Things that local authorities can do under ‘business as usual’ to achieve Net Zero

In this fifth paper in a series, Steve Gummer and Stephen Cirell move away from the common areas of major infrastructure that have been considered so far, to look closer to home to smaller actions that nonetheless can still work in the quest for net zero.

Introduction

The Green Steve’s series is a collaboration between Sharpe Pritchard Solicitors and energy & climate change consultant Stephen Cirell to assist local authorities to understand the energy market, identify opportunities and provide practical guidance as to how to engage more in the green agenda. In this fifth paper in the series, we move away from the common areas of major infrastructure that have been considered so far, to look closer to home to smaller actions that nonetheless can still work in the quest for net zero.

It is easy, of course, to dwell on those key bigger / infrastructure areas. So far we have looked at solar farms, EV charging infrastructure, battery storage and more innovative ways to procure energy directly from renewable energy generators. But what about the day to day activities of the local authority? How can every Council in the country be moving towards a position of net zero carbon in smaller steps? This is topical as COP 27 commences in Sharm El Sheik in Egypt and the world’s focus falls once again on the pressing need for emissions reductions.

Strategy

The sensible place to start is with strategy. Local authorities are good at both policy and strategy and setting up long term plans that provide a framework for action, allocate budgets and marshall resources. The vast majority of Councils have now declared a climate emergency (over 300 in total) and even those who haven’t done so have usually published a climate change strategy containing largely the same material.

This usually starts with a target. The most popular pledge is to make the operations of the Council reach a position of net zero (often in defined terms) by 2030. This could be wider in scope and some declarations include pledges to work with their local communities to help their wider areas reach this goal. However, it is surprising how many local government officers do not know what their declaration actually says, what their targets are and do not really have any clear understanding of how those targets impact on their own work.

The key issue in relation to climate emergency declarations is to embed climate change into every aspect of the local authority’s decision making processes. This is sometimes stated, but rarely achieved even where it is. To do this, the Council has to spend quite a bit of time and effort making sure that the employees are aware of the pledges and receive support in how they will impact on their duties. As an example, a person involved in social care might honestly consider that this is nothing to do with them and the responsibilities lie with others. However, nothing could be further from the truth.

Every single job has a role to play in the overall process. If it was social care it might be the buildings that are used to provide this function (energy efficiency, using less energy, heating etc), the vehicles that are used to travel around to see clients (mileage, types of car, move to EVs), supplies that are procured to provide the function (from plastics to disposables) and the very way in which that service is provided (from offices or remotely) and so on.

Local government is a ‘people business’ and the best way to achieve net zero carbon is to get people on board with what you are trying to achieve and willingly accept their ideas and suggestions about how things work on the ground.

One way that this can be achieved is by staff training. The Steve involved in consultancy work has been involved in much of this to explain to ranges of staff why it is important that these targets are met and facilitating stronger support based on the public’s general willingness to address climate change. Progress is not all about the ‘top down’ activity characterised by the larger infrastructure projects.

Carbon footprints

Another action that is a good start is the calculation of the Council’s carbon footprint. This is standard good practice, as it is impossible to determine how long it will take to reach a target if the Council does not know where it is starting from. This also benefits Members, as the decisions on what to include in the calculations make them think deeper and harder about what is involved in emissions reduction.

Carbon footprints are put into ‘scopes’ by the World Resources Institute guidance which is the most widely recognised international standard. Scopes 1 and 2 are the direct aspects of the Council’s operations, including oil and gas used in boilers and vehicles, to the procurement of electricity from third parties. Scope 3 is indirect in nature and these emissions are defined as those arising as an indirect consequence of the use of goods or services provided by the Council. This scope includes the far more difficult areas, where there is often little understanding of what is included and data can be far more scarce. However, a Council’s Scope 3 emissions may be more than 50% of its total and so action to get started on this area is vital.

There are some areas in Scope 3 that are not relevant to public authorities (manufacturing etc) but there are a number that can be addressed. These include waste generated in operations, business travel, employees commuting to work, contracted out services, investments and purchased goods and services (i.e. procurement). There is a real temptation here for a local authority to say that as there is no data available, these areas cannot be included in our carbon footprint. Instead, Councils should be striving to develop the data systems they need to take these into account and then address how they can be reduced.

