Carlisle City Council to take extra time to hit net zero carbon emissions

Modern life across Cumbria, across the UK and across the world all contributes towards the effect humanity is having on the plant's climate.

And so with every city on Earth playing a role in climate change, it stands to reason that it is vital every city has a plan for reducing this impact.

In March 2019, Carlisle City Council resolved to declare a "climate emergency", recognising the urgent action needed in Carlisle to reduce carbon emissions to net zero.

One of the key features of the climate emergency was declaring a commitment to ensuring the city council's activities achieved this net zero benchmark by 2030, as well as a commitment to working with others towards ensuring the Carlisle district as a whole hit net zero carbon emissions by the same year.

This has been the backdrop to a number of clashes in recent months among city councillors over the authority's climate change strategy, which on Tuesday was formally adopted after being approved by council members.

The council's climate change strategy and its associated action plan sets out steps that the authority will take to ensure its activities, such as waste collection, achieve net zero carbon emissions.

It also sets out how the council will support the district as a whole to reach carbon net zero.

The strategy adopted this week amends the council's target by which it seeks to achieve this from 2030 to 2037.

This date is in line with the baseline set out by the Zero Carbon Cumbria Partnership that the county as a whole should aim for net carbon neutrality, which itself is in line with the recommendations from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

The Zero Carbon Cumbria Partnership brings together nearly 70 organisations and local authorities across Cumbria to coordinate on achieving the shared aim of making the county the first in the UK to become carbon neutral, by 2037.

But the 2037 date set out by the city council's Conservative administration has been the subject of challenge in recent months.

In November last year, when the draft strategy was brought before council for the first time, the council's Labour group, which had been running the authority at the time the climate emergency was declared, proposed to keep the aimed-for carbon neutral date at 2030, and accused the Conservative leadership of lacking "ambition" on tackling climate change.

This prompted the Conservatives to withdraw the strategy from consideration to allow for further discussion over the issue, with Conservative environment and transport portfolio holder Nigel Christian saying at the time that 2037 was the only "feasible" date the council could aim for.

Contention over the climate change strategy has surfaced several times in subsequent virtual council meetings, with councillors such as Labour's Colin Glover, who was the council leader when the climate emergency was declared, accusing the Conservative leadership of allowing the council to fall behind others in taking action on climate change.

In response, Conservative councillors, such as deputy leader Gareth Ellis, have accused Labour of causing a delay to the adoption of the strategy by challenging the net zero date, and adding that a number of initiatives to address carbon emissions have already been undertaken.

The strategy returned to the council for consideration on Tuesday, after having gone through a second scrutiny process, with the proposed net-zero date of 2037 unchanged.

When the strategy was presented to council on Tuesday, Mr Christian stressed that it is "very important that we have an established strategy in order to support any grants that might come forward in the future".

But the 2037 target date was challenged again, this time by the council's sole Green Party member, Helen Davison.

Dr Davison proposed that the district-wide target of 2037 be retained, but the net-zero target date for the council's activities be changed to 2030.

She stressed that reaching the 2037 target date is going to require "very steep" action.

"We are going to have to make year-on-year cuts that are really quite significant," she said.

But she argued that the cuts to carbon emissions that can be made by the city council are at "the easier end of the spectrum", and as such the authority should strive to make them earlier, in order to contribute more effectively to the wider 2037 district and countywide goal.

Dr Davison added that both South Lakes and Eden District Councils have adopted 2030 as target dates for making their own activities carbon neutral.

She said that improving technology is going to make actions such as converting the council's vehicle fleet more achievable in the coming years.

"We need to trust that technology is improving by the day," she said.

"We're much better to aim for an earlier target and miss that, perhaps by a couple of years, than leave it longer and miss the 2037 target.

"We're encouraging major behaviour changes among the public, so shouldn't we be leading by example and doing everything we can, as fast as we can, to put our house in order?"

Dr Davison added that it was vital that councillors kept in mind the approaching "tipping point" pointed to by climate science - the moment by which catastrophic climate change becomes unavoidable.

Dr Davison's motion was seconded by the authority's sole UKIP councillor, John Denholm.

