Agenda item

The Council declared a Climate Emergency in March 2019, committing the Council to provide the leadership to enable Bath and North East Somerset to achieve carbon neutrality by 2030 and called for a progress report six months later and annually thereafter.  This is the first such report.

The Council considered the first progress report since it declared a Climate Emergency in March 2019, committing to provide the leadership to enable Bath and North East Somerset to achieve carbon neutrality by 2030.

On a motion from Councillor Sarah Warren, seconded by Councillor Paul Myers, it was

RESOLVED (unanimously) to

1.  Recognise the Council’s key leadership role and the significant and fundamental culture shift required, politically and organisationally, to rise to this challenge;

2.  Recognise that the first phase of research has enabled a clear definition of three immediate priorities for action for the Bath and North East Somerset area and the scale and speed of ambition needed to achieve the 2030 target.  In summary, these are:

  I.  Energy efficiency improvement of the majority of existing buildings (domestic and non-domestic) and zero carbon new build;

  II.  A major shift to mass transport, walking and cycling to reduce transport emissions;

  III.  A rapid and large-scale increase in local renewable energy generation.

3.  Recognise that further work is needed and in respect of the reviews, research and planning identified in paragraph 3.7 iv, ask for an update report for this next stage of work be brought to the March 2020 meeting of the Climate Emergency and Sustainability Policy Development and Scrutiny Panel, with a progress report to Council each year;

4.  Recognise that whilst the Council will provide leadership, the emergency cannot be tackled without active participation and leadership from all sectors in B&NES and wide and deep community engagement and that a new B&NES Climate Emergency, Environment & Place Partnership is being established to enable that;

5.  Recognise that business as usual is not an option and that the Council and all our partners and contractors need to review all existing strategies and plans to re-align to the Climate Emergency, as does the rest of the public sector and the private sector, and a further update report to the March 2020 Climate Emergency and Sustainability Policy Development and Scrutiny Panel will identify the timescale for reviewing all the Council’s existing strategies and plans to re-align them to the Climate Emergency;

6.  Recognise that meeting our Climate Emergency commitments is about major system change and can only be delivered by the combined action of national, regional and local government, other institutions, and alongside action in the private and community sectors.  Local government has a key influencing, convening and enabling role, but does not have the powers or resources to deliver these ambitions on our own;

7.  Recognise that individual citizen action is also important and that whilst there are things that everyone can do, it is constrained by current systems and that in order to engage as much of the community as possible, blame-laying on individuals is unhelpful;

8.  Note that, despite its pledge in March 2019 to provide the leadership to enable Bath and North East Somerset to become carbon neutral by 2030, the report (para 3.3 viii) states that ‘based on current knowledge, we don’t know exactly how to get to carbon neutrality’.  Council acknowledges the challenges that this pledge presents and seeks to develop the means to reach a goal that is beyond current capabilities.

[Notes;

1.  The above resolution contains wording at resolutions 3, 5 and 8 which was offered by Councillor Grant Johnson and accepted into the substantive motion by the mover and seconder.]