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Agenda item

Carbon Action Plan

Purpose:

To present the West Oxfordshire District Council Carbon Action Plan, which is proposed to be adopted and resourced by the Council from April 2024.

 

Recommendation:

That the Committee scrutinises the Carbon Action Plan and agrees any recommendations it wishes to submit to the Council’s Executive.

 

Invited:

Councillor Andrew Prosser, Executive Member for Climate Change

Hannah Kenyon, Climate Change Manager

Minutes:

The Climate Change Manager provided a copy of the Carbon Action Plan attached to the agenda. Lily Paulson, the Climate Change Officer was introduced and thanked for all her hard work on the project.

The report explained that West Oxfordshire District Council (the Council) declared a climate and ecological emergency in 2019, making its pledge to become a carbon neutral Council by 2030. A pledge to be carbon neutral meant that the Council needed to balance the carbon dioxide emissions produced as a result of its everyday activities with the amount of carbon dioxide emissions that was removed from the atmosphere. Therefore, the first objective was to minimise the amount of carbon dioxide emissions being released because of Council activities bringing these as close to zero as possible. Any remaining ‘residual’ emissions would then need to be offset through verified means.

While the Carbon Action Plan focused on reducing emissions from Council activities, buildings and services, the Council was also committed to facilitating the reduction of wider district emissions through the delivery of its Climate Change Strategy 2021-25.

The document provided an updated version of the Climate Action Plan, covering actions to be undertaken between 2024 and 2030 to reach the carbon neutral target.

The plan only focused on the Council’s internal emissions and set out the pathway and actions required to meet the 2030 targets.

A range of actions were required to meet these targets and currently the Council was not on course to reach the 2030 targets. The actions that were required in certain areas, the co-benefits, the financial implications, importance for external funding and how monitoring and reporting would be undertaken was explained.

Various questions and points of clarification were raised with Officers providing answers and points of clarification as follows:

  • It would be difficult to achieve Carbon neutrality without funding or opportunities to secure funding.
  • Grey Fleet meant vehicles that employees own and use for business purposes (which could include petrol, diesel, electric and plug-in hybrid vehicles).
  • The waste fleet fell under “scope one” emissions within the Carbon Action Plan.
  • Leased assets were commercially let and not delivering services for the Council.
  • The Old Port House had been reviewed and was the first project; which proved important for social impact and the Asset Management Team would look at retrofitting the Council held buildings within a timeframe of the next eighteen months.
  • The cycle to work scheme was being reviewed in the Active Travel Plan and what could be done to facilitate the switch to staff not using their vehicles was being examined. Information on how many staff use this scheme would be provided in due course.
  • Leisure centres were key projects for decarbonisation and the prices were highly inflated in the market due to not many suppliers quoting which had caused viability issues. Grant funding was being looked at.
  • There had been a switch to Green energy suppliers and there was a requirement for an Energy Manager to oversee this.
  • The Climate Team were ensuring continued maintenance of all leisure facilities and not just awaiting funding. In particular, any roof issues were being looked at.
  • Hybrid meeting options and condensing the need to travel were part of the Plan’s objective and Members’ travel was important and the team were happy to look at that and discuss with the Executive.
  • Air source and ground source heat pumps could be suitable for some projects.
  • A variety of mixed habitats were acknowledged and the nature recovery work was being reviewed.
  • Electric Vehicle (EV) charge points and their infrastructure were progressing; other alternatives were being viewed with an open mind.
  • There was approval for two nature recover specialists to join the Climate Team.
  • EV trials would be considered in the fleet of vehicles.

 

There was an additional question around funding and what the costs of reaching climate neutrality would be if no external funding was obtained. Officers explained that it would be very difficult to achieve that objective without any funding streams and exact deficit figures could be provided outside of the meeting. Action Point: Officers would provide deficit figures to Members.

RESOLVED that the Committee AGREED to submit the following recommendation to the Executive on 6 March 2024:

  1. That consideration is given to how the carbon footprint of Councillors may be reduced.

 

Supporting documents:

 

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