Council presses on with fight to deal with climate emergency

COUNCIL chiefs at Warrington have established a climate emergency commission and are set to approve its membership and terms of reference next week.
It will lead the public debate on actions required to deal with the climate emergency and public consultation on an emerging action plan is proposed as part of this debate.
Members of the council’s cabinet will be recommended to appoint Cllr David Ellis – a member of Birchwood Town Council -as chairman of the commission at their meeting on Monday.
It is proposed that membership of the commission will consist of the cabinet member for environment and public protection, a parish/town council representative, the deputy chief executive of the council, a representative of Warrington and Co, a housing association representative, a youth ambassador, a transport representative and a secretariat officer.
The council declared a climate emergency in June last year and committed the council taking steps to reduce carbon emissions to zero by 2030.
A report to be considered by cabinet members says the council has been at the forefront of action to reduce carbon emissions for some time.
Cllr Judith Guthrie, lead member for the environment – and owner of an electric car – will present the report which says while the council does not have control over all carbon emissions in the borough, the nature of the climate emergency is such that it cannot wait for national governments to take action.
“We are committed to taking what actions we can and to working in partnership with others to move towards net zero carbon.”
In 2011, the council published a carbon management plan setting an ambitious target of reducing the council’s own carbon emission by 40 per cent of 2009-10 levels. In fact, they h ad exceeded their 40 per cent target and emissions were now less than 50 per cent of 2009-10 emissions.
A particular success had been the upgrade of street lighting to new LED technology which had halved energy use on streetlights and saved more than £330,000 a year.
But more actions were still needed and the main concerns must be fleet energy use and natural gas use – two of the largest emission areas which must be early targets for change.
Borough-wide emissions are published annual by the government, along with all other local authorities but the latest figures are for 2017
Some 48 per cent of emissions are from road transportation but it is estimated that 30 per cent comes from the motorways rather than from local roads.
“Whilst it is difficult for us to affect all transport emissions, there are actions that we can take in conjunction with local partners and most importantly, with Warrington residents and
businesses. The figures clearly show that this should be a key focus of attention in the
short term. Transport strategy is well advanced at the council with the LTP4 (Local Transport Plan) now
approved and actions starting to be planned to decarbonise our transport systems,
therefore we can anticipate further progress in this area in the near future.”