“The ‘Carbon net-Zero’ Strategy for the Council is a step towards answering the Climate Emergency from a Local Authority perspective, we would like to understand the actions that form this strategy, including what steps are being taken to ensure that the Strategy is understood and implemented across internal council departments first; and then what wider steps are planned to communicate to council partners, local businesses and Carmarthenshire citizens. Communication, education and understanding are crucial to ensuring the strategy is implemented and successful.”
Minutes:
“The ‘Carbon net-Zero’ Strategy for the Council is a step towards answering the Climate Emergency from a Local Authority perspective, we would like to understand the actions that form this strategy, including what steps are being taken to ensure that the Strategy is understood and implemented across internal council departments first; and then what wider steps are planned to communicate to council partners, local businesses and Carmarthenshire citizens. Communication, education and understanding are crucial to ensuring the strategy is implemented and successful.”
Response by Councillor Cefin Campbell, Executive Board Member for Communities and Rural Affairs:-
“Thank you very much Neil for the question. I have the pleasure to give you quite a full response. As you know we committed, as a Council, to net zero carbon by 2030 and once that Notice of Motion was passed unanimously by the Council I then went to discuss with officers in the Council as to the way forward and we held a meeting on the 30th July of the Heads of internal departments in the council and it was a very positive meeting. I think there were about 12-15 people representing different departments from the council around the table and what was surprising to me was how much we are already doing – I have a list here, I won’t go through all of them, but there are a few things that were a big surprise for me. For example we are already investing £2m in 200 energy products and through that programme is going to reduce the carbon emissions by 4.1000 tonnes so we are already doing that. We are part of the Re:fit scheme provided by the Welsh Government so every new house and houses that we refurbish we are looking at ways to save energy and buildings which are non-domestic includes schools and leisure centres and care homes etc. We have also committed to obtain the passive house standard. As you know that looks at saving energy within housing. We have changed 20,000 street lights already into LED lighting. We have got rid of single-use plastics in the county council, we are also paperless officially since last month and we have committed to provide 26 electric charging points across the county etc. So this does show that we are doing a lot already and of course there is a lot left to do. So this Thursday, 26th September, I’m going to be chairing the second meeting of the Heads of departments and more have committed to come and officers have already prepared an action plan, a draft version, and we will be discussing that and we have invited Stephen Cirell from APSE – and to some of you who don’t know who APSE are – they are the Association ofPublic Service Excellence and they have published a strategy entitled ‘Local Authority Climate Emergency Declarations: Strategic and practical considerations for climate emergency declarations, targets and action plans’. So Stephen Cirell, who was one of the authors of this report, is going to help steer our meeting – so that’s an important stepand our action plan aims of course to be carbon net zero. But of course what we have to do, and it’s important to say this, we, at the moment, have to take a pragmatic approach towards what we can do. We have the aspiration but of course we have to be realistic in the short term as to what we can do but what we are committing to do is to set the foundations in place in order to build towards being carbon net zero. And your second part of your question is also important. We are working very closely with the PSB and the other public authorities in Carmarthenshire and they have recently set up a Healthy Environment Delivery Group which is going to look at climate change and an environmental risk assessment for Carmarthenshire as a whole and we are going to be a central part of that. And the third sector under CAVS has set up a network in order to reduce carbon. There’s one element in your question, and I recognise that possibly we do need to do more on it, which is possibly to go out to the private businesses and speak to them. So I will take that point on and when we will be discussing our action plan on Thursday I will raise that so that it is also part of our strategy as we move forward. So hopefully that gives to you an answer to the question.’