Agenda item

Report of Jos Holmes, Climate Change Strategy Manager and Michael Leah, Assistant Director – Environmental Services, Climate Change and Integrated Passenger Transport, to provide a progress report on the implementation of the Climate Change Delivery Pathway.

Some of the key points outlined in the report were:

·       Over 100 current actions from the Climate Change Delivery Pathway were being delivered or recognised as priority areas of focus and progress reported against each of these.

·       The estimated level of investment in climate change delivery with the available figures over a two year period to March 2025 is £2.8million internal funding and £32.7million utilising external funding (this excludes some investment figures not currently available) across the three sections of Mitigation, Adaptation and Supporting Nature.

·       Officers are currently preparing a new round of funding proposals and projects to Great British Energy and an initial pipeline of proposals has been submitted to the York and North Yorkshire Combined Authority as part of its Carbon Negative Challenge Fund.

·       Annual ‘territorial’ statistics from the Department of Energy Security and Net Zero are included with an 18-month time lag with the figures for North Yorkshire in 2022 and a comparison to 2020 figures. Also included are the North Yorkshire Council Operational Carbon Emissions for the 2023/2024 year. This is the first year of operational emissions for the new Council and data indicates the total emissions and derivation of emissions. This now provides a baseline for the new Council, but the calculation will vary depending on the addition or removal of building assets and ongoing transformational activity or organisational restructures.

·       It is the intention to bring the carbon emissions of Brierley Group companies into these calculations in future years.

·       The focus of the policy development work over the coming months is the development of an Adaptation Strategy by March 2025.

Following this, key points raised by committee members were:

·       To detail the work ongoing around active travel and sustainable travel initiatives. In response, support for programmes such as North Yorkshire Lift Share were highlighted  and encouraging low carbon travel options through the Bus Service Improvement Plan. One of the proposals submitted to the Combined Authority is the development of a multi-departmental, cross cutting project on air quality, cycling & walking and education. It is hoped to pilot this in the Darlington Road area of Richmond, where five schools with similar finish times experience regular congestion and air quality issues.

·       Examples of inadequate cycling and walking provision were highlighted and how these discourage residents and visitors from using more sustainable travel options, particularly as part of new housing developments built with poor active travel infrastructure.

·       In deeply rural areas there has been substantial investment in a community transport decarbonisation project, installation of electric vehicle charging points in rural areas through the LEVI programme, where points were not seen as commercially viable, mainly due to a lack of grid capacity.

·       The importance of local bus services for rural communities as a low carbon option and increasing the frequency and reliability of the services is a key part of increasing passenger numbers and improving wider connectivity.

·       Ways of reducing the cost of electric vehicle charging to make it affordable and realistic option for many communities.

·       Work by the Council to champion community energy initiatives. In response, the opportunities and grants available through the UK Shared Prosperity Fund and the Devolution Deal decarbonisation fund for community buildings was highlighted. Four to five larger community energy schemes have been supported through to feasibility stage, to hopefully enable the selling of energy ‘behind the meter’ in areas where they are grid constrained.

·       The Member Champion for Climate Change, Councillor David Hugill, spoke to highlight the ‘Farming in Protected Landscapes’ programme and the developing plans to encourage cycling in the National Parks. He looked forward to future involvement.

·       In rounding up the discussion, the officer noted plans to set up a forum of all protected landscapes - not just National Parks, but AONBs to discuss environmental matters. It is also hoped to link in with the York and North Yorkshire Combined Authority to address a common set of challenges.

Resolved that Members acknowledge the progress related to the implementation of the Climate Change Delivery Pathway and proposed next steps.

Following the meeting, the North Yorkshire Operational Emissions 2023/24 table at Appendix 2 was updated to correct the figures originally supplied.

Emissions from staff business travel are now 2,089.83tCO2e

This means total emissions (scope 1, 2 and 3) are now 29,951.10tCO2e

The updated table with the correct information is set out below:

The change in business travel mileage is as a result of the claimed mileage figures provided not being accurate.  Therefore, we have had to use the paid mileage figure as this was felt to be a more reliable and replicable figure to use.