Local Authorities and Climate Change


Many local authorities in the UK have committed themselves to timetabled action on climate change. According to Hilary Lamb [1], in November 2018 Bristol City Council became the first principal UK authority to declare a climate emergency in the UK, pledging to aim for net zero carbon emissions by 2030. Other cities with similar targets include London, Manchester, Lancaster, Leicester, Nottingham, Oxford, Durham, Sheffield, Cambridge, Plymouth, York, Sunderland and Newcastle. The city authorities have been joined by many town, parish and district councils in pledging to sharply reduce their carbon emissions on similar time scales. More recently the UK parliament passed a motion making it the first in the world to declare an “environment and climate emergency” [2], and this has now passed into law as an amendment to the 2008 Climate Change Act. In the context of these commitments, the focus of this post will be on the scope available to local authorities to take action.

A report published by the Committee on Climate Change in 2012 is regarded as still relevant [3]. It claimed that “Local authorities have significant scope to influence emissions in buildings, surface transport, and waste” which at the time of writing together accounted “for 40% of UK greenhouse gas emissions.” The report saw significant opportunities to reduce emissions in these sectors, the most important being efficiency improvement in residential buildings, but also in “non-residential buildings, sustainable transport and waste management”. A further role for local authorities lay “in supporting power sector decarbonisation through granting planning approval for onshore wind projects … and through supporting investment in electric vehicle charging infrastructure, which will result in longer term emissions benefits.”

A recent view of possible action at county council level is provided by a report from the University of Exeter to Devon County Council (DCC) [4]. It states that local authorities “can drive and influence emissions reductions in their wider areas through the services they deliver, their role as community leaders and major employers, and their regulatory and strategic functions” and, like the CCC report [3], identifies buildings, transport, waste sectors and renewable energy as areas of particular significance. Some of the recommended measures in these four areas are given below. Quantitative data has been omitted, and the intention is to indicate where action by a County Council is seen as possible, and overtly or by implication, where action is beyond its means.

Building

In existing dwellings DCC can assist with delivering the levels of insulation and boiler replacement required. It can use its role as a trusted, impartial, and local organisation to provide information to residents on energy efficiency schemes and behaviour measures, and by raising awareness of opportunities. It should encourage an increase in the number of heat pumps, the delivery of low carbon district heating schemes and anaerobic digestion with injection of biomethane into the gas network.

Transport

DCC can encourage the uptake of electric vehicles by supporting the installation of charging facilities in workplaces, retail sites and transport hubs, by providing priority/free/low cost parking spaces and dedicated lanes for EVs where possible, and by increasing the uptake of EVs within its own business fleet.
It can promote sustainable travel choices to residents and businesses by working to improve and increase the use of bus services in the county, and by encouraging strategies that reduce unnecessary freight journeys, shorten distances covered, and minimise empty running.

Waste

Emissions arise mainly due to the production of methane from landfill sites, and the flaring of methane from landfill sites in Devon should be promoted where possible. Other opportunities to reduce emissions include
further recycling and composting, anaerobic digestion with renewable heat and power capabilities, and ensuring there is sufficient capacity to sustainably dispose of waste generated from proposed new developments.

Renewable energy generation

“Planning applications are handled by the district authorities and so there is limited scope for DCC to support renewable energy here, but there is scope to assist with strategic-scale resource identification and collaboration on deployment issues, such as grid availability.”  
Future impact

“Finally, even if GHG emissions are reduced to zero tomorrow, the climate system will continue to change for another 40 years; the climate change we are experiencing now is a result of emissions in the 1970s. Therefore there is a need to ensure communities are able to adapt to the inevitable projected change.”



[3] How local authorities can reduce emissions and manage climate risk
Committee on Climate Change, May 2012

[4] A Review of Devon County Council’s Climate Change Strategy
University of Exeter Centre for Energy and the Environment
February 2018




Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Carbon Capture, Utilization and Storage

    Introduction The need to limit the harmful effects of climate change is a powerful motive for preventing carbon dioxide emissions from entering the atmosphere, and for removing CO2 that is already there, but there can be subsidiary aims associated with carbon capture, and there are many methods of accomplishing it. According to a definition published in 2014, “Carbon Capture, Utilization, and Storage (CCUS) encompasses methods and technologies to remove CO2 from … flue gas and from the atmosphere, followed by recycling the CO2 for utilization and determining safe and permanent storage options” (RCN-CCUS, 2014a). A definition of carbon capture and storage (CCS) used by Torvanger (2020) “refers to a group of technologies that reduce emissions of carbon dioxide from coal-fired or gas-fired power stations, or from process industries." The term sequestration is also used for the removal of CO2 from the atmosphere or from combustion gases, and permanent prevention of its...
Read more

Climate fiction and climate action

The interactions between climate fiction and environmental activism are the subject of a paper by Alacovska and Holt (2023). They describe environmental activism as “grassroots, decentralised social movements” which attempt to address issues of “inequality and systemic injustice arising from anthropogenic climate change, environmental degradation and ecological collapse” by means of non-hierarchical collective organising. The main object of their paper is to propose methods for future research, but here we will only draw on their introduction to the subject and its background. They believe that the popular genre of climate fiction influences climate activism , with the potential to stimulate the imagination and to energise the “quest for the attainment of better climate alternatives”. This stands in contrast with much writing on climate change, which is concerned with data and “mathematical prediction models for forecasting and comprehending the gravity of global environmental challeng...
Read more

Solar installations in the UK.

It is no doubt safest to assume that any correlation between an increase in solar generation in the UK and declining consumption of electrical energy from the grid is no more than that; nevertheless, a correlation is suggestive, and it could be instructive to pursue it further. To do this we will need to know more about solar installations in the UK. Ofgem, the Office of Gas and Electricity Markets for the UK, publishes data on the total FiT PV installation capacity for each year. https://www.ofgem.gov.uk/data-portal/total-installed-capacity-kw-installation-type Capacity in kW, as of 30 September 2017 is given as follows (here rounded to the nearest thousand). Community                                       287,000 Domestic              ...
Read more