"Technological limitations right now doesn't mean we should just give up," he said.

"We have an impetus, and we should try and maintain that."

Mr Denholm added that to shift the aimed-for dates to 2037 would be "very defeatist".

Labour's Colin Glover spoke in support of Dr Davison's proposed change to the council's climate strategy.

He acknowledged that the targets being discussed are "extremely challenging".

"When we last discussed this strategy back in November, there were lots of comments about concerns over a lack of ambition.

"We need to get on with delivering this strategy and action plan."

Mr Glover noted that 75 per cent of councils across England have declared a climate emergency, and of those, "75 per cent have kept their deadline for net carbon neutral at 2030".

Mr Glover said that keeping the city council's net-zero carbon deadline at 2030 would "show leadership on climate change".

"We saw in the campaigns in the run-up to declaring a climate emergency, lots of young people are watching this council for that leadership.

"They won't thank us for backing off and potentially kicking the can down the road.

"We shouldn't be afraid of that deadline."

The council's deputy leader, Conservative councillor Gareth Ellis, argued against moving from the 2037 date, and stressed that the IPCC's goal is for the world to become carbon neutral by 2050, and "even that requires massive technological shifts and changes in how we function".

Mr Ellis challenged Dr Davison's suggestion over a looming climate tipping point, arguing that the IPCC report which informed the drafting of the council's climate change strategy does not make reference to the prospect.

Mr Ellis also said that, despite the opportunities presented by two budgets brought to council since the climate emergency declaration, "there's been no realistic attempt by the opposition parties to actually show how they would reach carbon neutrality by 2030".

He said there had been "no real truth" presented by opposition councillors on "what it would cost this council to reach carbon neutral by 2030".

"2030 would be expensive, and much of the technology required is in its infancy, or is not moving quick enough for us to get there by 2030.

"Forcing us down that line requires us to start putting money aside now.

"We are not in a position to do that."

The electric vehicles the council currently has, Mr Ellis said, "work well in the city centre", but replacing the council's entire fleet, including its refuse collection lorries, with electric vehicles was impractical with current technology on offer, he argued.

"Once you get out to Hallbankgate, Longtown, Penton, you would end up with a flat battery halfway down Catlowdy.

"You would end up having to have multiple distribution points for refuse vehicles. With current technology, it would be financially unfeasible.

"This report we have here is about practical changes this council can achieve.

"It's about making serious changes to how the council operates. We will do that over a pace over a number of years, but we won't do that at the expense of cutting other services.

"This report is not about fundamentally changing the economy, or society. because we have no desire to do that.""

Environment and transport portfolio holder and Conservative councillor Nigel Christian said that he was "very sympathetic" towards the motion to amend the dates proposed by Dr Davison.

However he said he would not support the proposal because he was "very doubtful" the technology will be available to affordably reduce the council's activities to carbon net-zero by 2030.

"There is very little evidence that we can actually hit it," he said.

Mr Christian challenged Mr Ellis' rejection of Dr Davison's tipping point concerns, saying that he recognises "there is emerging evidence which suggests that some kind of tipping point might happen".

However, for "practical reasons", he argued for sticking with the 2037 date.

Mr Christian added he was keen to work with the Zero Carbon Cumbria Partnership to make collaborative achievements on reducing carbon emissions, and suggested that it was through cooperation that the most significant achievements will be made.

He added that the feasibility of achieving net-zero carbon emissions was also dependent "to a large degree" on national policy, though he said emerging national policies are "going in the right direction, and quite quickly".

When put to a vote, Dr Davison's proposal to amend the 2037 target date was rejected, in spite of support from Labour councillors.

Following the vote, Dr Davison expressed her disappointment, adding that the strategy indicated the council did not have the "ambition" she hoped for on climate change.

"I'd rather we had that target and missed it, because that's the incentive to move forward," she said.

Dr Davison abstained from voting on adopting the climate strategy itself, along with Labour councillor Anne Glendinning. UKIP councillor John Denholm voted against adopting the strategy, though all other council members voted in favour of accepting the strategy, resulting in its formal adoption by the city council.