It comes nine months after the Castlemaine-based shire declared a climate emergency in response to a predicted surge in extreme weather events.

Council officers have described the new roadmap as a major pillar in the emergency response that could, if endorsed by elected officials, sit alongside community focused strategies.

The roadmap would tie council to cuts of thousands of tonnes of carbon dioxide from its operations.

Mount Alexander staff believes it can make its biggest cuts in the buildings it manages, which currently produce 515 tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent every year.

All already have solar panels but the council would like to see if it can add more and to transition off of gas and electricity.

The council would also switch all streetlights on major roads over to energy efficient versions, through a collaborative program with 18 other councils in central and northern Victoria.

More news:

Even so, Mount Alexander Shire officers believe they will have to rely on a separate plan to reduce lighting emissions to zero by 2022.

That plan would see the council and 47 others band together to bulk buy green electricity for between seven to 10 years.

The energy purchase could begin in December 2021 but council officers warned there was a small possibility of the contract not going ahead.

If that happens, the shire would need to maximise its reliance on solar power and buy its own renewable energy year-by-year.

The council's latest draft plan would not directly address the greenhouse gasses from rubbish the public throws away between now and 2025.

The council would still need to offset 1615 tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent from 2025 onward, its officers estimate.

More than half of that will come from a disused landfill (read more on that below) and nearly a quarter from a council depot.

About 15 per cent per cent would come from the vehicles council staff drive even if a plan to start buying electronic vehicles starts soon, the council believes. Another three per cent would come from gas fittings in buildings.

The council would be able to offset some of that shortfall through work with local groups to plant trees, which naturally suck carbon dioxide out of the air.

They could also work with farmers on strategies that would capture carbon dioxide in soil.

The council would also look for non-local groups it could use to find carbon dioxide savings.

Castlemaine's landfill belched out 87 per cent of the shire's carbon dioxide in 2018 but it reached capacity this year.

The council now drives waste to other landfills outside the shire's boundaries, so the plan would be to reduce the amount taken in the first place.

Mount Alexander Shire officers say state and federal governments are working on plans to push down the amount of waste going to landfill by as much as 80 per cent.

Those plans will not be developed until next financial year but the council's draft strategy flags a range of interim projects that would encourage "community-wide waste reduction" like education campaigns and upgrading the Castlemaine Resource Centre.

The council would capture and burn methane escaping from its disused Castlemaine landfill by 2022/23.

That process would turn the methane into carbon dioxide, a less potent greenhouse gas that would also happen to be easier to estimate when the council offset its emissions each year.