Issue - meetings

Report of the Corporate Director (Public Protection, Planning and Governance) on the Council’s Climate Change Strategy.

Cabinet agreed to adopt the Climate Change Strategy and agreed to maintain a ‘live’ action plan of projects to be delivered by the Council and its partners.

Report of the Corporate Director (Public Protection, Planning and Governance) on the Council’s Climate Change Strategy.

(1)       The Decision Taken

RESOLVED:

(unanimous)

Cabinet agreed to adopt the Climate Change Strategy and agreed to maintain a ‘live’ action plan of projects to be delivered by the Council and its partners.

(2)       Reasons for the Decision

The Council declared a climate change emergency in June 2019.

The Council had identified five ambitious objectives, including to reduce emissions from our own estate and operations to net zero by 2030 and to support residents, communities and businesses in reducing their emissions

The Council had created a cross-party Member Group and an Officer Group, appointed a Cabinet lead, joined the Herts Climate Change and Sustainability Partnership and earmarked £150,000 to help tackle the emergency.

The strategy and action plan have been drafted to identify actions that the Council and its partners can take over coming weeks, months and years to tackle the emergency.

They were both subject to public consultation over the winter and informed by a virtual town hall event in January.

The strategy focuses on international agreements, national strategies and local plans that seek to tackle climate change as well as identifying funding opportunities.

It also identifies the baseline position as:-

The Borough emitted 629,000 tonnes of carbon from industrial, commercial, domestic and transport activities in 2019.

The Council emitted 2,507 tonnes of carbon from its buildings, services and transport activities in 2019/2020.

The Council’s stock of woodland and street trees annually sequester 2,400 tonnes of carbon and annually remove 31 tonnes of pollution from the ground and air.

The action plan identifies existing and new actions and projects that the Council will deliver to tackle climate change; which it prioritises by identifying their carbon reduction potential, cost and level of control.

The Council has already had considerable success: we have moved to a new green electricity tariff for all Council and GLL buildings and secured £2.3M of government funding to replace gas boilers with air/ground source heat pumps and solar panels at Campus East, Campus West and Hatfield Swim Centre.

Councillor Thomson thanked Members and Officers for their hard work on the Climate Change Strategy.