A climate change strategy for Easington council
A climate change strategy for Easington council
CSE has recently completed a pioneering piece of work on behalf of Easington District Council in County Durham, using the Local and Regional Carbon Management Matrix
2 October 2006
CSE has recently completed a pioneering piece of work with Easington District Council in County Durham. The Council, which enjoys senior-level commitment to reducing carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions, commissioned CSE to help it draw up a Climate Change Strategy to underpin efforts to cut energy use in the district by local people, businesses, and by the Council itself.
In addition to estimating a baseline for the total annual CO2 emissions caused by energy consumption and transport across the district, CSE also helped the council draw up an action plan to cut these emissions.
CSE applied the ‘Local and Regional Carbon Management Matrix', an assessment tool developed by CSE and partners. The ‘Matrix' identifies a wide range of areas where councils have existing powers and influence which they could use to stimulate carbon emission reductions. Against each of these ‘levers' the Matrix codifies the behaviour which could be classed as ‘weak', ‘fair', ‘good' and ‘excellent'.
This approaches enables a council to assess its current performance on carbon emission reduction whilst also identifying the steps to improvement (eg from ‘fair' to ‘good') — an ideal starting point for an action plan.
Cliff Duff, Easington's Energy Manager, describes the matrix as "very, very useful" and "an excellent tool" to appraise a local authority's activities from the perspective of tackling climate change. "It's an essential piece of work that could be used ... to assess the carbon reduction performance of all local authorities" he said.
"Here at Easington, we knew in which areas of carbon management we performed strongly. The matrix highlighted opportunities to improve performance and allows us to focus on specific areas for improvement."
In drawing up a Climate Change Action Plan, Easington Council has pre-empted the tougher line laid down in the new UK Climate Change Programme. The Government has committed to start assessing the performance of local authorities and expects to ‘see a significant increase in the level of engagement by local government in climate change issues' (see www.cse.org.uk/news/view/1239).