Draft Climate Change Strategy 2023-30

Charnwood Borough Council is committed to playing its role to help tackle climate change.

We have produced a draft Climate Change Strategy 2023-30 which sets out how we will reduce our impact on the environment and our carbon footprint.

The strategy also sets out how we will help lead local communities, residents, organisations, and businesses to reduce their impact on the environment and climate change.

Some solutions to help tackle climate change locally will require significant funding and it is likely this will need to come from central Government or other sources.

Having a strategy in place will help with bidding for any funding that becomes available in the future.

What the Council can also do is work with partners, bring people together and provide leadership within Charnwood. 

A consultation has held on the draft strategy between January 23, 2023 and March 6, 2023. Following the views submitted to the consultation, the strategy is being finalised and will be published shortly.

Background

The Council has been reducing its carbon footprint and helping to tackle climate change for many years.

This strategy will replace a previous climate change strategy which was adopted in 2018. As part of that strategy, the Council encouraged residents to recycle more, embedded climate change into policy and decision making and supported renewable energy by identifying areas of the borough best suited to that type of development.

The Council is also committed to being carbon neutral by 2030 and is tackling its carbon footprint by reducing emissions linked to its buildings and transport. Its Carbon Neutral Plan can be read here and will work alongside this strategy.

In 2019, the Council voted in favour of a motion on notice which set an aspiration for the council to achieve carbon neutrality from its own operations by 2030. The Council also committed to working with residents, businesses and other public bodies across the borough and region to deliver this ambitious goal through all relevant technologies, strategies and plans.

Previous successes

As part of our previous Climate Change strategy and Carbon Neutral Plan, we reduced the Council’s carbon footprint by 37 per cent, planted more trees in the borough, including over 14,000 at Hathern, encouraged people to take up greener travel, saw Stonebow and Gorse Covert be declared as Local Nature Reserves and encouraged Council staff to take sustainable actions through a dedicated programme called Green Rewards. 

Climate Change

Climate change, also called global warming, refers to the increase in global temperature and its effects on the Earth’s climate system, including weather patterns. The Earth’s temperature has risen by 0.08° C per decade since 1880, but the rate of warming since 1981 is more than twice that at 0.18° C per decade.

Scientists believe that recent rapid rises in the global average temperature are caused by human behaviour, with the burning of fossil fuels (oil, coal, and gas) being the main contributor.

As a result of climate change, deserts are expanding, and heat waves and wildfires are becoming more common across the world.