PEOPLE in Worcestershire can breath more easily after the County Council revealed it has achieved a 24 per cent reduction in CO2 emissions in the last two years.
In 2016, the Council produced a new Energy and Carbon Management Plan – a five year strategy to significantly reduce its energy consumption, costs and carbon emissions, and future-proofing services against rising energy costs.
The plan set a 20 per cent carbon reduction target by 2021, which has been exceeded after just two years.
Energy efficiency projects undertaken include major street lighting upgrades, installation of solar panels on a number of sites, improvement in the energy efficiency of buildings, and the introduction of three electric vehicles into the Council’s fleet.
The projects supported by the Council’s Spend to Save Fund are saving the Council approximately £180,000 every year, and when schools, which benefited from early investment from the fund are taken into account savings are more than £400,000 every year.
Publishing an annual Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emissions report allows for a broader look at wider emissions across the Council’s service delivery with GHG reduced by 33 per cent since 2009/10, with a 19 per cent reduction achieved last year alone largely due to sending more household waste to its new energy from waste facility, EnviRecover rather than landfill.
