Reducing emissions from our buildings and fleet
The Council has a target of reaching carbon neutrality for its own operations by 2030. This means the Council will prioritise reducing emissions as much as possible, for example by increasing the energy efficiency of our buildings and buying electric vehicles to replace diesel vehicles. Any residual (or ‘left over’) emissions will be cut using ‘offsetting’, meaning the Council will invest in reducing emissions elsewhere (but within the city) to help cut the Council’s carbon footprint to zero.
The Council publishes its emissions figures on an annual basis. These can be viewed here.
Key to tackling the climate emergency is reducing the emissions associated with the Council’s buildings and fleet that it owns and operates. Approximately 66% of the Council’s emissions are from its buildings, and 25% from fleet (based on financial year 2021-22).
Here are some of the ways the Council is reducing its emissions from its buildings and fleet:
- Buying electric vehicles to replace existing diesel vehicles in the Council’s fleet.
- Securing a 100% renewable green electricity tariff
- Reviewing opportunities for increasing quantity of solar photovoltatic (PV) panels on council buildings
- Creating a ‘Carbon Management Plan’ which will identify actions that the Council can do to help reduce emissions from buildings, to help in staying on the pathway to net zero by 2030.
In 2022 the Council began installing an air source heat pump, roof insulation, LED lighting and other improvements to increase the energy efficiency in Rowan House, the Council’s main office building. The air source heat pump will use electricity rather than gas to heat the building, which will produce significant emission savings. Find out further details about the project here.
Case study: Making the Council’s vehicles greener
The Council uses a variety of vehicles to conduct its work from small vans to large refuse trucks and more recently electric cargo (eCargo) bikes. We have committed to converting all our vehicles to be electric or using low carbon fuels by 2030. The Council worked with the Energy Saving Trust to produce an initial version of a fleet transition plan, detailing when different types of vehicles would be transitioned to electric/low carbon fuels. You can find out further details about the plan to transitioning our fleet (PDF, 236KB).
The first of the Council’s electric vehicles arrived in 2022, a picture of some of our electric vans are provided below!
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