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Our Carbon Management Strategy and

The Local Authority Carbon Management Strategy & Implementation Plan (SIP)

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In 2007, Hertfordshire County Council enrolled on the Carbon Trust’s Local Authority Carbon Management Programme. The primary aim of the programme was to develop and implement a Strategy and Implementation Plan for the council detailing measures for the reduction of carbon dioxide emissions across the organisation.

Signing up to the programme provided the council with the opportunity to focus its attention towards emissions reduction and carbon management in a focused and structured way. It has also assisted us in preparing for incoming regulations and legislation, acting as a trigger to focus attention and bring together all of the work being undertaken across the council in order to work towards greater energy efficiency and CO₂ savings.

In March 2008 the council published its approved Carbon Management Strategy. The Strategy’s vision is ‘to reduce Hertfordshire County Council’s contribution to climate change by reducing emissions of CO₂ from its properties and operations so as to lead our partners and wider community by example, and contribute to the County’s response to tackling climate change’.

The Strategy sets the County Council a challenging target to make a 25 percent reduction in its CO₂ emissions arising from its property, schools, business mileage and street lighting by 2012/13. The 25 percent reduction will be compared to the council’s CO₂ emissions in 2005/06 – otherwise known as the ‘baseline’.

CO₂ emissions from the Authority’s activities in 2005/06 amounted to 114,813 tonnes. This baseline was calculated from:

• Energy (electricity, gas, oil) use in our property and schools
  
• Electricity use for street lighting and other street furniture
  
• Fuel use for transport

We have calculated that by adopting a carbon management approach with a 25 percent reduction target, we can potentially save over 35,000 tonnes of CO₂ by 2012/13 with associated financial savings in energy expenditure of around £6.76 million. To put this into perspective, if we do not adopt this target and carry on as normal, we could expect that our energy and fuel consumption would increase, resulting in an estimated CO₂ emissions increase of 6,000 tonnes by 2013 – and at a cost of an extra £5.9 million.

The Carbon Management Strategy outlines an implementation plan for the Authority which consists of a proposed range of actions and projects to be implemented over the 7 years between 2005/06 and 2012/13, which will directly facilitate CO₂ emissions reduction. The identified actions focus on four main areas: property, schools, street lighting and mileage. They include both CO₂ mitigation projects (those that will immediately reduce CO₂ emissions as a result of investment) and embedding projects (those that will require additional organisational and behavioural change.

Further information

More information on the Carbon Trust’s Local Authority Carbon Management Programme can be found at www.thecarbontrust.co.uk/carbon/PublicSector/la/

To view a specific section of Hertfordshire County Council's Local Authority Carbon Managment Programme Strategy Implementation Plan (SIP) click on the section below. Alternatively, view the Plan in its entirety by clicking on the pdf logo at the end.