The Dunedin City Council has signed off on its first energy plan for the city, despite councillors from all sides this week criticising the document's weaknesses.
Councillors at Monday's full council meeting voted unanimously to adopt the plan, which sought to plan for the city's future energy needs, despite criticising it for not going far enough.
The plan outlined projects already under way, such as the baseline energy study carried out earlier this year, and plans being rolled out by Delta to install the city's first electric vehicle charging station.
It also covered plans to upgrade the city's street lights using LED technology, to save energy and protect the city's night sky views, as well as the cosy homes initiative to improve the city's housing stock.
There would also be more emphasis on the need to harness the city's biomass fuel potential for energy needs, and encourage the uptake of electric vehicles in the city, as a result of the plan.
Councillors at Monday's meeting were happy to see progress, but hoped the document would continue to evolve and become more ambitious.
Cr Lee Vandervis, speaking before he was ejected from the meeting, led the criticism, despite saying he would vote for it.
He wondered why the council was not doing more with its own council-owned companies to harness the resources they controlled to help secure the city's energy future.
In City Forests, the council had a ready source of wood chips for biomass fuel, which could be used to power woodchip burners, he said.
And, in Aurora, the council had access to a lines network it should use to help generate returns to people who supplied solar energy to the grid, he said.
Instead, the council was only now talking about following in the footsteps of the University of Otago and Otago Polytechnic, which both used woodchip burners, he said.
"Surely, if we're to produce an energy policy that is to be taken seriously we should be leading by example?
"We could feed this report to a furnace and actually get something from it,'' he said.
Deputy mayor Chris Staynes said the city was "heading on a journey'' with its energy plan, but the first steps were necessarily cautious after criticism during earlier stages of the document's development.
"Yes, perhaps it's a little bit 'softly, softly' ... we can't force people to change. We have to provide some leadership.''
Cr Andrew Whiley supported the plan, despite concerns the report was "a little bit underwhelming'' and did not capture the public enthusiasm shown in its development.
But Cr Aaron Hawkins compared the energy plan to the less-than-perfect climate change deal struck by 196 countries last week.
The energy plan, like the climate change deal, was not as strong as it needed to be, and did not match the aspirations of the community, he said.
"But what it does, like Paris, is provide us with a framework that will allow us to strengthen that commitment over the years.''
He hoped the energy plan, as a living document, would become "far more transformational'' as it was updated in future.
Cr Jinty MacTavish said the energy plan addressed "one of the very base building blocks'' of the city, and she hoped for enthusiasm around the council table when attending turned to funding its initiatives next year.
Dunedin Mayor Dave Cull said the impetus to develop a plan came from the recognition energy was "fundamental'' to the city's economic development.
But, as good as the projects outlined in the new plan were, "they don't seem to me to reflect that importance'', he said.
"This is a good start, but I would hope the next iterations would be considerably more ambitious and considerably more aspirational,'' he said.
