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The Carbon Trust’s Local Authorities Carbon Management programme is designed specifically for local government, providing councils with support and guidance to cut their carbon emissions and reduce energy costs. Today’s launch marks the start of phase four of the programme, bringing the total number of local authorities working with the Carbon Trust to 98 – that is, 20 per cent of all UK authorities. To date, 63 authorities have identified savings of £20.5 million and 300,000 tonnes of carbon during the first three phases of the programme, across all sites involved.
Richard Rugg, Programme Manager at the Carbon Trust, said,
“Cutting carbon emissions as part of the fight against climate change should be a key priority for local authorities – it’s all about leading by example. Our Local Authorities Carbon Management programme is designed to equip councils with the tools they need to save money on energy and put it to good use in other areas, whilst making a positive contribution to the environment by lowering their carbon emissions. We’re proud to be working with one fifth of the UK’s local authorities and encourage others to get onboard and find out how much they could save.”
The 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.
One organisation that has benefited from the pilot phase of the Carbon Trust's Local Authorities Carbon Management programme is Suffolk County Council. With an annual energy bill of more than £12 million and annual emissions of more than 54,000 tonnes of carbon, the plan has identified how to reduce the county council's carbon emissions by 7.5 per cent and save £2 million in energy costs over 5 years (based on 2002/03 levels). The energy-saving recommendations that the council is working towards include an Energy and Carbon Efficiency Loan Fund, business travel mileage reduction and a woodchip boiler initiative. During this financial year, the authority will be implementing a number of initiatives, including an investment of £100,000 in the Energy and Carbon Efficiency Loan Fund, and four woodchip boilers in schools. It is estimated that this will result in approximately 500 tonnes of CO2 savings in its first year.
Esther Keen, Regeneration and Environment Policy Manager, Suffolk County Council, commented:
"We are taking a strong community leadership role on climate change which prompted us to take a closer look at our energy usage and carbon impact. The Carbon Trust's Local Authorities Carbon Management programme offered us the right, user-friendly combination of expertise and support to start reducing our energy use whilst limiting our impact on the environment."
Phase four of the Local Authorities Carbon Management programme will run until 31 March 2007. Any authority that would like to be considered for phase five of the programme should contact the Carbon Trust by emailing alex.mitchel@thecarbontrust.co.uk. The current toolkit is available from the Local Authorities section of the website.
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