Take Council employees commuting to work as an example. First, the Council must have a record of where everyone lives and ensure it is up to date. Secondly, there are issues about whether people are required to work in a defined place (office, depot etc) or can work remotely. From this a picture can form as to what the emissions associated with this activity are. Then the Council can start making decisions: should it recruit more people who live in the Borough itself, or should it allow more home working (to reduce this travel); could it provide help and guidance on active travel (bike loans, showers at work, reduced public transport passes etc). All of this needs to be filtered into a wider comprehensive action plan.

Wider area plans and relationships

It was indicated that many targets include a wider aim to help the area (not just the Council activities) reach net zero carbon. This external focus can be challenging as the Council can only influence the activities of others, whereas it can control its own activities. So the essence of this is to identify and work with partners or the wider community to get them to engage in many of the initiatives that the Council itself is following. This group will include other public bodies, the business sector, community groups and individual inhabitants of the area concerned.

Of course, local government does not exist in a vacuum. This means that across each Council there is already a myriad of relationships with external parties for various functional areas. What is needed here is to utilise those relationships to increase influence on climate change. Much of the time this might be merely improving awareness of other parties or sharing information about what the Council is doing.

This is unlikely to be a one way street: many authorities that have relationships with Universities and Colleges find that they are often well advanced with this work and can provide reciprocal advice and guidance.

Reviewing services and resourcing

Looking at the internal position of the local authority will also be required. If everyone in the Council is applying their minds to this progress will be much quicker and more effective. Here, what is required is for the modes of operation of the Council’s services to be reviewed across the authority. As indicated above in relation to Scope 3 emissions, consideration can be given as to how services are organised, how much travel is involved and whether internet based meetings can be introduced to replace many face to face meetings. A look can be taken as to what equipment is used or how rounds or home visits are organised. The COVID-19 pandemic forced local authorities to consider different ways of providing services and this was not necessarily a bad thing.

Inevitably, when considering the provision of services, the issue of resourcing arises and in some areas, further resources will need to be provided. In one District Council a lone climate change officer for many years has now been supplemented by a team of four. In other areas, if the Council wants action by others, it has to provide enforcement resources. A good example of this will be the MEES regulations (the Energy Efficiency (Private Rented Property) (England and Wales) Regulations 2015) which prohibit private accommodation lettings if a property does not achieve an EPC rating of at least E. It is often reported that many authorities do not enforce this law as they have insufficient resources to do so. Poor thermal performance is a large part of the increasing greenhouse gas emissions, but standards are unlikely to improve without effective enforcement action.

Action plans

Mention was made previously about local authority climate emergency or climate change action plans. The action plan is a key document. The Council’s policy will set down the target and include data on the Council’s performance to date. It will indicate where it wants to get to and by when. It may well indicate the sorts of areas that the Council intends to address. But it is the action plan that sets down exactly what the Council proposes to do. It will set out activities and resourcing in each area and include provisions to monitor progress and report back to Members.

Having prepared a climate emergency or climate change action plan, efforts should be made to ensure that everyone in the organisation (both officers and Members) understands what is in it and what their role is in its implementation.

It is more and more the case now that the triumvirate of climate change, biodiversity and air quality are all being considered together. This allows action plans to identify the correlation between each area. Promoting improvements by parks or gardens, for example, improves biodiversity, whilst benefitting air quality and carbon retention all at the same time. Every Council should have a comprehensive action plan, even if this is modest in its aims and aspirations. It is not essential to have the major infrastructure developments featured previously in this series, if there are many smaller, local actions already contributing to the move towards net zero carbon.

Energy use

One area that is often missed is the use of energy and how this can be reduced. The hierarchy of energy is to use less energy first, then to improve the energy efficiency of any unit of energy that is actually used and finally to source new energy from renewable sources. This is a linear progression i.e. you should start with using less energy and work from there. The reason that this is the starting point is that the best unit of energy is the one you do not use at all. It costs nothing and has the greatest impact. In colloquial terms, it is the best ‘bang for your buck’ – much better than the return from either energy efficiency or renewables. So why is it that many authorities do not even have a ‘use less energy’ strategy?

Procurement

The area of procurement was mentioned previously in the context of Scope 3 emissions. This is an area that the Green Steves intend to return to in more detail but for the purposes of this paper there is action that can be taken now as part of the Council’s normal activities.

