Carbon Neutral Council Plan 2022- 2024

The Climate Strategy sets out the following objectives for the Carbon Neutral Council: 

• To become carbon neutral as an organisation by 2030 
• Provide leadership locally and nationally, sharing learning 

The 2030 target covers the council's direct emissions (Scope 1 & 2) however the strategy includes an objective to understand and reduce the council's Scope 3 emissions as well, Briefing: What are Scope 3 emissions? (carbontrust.com) (opens new window). 

The council's Carbon Management Plan has been in place since 2013 and the council has been carrying out work to decarbonise the council's estate. This work is ongoing and has so far achieved 80% reduction of greenhouse gas emission from the baseline year of 2014.  

This 'Carbon Neutral Council Plan' replaces the Carbon Management Plan, and focuses efforts on our current carbon neutral goal, building on our foundation of ongoing carbon reduction.  

Work was carried out by the council and consultants Anthesis to understand the specific measures needed to achieve carbon neutrality by 2030 for council emissions. The resulting report, published in May 2022, has informed this plan. 

Discussions with key service areas have helped to understand the potential for carbon savings but also that there is some groundwork required to make the most of future opportunities. This delivery plan sets out actions that are being undertaken in the year 2022-24 to reduce the council's carbon footprint. We have included information on carbon reduction, as well as cost and co-benefits, where this information is available. Actions cover all the different 'Levers of Influence' that the council has. While some actions are clearly significant in terms of their potential to reduce carbon dioxide emissions, some of the actions have been identified as 'enabling actions' that will help specific carbon-saving projects to be progressed in the future, or 'influencing' actions that help to multiply the effects through awareness raising. 

In conjunction with this delivery plan focussing on the Carbon Neutral Council, we have also produced an outward-facing delivery plan for the whole county of Wiltshire "Climate Strategy Delivery Plan for Wiltshire".