Minutes:
Councillor Barry Lewis, Cabinet Member for Strategic Leadership, Culture, Tourism and Climate Change, gave a verbal presentation, providing an update to the Committee on the climate change work of the Portfolio Holder.
Building on the launch of the Derbyshire Climate and Carbon Reduction Manifesto in 2019, and the establishment of the Council’s net zero target of 2032, or sooner, the Derbyshire County Council Climate Change Strategy: Achieving Net Zero (2021-2025) was developed and subsequently approved for adoption by Cabinet on 14 October 2021. The Strategy was now almost two years into its implementation and the majority of the actions and targets within the Strategy were on track to be achieved, with some already exceeded.
The Council’s emissions had fallen by 64.2% between the baseline year of 2009-10 and 2021-22. This included a 43% reduction in emissions from Corporate Property since 2009-10 and an 83% reduction in emissions from streetlighting.
To ensure further emission reductions the Council remained on track to achieve net zero by 2032, or sooner, Corporate Property had been developing a decarbonisation plan for the Council’s corporate estate. The Sustainable Procurement Policy was approved by Cabinet in July 2022 and was being applied on contracts. The Council had also produced a policy to reduce the amount of Single Use Plastics it uses in its buildings and the services. It was recognised that, even with significant effort to reduce emissions from the Council’s estate and activities, there would be some residual emissions that would need to be offset to ensure the Council meets its net zero target. As such, opportunities for an increase level of renewable energy generation on Council buildings and land, as well as increased carbon sequestration through tree planting, were actively being investigated and implemented.
The Climate Change Planning Guidance and Metric had been developed, which achieved a commendation in the Best Plan of the Year category in this year’s East Midlands Royal Town Planning Institute’s Awards for Planning Excellence. As well as this, the Derbyshire Spatial Energy Study and the Derby and Derbyshire Minerals Local Plan had also been developed as well as the Strategic Framework for Council action for progress to net zero energy in Derbyshire.
The Council was formally supporting a number of community energy projects. As well as proving funding and support through the Green Entrepreneurs Fund, Derbyshire Grants and DE-Carbonise.
With recent Active Travel England Capability fund grant awards, the Council would now begin to develop a series of local market town scale active travel plans. This workstream would be a primary focus of the next 12 months and look to explore the opportunities, barriers and interventions required to ensure walking, wheeling, and cycling can plan a key role in daily movement needs of Derbyshire’s residents and visitors. A Public/Stakeholder Engagement Report for the joint D2N2 Draft Local Cycling and Walking Infrastructure Plan was being finalised for publication and to inform the final Plan for Cabinet Member endorsement.
In 2021 the Council commissioned a Natural Capital Strategy for the county. The Strategy was now being used to identify the priority areas for the protection, restoration, and enhancement of natural capital assets. As part of the Council’s commitment to tackling the effects of climate change, the Council planned to facilitate the planting of a million trees in the county by 2030. As of 1 September 2023, 315,098 had been added to our online Million Trees totaliser.
A joint Vision Derbyshire Climate Change Strategy (2022-2025) had been developed that set out how Derbyshire councils could work together to reduce emissions across the county to net zero by 2050. There had been collaboration across D2N2 through the Innovate UK funded two-year Fast Followers project; as well as Collaboration across D2N2 through the Department for Energy Security & Net Zero funded Local Energy Advice Demonstrator project.