Climate emergency strategy
Theme 6: The Council
Leicester City Council will:
- Identify a roadmap for the council to become carbon neutral by 2030
- Reduce emissions from our office buildings and invest in energy efficient public lighting and low carbon heating systems
- Consider opportunities for renewable energy generation and storage
- Continue to work with schools to reduce their carbon emissions
- Reduce our emissions from council business travel and decarbonise our fleet
- Address the climate impact of goods and services we buy
- Apply the waste hierarchy of reduce, reuse, recycle/compost when dealing with our waste
- Improve working practices and provide communications and guidance to staff to minimise our climate impact
- Develop resilience measures that address the risks to our customers, assets and services from climate change
Summer temperatures in Leicester will increase as a result of the changing climate with the Met Office predicting a 50% chance of temperatures similar to the 2018 heatwave by mid-century.
Actions for 2020-2023 include:
- Develop a carbon neutral roadmap of actions to enable council to achieve zero carbon by or before 2030
- Create agile working practices and use mobile technology to reduce business travel
- Develop and implement a carbon literacy training programme for staff, including senior leaders in the council
- Implement a £1.8m scheme to replace heating systems, boiler controls and windows at a number of schools and childrens’ homes across the city
- Develop and deliver a £25M capital investment
programme to reduce energy use, generate renewable energy and install low carbon heating in 55 schools and 37 other council buildings - Expand the BESS energy programme (Built Environment Services for Schools)
- Develop and implement a climate emergency toolkit and carbon tracker for capital projects
- Deliver a net zero building as part of the Oaklands school extension
- Introduce 19 new ultra-low emission vehicles (ULEVs) into council fleet