Page 1848 - Week 06 - Wednesday, 8 June 2022
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That this Assembly:
(1) notes that:
(a) Canberrans deserve to take pride in our clean air. Clean air is a universal right;
(b) as shown by the ACT Air Quality Report, air quality in the ACT is generally excellent compared with other Australian cities and is considered clean by world standards;
(c) air quality standards should be as rigorous as possible, recognising that some pollutants such as PM2.5 have no known safe level;
(d) wood heaters generate a complex mixture of particles and gasses, such as carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, nitrogen oxides, organic compounds and organic matter. These pollutants are both damaging to human health and the environment, but of these pollutants it is PM2.5 that has the greatest health impacts;
(e) although the number of Canberra households with wood heating is relatively small, these heating sources are largely responsible for increased PM2.5 pollution during the winter months;
(f) Tuggeranong Valley is among the three valleys worst affected by pollution from wood heater smoke in Australia, due to the topography, cold weather inversions during winter, and as demonstrated by continued PM2.5 monitoring;
(g) by the ACT Government’s most recent ACT Air Quality Report, the air quality sensor in Monash recorded 37 days that exceeded safe levels of PM2.5 in 2020, 13 of which were attributable to domestic wood heater emissions between May and August;
(h) in 2019, only two such days were attributable to domestic wood heater emissions; and
(i) higher levels of PM2.5 during winter suggest that Canberrans have been staying home and using wood heaters more since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic;
(2) acknowledges the work that the ACT Government is doing, including:
(a) releasing, in November 2021, the Bushfire Smoke and Air Quality Strategy 2021-2025—a whole of government approach to prevent, prepare for, respond to, and recover from significant bushfire smoke events and better manage smoke from wood heaters;
(b) that the first Action Plan outlines the ACT Government’s commitment to review and improve the Wood Heater Replacement Strategy, to strengthen wood heater emissions standards for wood heaters, and to phase out older, polluting wood heaters that do not meet the standards;
(c) the ACT Government’s Wood Heater Replacement Strategy, which commenced in 2004 and offers financial incentives to encourage removal of wood heaters from Canberra homes; and
(d) the ACT Government’s 2021 Sustainable Household Scheme, which complements the Replacement Strategy with zero-interest loans for household emissions reductions;
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