The Queensland Government is rolling out a new strategy to slash emissions across its 11,000-strong fleet by 10% by 2030.
The new QFleet Emissions Reduction Strategy aims to reduce emissions across the fleet to their lowest levels yet while still enabling unprecedented growth.
While the prior Labor-led government’s policy mandated 100% of “eligible” passenger vehicles transition to electric by 2026, the current government says that only covered around 3,600 government vehicles.
Under the new policy, QFleet’s vehicles can be a mix of electric, hybrid, and other low-emission options for the government and agency fleets used by frontline service workers such as nurses, child safety and housing officers, QBuild tradies, and youth justice workers.
Minister for Public Works Sam O’Connor says the strategy aims to remove 3.33 kilotonnes of emissions from QFleet by 2030.
“This represents around 63% reduction in emissions from what QFleet’s emissions were in 2005,” O’Connor says.
“We’re not here to tick boxes – we’re here to focus on outcomes. We’ve laid out a genuine pathway to reduce tailpipe emissions and better support the hardworking public servants who rely on QFleet to get them to where they need to be.”
The strategy will allow agencies enough time to install charging infrastructure while still meeting the reduction target.
An updated QFleet strategy is a smaller piece of the country’s wider net zero plan.
Following the Paris Agreement’s global goal to hold the ongoing increase of average temperatures, Australia aims to meet a legislated output target of 82% renewable energy by 2035.
The resources sector is seeing the effects of this initiative with a growing global demand for electric vehicles. Electric vehicles batteries rely on lithium, nickel, cobalt, manganese, and graphite to operate.
The graphite market is particularly under pressure, expected to jump from US$8.32 billion in 2025 to US$13.35 billion ($20.53 billion) by 2032, as reported by Mining.com.au. This represents a compound annual growth rate of 6.9%.
Write to Maddison Elliott at Mining.com.au
Images: Queensland Government
