Council shares expertise at climate change webinar

Lancaster City Council’s expertise in tackling the climate emergency has been showcased as an example of best practice that the wider public sector could adopt.

The city council was recently commended in the ‘leadership in responding to the climate emergency’ category at the 2021 MJ Awards for the way it has approached reducing its carbon emissions.

This has seen the council create a CO2 dashboard to track its emissions and identify areas where positive action can be taken, information that was key in the recent award of funding for a major decarbonisation project at Salt Ayre Leisure Centre.

On the back of the success of its CO2 reduction programme so far and commendation by The MJ, the council was asked to present its approach at a webinar organised by The MJ and Local Partnerships.

Councillor Kevin Frea, deputy leader and cabinet member with responsibility for climate action, said: “The council’s declaration of a climate emergency is a commitment to reduce carbon emissions to net zero by 2030, but before we could develop our strategy, we needed to know the main sources of our emissions.

“This allowed us to identify the areas we needed to tackle first and effectively target our resources where they would have most effect.

“The CO2 dashboard has been instrumental in our approach and monitors emissions in every area of the council’s activities. This was key in identifying Salt Ayre as the biggest emitter of all the council’s properties and prioritise its decarbonisation through the installation of air source heat pumps and a solar farm on the adjacent landfill site.

“I’m very pleased that our approach has been recognised nationally and that we were asked to share this expertise with the wider public sector.”

Watch the webinar here: https://vimeo.com/622500256 

Last updated: 05 October 2021