Dunedin Stadium is known for its live concerts, big sporting events, community festivals – and of course the covered roof, which means rain never stops play. In the background, the Stadium has been working on understanding and reducing its emissions footprint.

In 2020, Dunedin Stadium asked Opportune to guide them through the process of creating their first Greenhouse Gas Inventory, aligned with the international standard ISO14064-1.

They realised quickly that a robust footprint comes down to the ability to access good quality data about their activities: the kWh of energy at each building, the litres of petrol purchased, the number of flights taken, and more. We helped them understand the scope of their emissions, different methods available to model and measure emission sources, and where Scope 3 emissions start and stop.

Their organisation entails more than most people realise, so their footprint needed to consider tenants in their buildings, as well as buildings where they’re the tenant, their event food supplier, the events they run and those run by promoters.

The key to success was building a close working relationship with the staff, and digging in to understand in great detail how the business operates.

Dunedin Stadium then asked us to help with their next project – to set an emissions reduction target and develop an emissions reduction plan. Both been successfully adopted by the Board and implementing first year actions got underway in 2022.