Meet the winners of the 2024 SA Climate Leaders Awards

The Climate Leaders Awards are run by the Premier’s Climate Change Council to shine a light on the actions being taken in South Australia to address climate change.

Overall winner

The City of Mitcham was declared the overall winner of the 2024 awards, also taking home the award for Government, with four other category winners and many more finalists recognised.

The City of Mitcham’s Community Renewable Energy Program provides solar panels and home batteries to households and businesses across the Mitcham district with no up-front costs.

More than 900 systems have been installed as part of the program, which first started in 2021.

The program also includes the option for residents to participate in a virtual power plant, which is a network of connected solar batteries coordinated to work together, just like a power plant.

As part of being the overall winner of the 2024 SA Climate Leaders Awards, the City of Mitcham was awarded a $10,000 prize, which it plans to use on the development of a video with ABC’s Craig Ruecassel (Fight for Planet A and War on Waste) to help share the council’s successful program with a wider audience.

Category winners

Other winners recognised included Electrolux, which received the Business and Industry (Large Enterprise) award for its new electric furnace, located in the business’s Dudley Park factory. The furnace reduces energy consumption by 70 per cent compared to its old gas-powered furnace.

Sparc Hydrogen took out the Business and Industry (Small to Medium Enterprise) category award for the development of a planned pilot power plant using green hydrogen production technology. The plant is designed to use no electricity or produce any carbon emissions, and its location near Adelaide will enable continuous testing and optimisation, ensuring the technology is ready for large-scale deployment.

The recipient of the Community award was Biodiversity McLaren Vale, a collaboration between local community, industry and government to rehabilitate the native landscapes and waterways and increase indigenous biodiversity within the region, helping to reduce carbon emissions and improve climate resilience.

The University of Adelaide’s Waite Arboretum was awarded the Research and Education category for a study that has combined data from 20 councils to build a large single-city tree database, which can help identify vulnerabilities in the urban forest and find opportunities to increase resilience of green spaces.