the industry benchmark for the GLAM sector of 427.40. This is encouraging given 2024 was our National Conference year and our biggest emission source Accommodation included the conference venue hire. Food and catering was the third highest source of emissions. Having our headquarters in Canberra is beneficial, as all our energy consumed in the ACT is already carbon neutral.
The next step in the project was to offset our emissions to become carbon neutral. We purchased carbon credits in the following projects:
- South Gippsland Reforestation and Biodiversity project in Victoria, Australia. This project will restore a continuous habitat for regional wildlife including the Strzelecki Koala and the endangered Swift Parrot.
- Bundled Solar Power Project in Indonesia. This project involves generating clean electricity through renewable solar energy sources.
- Installation of high efficiency wood burning cookstoves in Kenya. The cleaner stoves use half the wood previously required, meaning women and children spend less time collecting, chopping or purchasing wood and are breathing in smaller volumes of particulate matter.
The purchase of carbon credits to offset our emissions means ALIA is now carbon neutral!
We won’t be resting on our laurels however. We will continue to investigate ways to reduce our emissions even further. With National 2026 looming, we’ll be investigating how we can reduce our emissions with the venue and caterers. We’ll also be looking at how we can prioritise low-carbon travel options wherever possible as well as other initiatives with suppliers in our supply chain. Looking to the future, as well as hopefully reducing our emissions further, we’ll be looking to gain Climate Active certification, an Australian Government initiative recognising organisations that have reached a state of carbon neutrality.