Procurement is currently undergoing change as a result of the United Kingdom leaving the European Union on 31 January 2020. For decades before that, it was the EU Public Procurement regime that was applied by local government. Now it is a new UK based system. However, the principles have not changed. There is a clear public policy justification for an intervention in the market, to ensure that public money is spent wisely by those who bear the responsibility for its stewardship. In recent years, the EU regime had started to become more cognisant of climate change and the green agenda and that now needs to be taken to a new level.

However, on a practical level, there is much that can be done by the local authority even at this stage. Primarily, it is about awareness again and the necessity for the Council’s procurement processes to harmonise with its wider climate change, biodiversity and air quality plans. If we are to include Scope 3 in our carbon footprints – as will surely be required before much longer – then we need to have to start that work now.

The first thing is data. We cannot see what the position is without data. This means that we now need to know much more about the supply chain than previously. We need to know the embedded carbon footprint of goods we buy and that involved in their transportation to us. We need to know the carbon footprint of services provided on our behalf, in terms of vehicles, staff, buildings etc. Put simply, we need all the same data as we ourselves are collecting in relation to our direct activities.

The problem is that it is likely that the Council has never asked for this data previously in past procurement exercises. As legal contracts will have been prepared for those goods and services, it is likely that there will be no provisions included to provide this information (as it wasn’t part of the procurement exercise). If we want to make inroads into future practice, we need to start asking for this data now.

There is much that could be said under this heading but for now there are two key areas that are concerned: including this area in all new procurement exercises; and ensuring that this is backed up by contractual provisions ensuring that the information has to be provided and verified.

If we start this right now, meaningful data will only really start to emerge in a couple of years’ time and only at that stage could this be included in Scope 3 provisions. It is therefore essential that this work is embarked upon and this should be possible by procurement officers already engaged in the changes in relation to the introduction of the new UK provisions.

Offsetting and Carbon Credits

The final point about targets and carbon footprints is that the UK legal provisions under the Climate Change Act 2008 (as amended) are ‘net zero carbon’, not ‘zero carbon’. It is impossible for any local authority providing public services to be zero carbon.

So the process is to reduce the use of energy as much as possible, to improve energy efficiency on all buildings and equipment, to introduce low carbon sources of new power and then to offset the remaining rump of emissions that cannot be removed (known as offsetting). This is characterised in the hierarchy: calculate, avoid, reduce and offset.

Offsetting is a complete subject in itself but essentially involves an activity that provides a carbon benefit to counteract a negative carbon impact. A simple example is provided by nature based solutions. The most often quoted scenario is tree planting.

The reason that trees and other plants are such an important part of the carbon cycle is that they accumulate carbon as part of the growing process. As every child learns in school, plants rely on a process called photosynthesis to use the energy from light in order to convert carbon dioxide and water into carbohydrates (which are needed as building blocks for plant growth) and oxygen (as a waste product). So trees literally suck in CO2 and breathe out oxygen.

This means that local authorities can be engaging now in activities that are part of their functional areas that will help reduce their carbon footprint. Grounds maintenance is a case in point.

As local authorities have biodiversity and other strategies these can be harmonised with climate change targets. Tree planning targets can be increased and land management amended to help this process. Many authorities are now introducing wildflower meadow verges and roundabouts that have multiple benefits: they costs less; they require less maintenance and equipment; they provide benefits to bees and other pollinators; they improve air quality; but most importantly of all, they can be counted as carbon offsets.

There are provisions to be observed here (such as there must be data in support, the benefit must be new and additional etc) but this is an area that local authorities should be addressing as part of business as usual.

Conclusion

It was mentioned in the introduction above that it is easy for a local authority to go for major infrastructure projects to demonstrate that it is serious about addressing its carbon footprint and reaching its net zero targets.

But as the foregoing has demonstrated, it is not just about the ‘big ticket’ projects. There are many low cost / high commitment actions that can be taken on a day to day basis that will also make a considerable contribution to this challenge and show genuine commitment to net zero carbon.

Some of these may not be easy, but they are not expensive either and will have a big impact on the ground. What better way for a local authority to show it is indeed serious about climate change and contributing to a better world?

Steve Gummer is a partner at Sharpe Pritchard LLP and Steve Cirell is a solicitor and consultant who independently advises local authorities on climate change and renewable energy. For further information, please contact Steve Gummer on 020 7405 4600. Visit their Green Goals page.

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