Byron Council is one of the Shire’s biggest greenhouse emitters, additionally with 45 per cent of its millions invested in fossil fuel investing institutions.
At the 27/03/25 meeting Byron Shire councillors formally abandoned Council’s previous commitment to be net zero by 2025. Instead, they adopted an ‘aspirational’ net zero greenhouse gas pathway for reductions sometime into the future.
They adopted the incoherent staff report, that double-dipped on counting Council’s emission reductions, and which incorrectly claimed no commercial solutions for wastewater and landfill emissions. They adopted the report’s ‘new pathways’ next steps – ‘first an internal review, then a consultant, then look at the consultant’s report, then get modelling, then look at modelling to inform proposed projects, then have proposed projects workshops, then assess feedback on the workshops, then develop strategy from the workshops, then develop a plan based on the workshops strategy, then get community consultation on the strategy, and then consider community feedback on the strategy’, upon which Council will then consider whether to do anything.
Greens Cr Lowe didn’t attend, the Greens Mayor Sarah Ndiaye stepped out, Cr Dods chaired, and all remaining councillors voted for this. Unfortunately, Byron Bay, and Council’s proposed gas-fired electricity plant, may be under the ocean by then.
For four decades The Echo has printed the stories some people loved, some people hated, and some pretended not to read. If you want us to keep telling the truth, the real truth, not the sugar-coated version. We’ll need your support to keep the presses rolling. 
