Carbon Footprint 2023-24

Purpose

This report describes the greenhouse gas emissions produced by our activity – our carbon footprint in the financial year from April 2023 to March 2024 (referred to as 2023/24). These emissions are compared to previous years’ data and our baseline year of April 2012 to March 2013.

The Carbon Reduction Plan explains the activities we are implementing over the next 6 years to achieve a net-zero operation. Given great progress on the plan, we have reviewed and updated it and the new draft is going to Cabinet in October together with the Low Carbon Procurement Strategy.

Summary

Encouragingly, emissions decreased by 4% last year thanks to small reductions in emissions from buildings, the fleet, business travel and school transport. Overall, we are 57% below the baseline figure of 2012/13 and ahead of target to achieve a 70% reduction by 2030. However, if this rate of progress is maintained we will miss the 70% target by 2030/31.

Part A – Summary Table and Graphics

The Greenhouse Gas (GHG) Protocol sets the global standard for how to measure, manage and report a carbon footprint. Within the standard, emissions are split into three scopes:

• Scope 1 GHG emissions are ‘emissions from sources that are owned or controlled by the organisation’. In our case this is the burning of fossil fuel (e.g. gas and diesel) in buildings and our vehicle fleet.
• Scope 2 GHG emissions are defined as ‘emissions from the consumption of purchased energy’. In our case this is electricity.
• Scope 3 GHG emissions are defined as ‘emissions that are a consequence of the operations of an organisation but are not directly owned or controlled by the organisation’. Scope 3 is an optional reporting category which can include several different sources of GHG emissions. In this report we have included GHG emissions associated with providing ‘home to school’ transport, travelling for our work purposes, water consumption in our corporate buildings, home working and the GHGs emitted during the process of extracting, refining and delivering fossil fuels and electricity to our business locations – these are termed ‘Well to Tank’ emissions.
• We expect the GHG Protocol to bring out guidance on accounting for emissions from land and its management and land-use change in 2024/25. We will need to consider how to respond to this in our next report.

Table 1 shows our gross 2023/24 emissions in comparison to previous years and the baseline year of 2012/13. In addition, 2019/20 data is also included to show the difference with the pre-pandemic situation. The 2023/24 gross emissions are 57% below 2012/13 levels – ahead of target – and about 4,700 tonnes below 19/20 and over 25,000 tonnes below 12/13.

The data is displayed in tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent. This is a measure of the effect of a basket of greenhouse gas emissions (such as methane and nitrous oxide) on the atmosphere, not just carbon dioxide. All the years are directly comparable as we have recalculated the data to remove the effect of significant changes to the organisation, such as a year where buildings were passed to another organisation to manage, or where additional sources of emissions have been brought in e.g. commuting.

Table 1: Devon County Council’s greenhouse gas emissions data for 2012/13, 2019/20, 2022/23 and 2023/24 displayed in tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent (tCO2e).

Figure 1 shows the gross corporate greenhouse gas emissions for each year on a bar chart. The orange line shows the level below which our emissions need to be to reach our target of reducing gross corporate emissions by 70% by 2030 from 2012/13 levels. We are still looking to offset the residual emissions through certified carbon offsetting mechanisms in the United Kingdom to achieve ‘net-zero emissions’.

Figure 2 shows that emissions from school transport are still the biggest proportion of DCC’s carbon footprint and therefore we cannot afford to ignore them. Street lighting used to be the largest and significant investment in LED lighting and controls has made a big difference. We are looking at further dimming and switch offs where safe to do so but these are unlikely to bring in major reductions. Therefore, we are proposing major investment in renewables on our estate to “offset” emissions from grid electricity use, which further decarbonisation of the grid will support.

Part B – Supporting Explanations

Organisation Information

Devon County Council is the upper tier local authority in Devon, excluding the unitary areas of Torbay and Plymouth.

Quantification and Reporting Methodology

We have followed the Defra Guidance on ‘Environmental Reporting Guidelines: including mandatory greenhouse gas emissions reporting’ updated March 2019, which is heavily based on the GHG Protocol. The scope of the carbon footprint is based on our activities that can either be measured from consumption data or reasonably estimated from finance data. We have used the 2023 emissions factors from the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy for this assessment.

Organisational Boundary

DCC has used the financial control approach to identify operations from which to collect data.  Therefore, schools and leased properties are excluded from scopes 1 and 2.

Operational Emissions

DCC measures its scope 1, 2 and available scope 3 emissions and also categorises them by activity. These are shown in Table 2 along with the change in the previous 12 months. The biggest percentage increase is for commuting, which reflects a return to the office. Small decreases across the board have contributed to the overall 4% decrease.

Table 2: Devon County Council’s gross greenhouse gas emissions in tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent (tCO2e) by category.

Current exclusions

Scope 1

• Emissions from air conditioning and refrigeration units not assessed as there is insufficient information about units. This is a regulatory issue, which needs to be addressed. Looking at data from other similar local authorities, it is likely that emissions are very small.
• Emissions and sequestration of greenhouse gases from land assets – we have commissioned Exeter University to use mapping data to estimate emissions from land this year and are awaiting new guidance from the GHG Protocol as to how to account for these.

