Carbon Footprint 2023

Purpose

This report describes the greenhouse gas emissions produced by Devon County Council’s (DCC) activity (our ‘carbon footprint’) in the financial year from April 2022 to March 2023 (2022/23). These emissions are compared to previous years’ data and our baseline year of April 2012 to March 2013 (2012/13).

The Carbon Reduction Plan explains the activities we are implementing over the next seven years to achieve a net-zero operation. Given great progress on the plan, we are reviewing and updating it and a new version will be available shortly.

Summary

Overall Progress

Encouragingly, emissions decreased by 6% in comparison to 2021/22 thanks to reductions in energy use for street lighting and buildings and school transport. Overall, we are 56% below the baseline figure of 2012/13 and ahead of target to achieve a 70% reduction by 2030.

Changes to methodology

Carbon footprints are a work in progress and it is important to regularly review what is included and how emissions are calculated. We have made several improvements to our methodology since our last report:

• adding in additional sources of emissions from commuting (to complement homeworking), waste and emissions associated with electricity generation before generation (i.e. extraction of fuel.)
• using a more accurate carbon factor for school buses and adding travel by main carers taking children to school in their vehicles.

As a result of these changes, we have re-baselined 2012/13 to ensure that year-on-year figures are comparable and the target percentage reduction is a fair reflection of changes. For example, we have added an estimate for commuting to every year. Therefore, figures for previous years will not match the figures in previous reports.

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, commuting and the GHGs emitted during the process of extracting, refining and delivering fossil fuels and electricity to our business locations – these are called “Well to Tank” and “Transmission and Distribution” emissions.

The data is displayed in tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent (tCO2e). 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.

Table 1 shows our gross 2022/23 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 2022/23 gross emissions are 56% below 2012/13 levels – ahead of target – and about 4,000 tonnes below 19/20 and over 24,400 tonnes below 12/13.

Table 1: Devon County Council’s greenhouse gas emissions data for 2012/13, 2019/20, 2021/22 and 2022/23 displayed in tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent (tCO₂e).

Figure 1 shows the gross corporate greenhouse gas emissions for each year on a bar chart. Included in Figure 1 is a turquoise line showing 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 the footprint by category. With the major reduction in electricity use by street lighting, school transport is now the biggest source of emissions.

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 2022 emissions factors from the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy for this assessment. The estimation of supply chain emissions covered under ‘Exclusions’ below draws on the latest emissions factors available from the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs dated 2019 updated for inflation.

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 increases are for fleet car use and business travel – this possibly reflects the growth in staff numbers as much as behaviour change. We have made tremendous progress increasing the efficiency of street lighting – from a consumption of 32,000,441kWh in 2012/13 to 13,249,806 in 2022/23 – a saving of just under £5 million in 2022/23.

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 thought to be very low.
• Emissions and sequestration of greenhouse gases from land assets (awaiting new guidance from the GHG Protocol)

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. Every year 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. However, we have been able to update 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 our approach. We are working with larger suppliers to obtain actual emissions, starting with highways maintenance contractors.

Reasons for Changes in Emissions

Our gross GHG emissions are 56% 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 controls
• Deep retrofit of 9 buildings with Public Sector Decarbonisation Funding and our own capital contributions
• 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, which now contribute around 37% to generation in the last year. (National Grid: Live (iamkate.com))

Base Year

We recalculate the base year emissions whenever:

• Property disposals associated with outsourced 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. For 2022/23 we recalculated the base-line to reflect the additional sources of emissions brought into the account 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’.

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 59% 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 1,700 tCO2e, which would make a significant difference at about a twelfth of predicted residual emissions.

Carbon Offset 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 are exploring other options this year as new carbon codes are now operating.

In addition, we bought 11 hectares of land near Okehampton to trial this more direct approach to offsetting; there are additional benefits for wildlife and public access. We are applying for grant money to plant the trees over the next 2 winters and have registered the project with the Woodland Carbon Code.

Renewable Electricity Generation

Our solar PV arrays on non-school properties generated 188 MWh of renewable electricity in 2022/23 saving about 50 tCO2e and about £50,000. We have generated renewable heat in our non-school properties. We added several roof-mounted solar PV arrays and air-source heat pumps as part of the deep retrofits carried out with Public Sector Decarbonisation Funding. We are investigating how we can measure the renewable heat from the pumps.