How Devon County Council is reducing its emissions
Review of climate change strategy
Why is a review needed?
Devon County Council’s (DCC’s) current climate change strategy was published in 2005, since which time there have been many significant changes to the policy context and delivery landscape. These changes include the advent of the Climate Change Act 2008 with its emission reduction targets and carbon budgets, initiation of the CRC (Carbon Reduction Commitment Energy Efficiency Scheme), rising energy prices, extreme budgetary constraints, the dismantling of the regional policy structure and Local Area Agreements, and changes in the support mechanism for renewable energy systems. Several other policy ‘elephants’ are also starting to appear over the horizon, including the localism agenda, Green Deal, and the Green Investment Bank.
The review will provide DCC and its partners with a shared understanding of the drivers of action on carbon reduction and sustainable energy use. It will provide an opportunity for us to refresh our strategic objectives and planned actions for reducing the carbon footprint of DCC, whilst realising the financial and other benefits associated with a sustainable approach to energy (and fossil fuel) management.
The review will also provide an indication of how the County Council will work with partners, notably those on the Devon Strategic Partnership, or its successor body.
How and by whom will the review be conducted?
The review will be undertaken during the first half of 2011 by staff within the Environmental Policy Team, in liaison with officers across relevant DCC teams and directorates. Progress will be reported to the quarterly carbon management board, chaired by the Director of Environment, Economy and Culture.
To provide a firm foundation for the new strategy, and to ensure a common and accurate understanding for all parties of the current position in relation to carbon reduction work, a series of background papers have been drafted covering a range of pertinent topics, including the national/regional picture; published data and information; and relevant action at community level. These papers can be accessed below.
What are the expected outputs?
The output of the review will be a new strategy for reducing carbon emissions arising from DCC’s activities and operations which will have a focus of up to 2030. A plan of indicative short- and longer-term actions will be drawn up to deliver the strategy’s objectives, and a monitoring mechanism for gauging the effectiveness of the climate change measures will be put in place.
We hope that external partners will wish to endorse the goals and strategic priorities set out in the new strategy and take account of them when planning their own climate change activities.
How will DCC keep interested parties informed of progress on the review?
Draft strategy and action plan documents will be linked to these webpages as they become available.
Background papers currently available are:
- Carbon modelling for LTP3
(134KB - pdf help) - Climate change activity at community level (122KB - pdf help)
- Climate change legislation policies and strategies (99KB - pdf help)
- Communicating global warming and carbon reduction (73KB - pdf help)
- DCC business travel and fleet (93KB - pdf help)
- DCC's carbon management programme (200KB - pdf help)
- Domestic sector carbon emissions (162KB - pdf help)
- Governance and accountability (82KB - pdf help)
- Greenhouse gas emissions for Devon at sub sector level (157KB - pdf help)
- Impact of national policy measures on local carbon emissions (1.00MB - pdf help)
- Low carbon economy in the context of the Devon economy (1.57MB - pdf help)
- Low carbon economy final technical annex v5 (1.93MB - pdf help)
- Planning and transport (122KB - pdf help)
- Published data and information (147KB - pdf help)
- Review of renewable energy resource assessment and targets for Devon (550KB - pdf help)