Scope 3

• Emissions from the fossil fuel and electricity used to operate school buildings. These are not formally reported as we do not have financial control over these assets, but the emissions are monitored. They are coming down every year as more schools decide to become academies.
• Leased assets are excluded as there are very few buildings and the tenants have responsibility for paying the energy bills – we are looking to see if we can find a way to estimate these emissions.
• Supply chain emissions are not part of the corporate carbon footprint and we will decide how to bring them in as we get a more accurate picture of how much and the biggest sources of emissions. We have updated our estimate based on spend by using 2019 carbon-emission conversion factors adjusted for inflation. Indicative carbon emissions from our supply chain for 2022/23, estimated using these updated factors for different types of public sector activity, were 101,285 tCO2e.
• We have produced a draft Low Carbon Procurement Strategy, which sets out how we intend to tackle our supply chain emissions, which, together with additional staff resource, is awaiting Cabinet sign off. We propose to work with larger suppliers to obtain actual emissions and have already started with highways maintenance contractors. We would then work with suppliers to reduce emissions.

Reasons for Changes in Emissions

Our gross GHG emissions are 57% below the 2012/13 base year. Reasons for this are:

• Replacement of older boilers with condensing models through the maintenance programme
• Installation of LED lighting in corporate property through the maintenance programme
• Installation of part-night and LED street lighting and traffic signal controls
• Deep retrofit of 9 buildings with Public Sector Decarbonisation Funding and our own capital contributions
• Gradual improvement in the carbon intensity of staff vehicles and purchase of electric vehicles
• Technology enabling less travel, such as Windows 10 and Microsoft Teams, greatly accelerated by the COVID pandemic.
• Reduced carbon intensity of grid electricity due to renewables – more than half now comes from non-fossil fuel sources and renewables can be as much as 75% generation on certain days. (National Grid: Live (iamkate.com))

Base Year

We recalculate the base year emissions whenever:

• Property disposals and terminated services represent 5% or more of base year emissions
• New properties, services or previously excluded emissions make the base year incomparable
• There is a significant change in reporting accuracy that makes the base year incomparable.

We re-calculated Base Year emissions and subsequent years’ emissions in 2017/18 to reflect the significant outsourcing of services and staff reductions that had occurred. In 2023 we recalculated the base-line to reflect the additional sources of emissions brought into the account (commuting and waste) and some changes to methodology. This means that figures in previous reports will no longer tally with those in this report.

2012/13 has been retained as the base year, which remains relevant in the context of our Carbon Reduction Plan and net zero target.

Target

Our 2019 Carbon Reduction Plan set targets to reduce the corporate carbon emissions by 70% over the 2012/13 baseline by 2030 and offset the remaining 30% to achieve ‘net-zero emissions’. We reviewed and updated the plan last year and it is awaiting Cabinet sign off. It proposed to retain the target, although if the plan is fully implemented it should be possible to exceed 70%.

Intensity Measurement

We have chosen to use Gross Operating Expenditure as the intensity measurement. This provides an indication of the extent of activity we deliver and is applicable to all components of the carbon footprint. Our gross emissions per million-pound spend, adjusted for inflation, has reduced by nearly 60% since 2012/13. (See Table 1)

External Assurance Statement

Our GHG emissions data is not covered by an External Assurance Statement.

Green Energy Tariffs

We have not purchased a green energy tariff, as there are serious concerns about the validity of these tariffs i.e. that they do not tie to real additional renewable energy generation. Instead, we investigated power purchase agreements (PPAs), where we would purchase electricity directly from an installation owned by a (community) energy company. However, the high development costs of relatively small schemes meant that the cost per kWh was prohibitive.

We are now looking to develop our own renewable energy installations – we can net off exported electricity against our scope 2 emissions. Even with de-carbonisation of the grid, this could be up to 1,000 tCO2e, which would make a significant difference at about a twelfth of predicted residual emissions.

Offsetting – Carbon Credit Units

We have built our experience in carbon offsetting by attempting to purchase Woodland Carbon Units to incrementally offset an increasing percentage of the remaining carbon footprint
from 5% in 2019/20 to 100% by 2030/31. This was not possible because the market could not provide enough units. Instead, we purchased Pending Issuance Units, issued under the Woodland Carbon Code, that will mature into Woodland Carbon Units in the late 2020s, 2030s and 2040s. We retired a very small number of Woodland Carbon Units (46) in 2018.

In March 2024, we bought actual carbon credits which we can retire in 2030/31, which is a big step forward. These are based on the UK Carbon Code of Conduct, which calculates carbon sequestration from changes to land management practices, such as hedge and tree planting and sowing wildflower meadows. The credits come from 2 farms in Sussex and Kent. We are working with similar projects in Devon to generate credits for DCC and other local organisations.

We bought 11 hectares of land near Okehampton to trial a more direct approach to offsetting. Whilst there are additional benefits for wildlife and public access, it has proven a very expensive way of generating credits. We have successfully applied for grant money to plant the trees over the next 2 winters from the Plymouth and South Devon Community Forest. We have registered the project with the Woodland Carbon Code.

Renewable Electricity Generation

Our solar PV arrays on non-school properties generated at least 217 MWh of renewable electricity in 2023/24 saving about 60 tCO2e and about £65,000. We have installed 3 more solar PV roof systems on 3 depots in 2023/24 – Rydon, Honiton and Pathfields. It is proposed to proceed with a further installation at Tavistock this year.

We secured funding to explore the technical and financial feasibility of solar PV arrays on 3 former landfill sites. We have appointed the contractors and expect this work to be finished by June 2025 together with the business case for investment finance.