Cumbria County Council has joined the Carbon Trust's Carbon Management Programme, with the aim of radically reducing the the authority’s carbon emissions to help combat climate change.
The county council has joined Carlisle City Council, South Lakeland District Council and the Lake District National Park in a Cumbria consortium, which it is hoped other local authorities will join in the future.
The Carbon Trust is an independent body set up by the government to move the UK towards a low carbon economy by working with organisations to reduce carbon emissions and develop low carbon technologies.
The Carbon Trust's Local Authorities Carbon Management programme is designed to deliver improved energy management to reduce emissions under the direct control of the local authority - such as buildings, vehicles, street-lighting and landfill sites.
Now that it has joined the programme, the county council will form a special, cross-departmental group to work with consultants from the Carbon Trust.
The trust's consultants will guide the council through a five-step process that involves:
- building an inventory and baseline of the council’s current total carbon emissions
- assessing the future costs to the authority arising from energy consumption and carbon taxes and from that making the case for investment and emissions reduction
- identifying opportunities for emissions reduction and
- producing action plan to manage the council’s carbon emissions.
At the end of this process, which will take around 10 months, a draft implementation plan will be produced identifying a number of actions that need to be given priority. The plan will clearly state the carbon saving potential of each action and the cost of implementation. This can then be fed into the council’s budget planning for 2009/10.
Ian Stewart, is the county council's cabinet member for Environmental Wellbeing. He said:
"This is very good news for Cumbria.
"Climate change is central to government policy and local authorities are increasingly being required to help achieve national climate emission targets.
"Joining this programme will enable us to mitigate climate change in a cost effective, and affordable, way and be able to demonstrate that Cumbria's councils are fit for purpose."
Cumbria has joined in the sixth round of entries to the Carbon Trust’s Local Authority Carbon Management Programme. One hundred and forty three councils have already been through the programme, saving around £66,160,119 and 767,448 tonnes of carbon between them.
ENDS
Further information from Alison Lister, Media Officer, on 01228 606335
Notes
The Carbon Trust was set up by Government in 2001 as an independent company. Our mission is to accelerate the move to a low carbon economy by working with organisations to reduce carbon emissions and develop commercial low carbon technologies.
The Carbon Trusts’s Local Authorities Carbon Management programme is designed to deliver improved energy management to reduce emissions under the direct control of the local authority such as buildings, vehicle fleets, street-lighting and landfill sites. It also provides practical support to organisations by helping them identify carbon saving opportunities, providing tools to analyse energy consumption and delivering workshop support for staff and senior managers to enable them to ‘embed’ carbon management into the day to day business of the council. The programme is supported by a bespoke toolkit –a web-based manual that gives detailed guidance on the programme’s process, technical advice and examples of best practice.
Consultants hired by the Carbon Trust,at no cost to participating councils, guide the council through a five step process that involves building an inventory and baseline of the council’s total carbon emissions; assessing the future costs to the authority arising from energy consumption and carbon taxes and thereby making the case for investment and emissions reduction; identifying opportunities for emissions reduction and the comparative investment costs and benefits arising from each course of action; producing a strategy and action plan to manage carbon emissions for approval by the council followed by implementation.
For more information go to http://www.carbontrust.co.uk/ (external link)