This information was correct at the time of writing. For an updated view of our Sustainability targets and climate action go to Doing better for the future: Telstra's Sustainability Hub.
This comes after we announced we were close to being certified as carbon neutral last month, well ahead of our initial plan.
We’re continuing to work to reduce our overall emissions by 50% in 10 years and while we do that, we’re purchasing carbon neutral credits to counteract our environmental impact.
As one of the largest consumers of power in the country, our certification from Climate Active has been achieved by purchasing 2.3 million carbon offset credits from projects that avoid, reduce or remove greenhouse gas emissions from being released into the atmosphere. We have also saved over 13,000 MWh of energy through energy efficiency initiatives and a further more than 18,000MWh through decommissioning old equipment.
We have chosen carbon offset credits consistent with the Australian Government’s Climate Active program guidelines and further applied our own criteria to assess the social and environmental integrity of projects we chose to invest in. The credits purchased to meet our 2020 carbon neutral commitment have been from two project owners in Australia and three in India.
Our experience has been that it is extremely difficult to purchase carbon offsets from projects located in Australia. This is something that needs to be addressed because what it says is that there are not enough projects contributing to a reduction in greenhouse emissions.
When we looked through the list of projects with Climate Active, the way the Savanna Burning Project blends traditional knowledge with technology to deliver a favourable environmental outcome made this project an obvious choice for us.
The Southern Aurukun Savanna Burning Project combines traditional knowledge – how to read country and knowing when to burn – with high-tech hardware including helicopters, fireballs and leaf blowers, to ensure traditional patchwork burning is restored in the right way and greenhouse gas emissions are reduced on Wik and Kugu country.
Greenhouse gases (GHG) emitted from savanna fires makeup 3% of Australia’s total emissions. Savanna burning projects undertaken by Traditional Owners and Aboriginal rangers reduce GHG emissions by undertaking cool, lower intensity fires in the early dry season when the vegetation still contains some moisture from the wet season. This reduces the GHG emitted from high intensity, unmanaged fire in the late dry season when the country is dry.
Community responsibility cannot work in isolation and we’re committed to also improving network availability in Australia’s Indigenous communities. We’ve delivered network upgrades on the Cape York Peninsula over the past three years, improved mobile coverage throughout the Torres Strait, and enhanced fibre connectivity to the communities of Hopevale and Aurukun, so that these communities can also access the health, education and society benefits that connectivity provides.
Telstra is also currently undertaking a capacity upgrade of the network backbone infrastructure in Cape York. Once complete, this will provide a significant amount of network capacity to support future projects across the Cape.
Following on from devastating bushfires in Australia in recent years, Telstra wanted to invest in a program that would help regenerate Australia’s ecosystem and improve biodiversity in the wake of loss.
The Yarra Yarra Biodiversity Corridor is a native reforestation project located in Southwest Australia – a global biodiversity hotspot. The project is established on degraded, semi-arid agricultural land that no longer supports viable farming practices. It removes carbon from the atmosphere and recreates a healthy and functioning landscape, restored after decades of habitat loss and soil degradation.
Planting native tree and shrub species indigenous to the region provides essential habitat and connectivity for birds and animals to transition through the landscape. The project also delivers measurable environmental, social, economic and heritage benefits to the community, including local Indigenous inclusion and employment and support of over 80 local businesses. The reforestation is protected for 100 years by Carbon Right and Carbon Covenants registered on land titles.
In India, where Telstra has significant operations, we have also purchased offsets from two solar power projects with a number of separate solar farms ranging in size, and three wind farms.
One of the solar power projects, ReNew Solar Power, has 26 separate solar farms with a total installed capacity of 927MW and exports to the Indian electricity grid in five states of India.
These investments help to decarbonise the India electricity grid and therefore align closely with Telstra’s renewable energy power purchase agreements in Australia through the Murra Warra wind farm and Emerald solar farm.
