Councils - emissions from the local authority area
A lot of councils have been more ambitious than just looking at tackling emissions they are directly responsible for, and have plans or targets which cover emissions from the local authority area. That means any emissions occurring within the geographical boundary of the council area.
If you are a council and you want to know what’s happening in the whole of your council area, then the good news is that there are already official Government statistics which tell us about that. Those are published by the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero (DESNZ). The statistics are published annually by DESNZ each summer, around June/July, and they report emissions of carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide at local authority level, on an end-user basis. This means that emissions from electricity or fuel supply (power stations or refineries for example) are re-allocated to where that energy (mainly electricity) is used. The statistics don’t relate to the latest year, but to the preceding one – there is an 18-month lag, which is necessary as there are various sets of underlying data, all of which take some time to become available. Turning all that data into a local-level emissions dataset is then also a complicated and time-consuming process.
Prior to 2020, these statistics were just for carbon dioxide (CO2). Although emissions of fluorinated gases (F-gases) are still not included in these statistics, the inclusion of methane and nitrous oxide as well as CO2 now mean that 97% of the UK’s greenhouse gas emissions are incorporated in this dataset, disaggregated by local authority. Which makes this a very powerful set of data for councils to use.
If you are interested, the DESNZ statistics can be found here.
Importantly, the DESNZ statistics are consistent with the UK total emissions figure which gets reported to the UN - the sum of emissions for all UK local authorities, less a few exclusions, adds up to the UK total. But does it matter that everyone is using the same data? In a word, yes. At the national level, countries sign up to using established accounting practices for monitoring and reporting their greenhouse gas emissions. They all use the same methods, which means that we can reliably compare one country with another. So if all councils follow the same approach, and use the DESNZ statistics, we can compare one council with another. If we are doing that, we need to take into account local context of course – urban areas will have very different emissions from rural areas, and there are good reasons why that’s the case – but we can use the same underlying data to look into where action would be beneficial, and importantly to establish best practice.
Alongside the full annual dataset, DESNZ also publish a separate subset covering emissions considered to be “within the scope of influence of local authorities”, for just emissions of carbon dioxide. This excludes a number of emissions sources over which local authorities have no influence, which are:
The combined impact of these exclusions varies from one authority to another, although for some authorities that impact could be significant.
Councils have some level of influence over almost 85% of CO2 emissions – that’s a huge amount. The key word here though is influence. Councils need to be able to distinguish between emissions that they have control over and those they can only influence. That level of influence may be small in some cases. But councils are uniquely placed to exert that influence by way of the role they play locally - be that with people who live in the area, or those who work in the area, or the businesses they work for.
If you are a council and you want to know what’s happening in the whole of your council area, then the good news is that there are already official Government statistics which tell us about that. Those are published by the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero (DESNZ). The statistics are published annually by DESNZ each summer, around June/July, and they report emissions of carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide at local authority level, on an end-user basis. This means that emissions from electricity or fuel supply (power stations or refineries for example) are re-allocated to where that energy (mainly electricity) is used. The statistics don’t relate to the latest year, but to the preceding one – there is an 18-month lag, which is necessary as there are various sets of underlying data, all of which take some time to become available. Turning all that data into a local-level emissions dataset is then also a complicated and time-consuming process.
Prior to 2020, these statistics were just for carbon dioxide (CO2). Although emissions of fluorinated gases (F-gases) are still not included in these statistics, the inclusion of methane and nitrous oxide as well as CO2 now mean that 97% of the UK’s greenhouse gas emissions are incorporated in this dataset, disaggregated by local authority. Which makes this a very powerful set of data for councils to use.
If you are interested, the DESNZ statistics can be found here.
Importantly, the DESNZ statistics are consistent with the UK total emissions figure which gets reported to the UN - the sum of emissions for all UK local authorities, less a few exclusions, adds up to the UK total. But does it matter that everyone is using the same data? In a word, yes. At the national level, countries sign up to using established accounting practices for monitoring and reporting their greenhouse gas emissions. They all use the same methods, which means that we can reliably compare one country with another. So if all councils follow the same approach, and use the DESNZ statistics, we can compare one council with another. If we are doing that, we need to take into account local context of course – urban areas will have very different emissions from rural areas, and there are good reasons why that’s the case – but we can use the same underlying data to look into where action would be beneficial, and importantly to establish best practice.
Alongside the full annual dataset, DESNZ also publish a separate subset covering emissions considered to be “within the scope of influence of local authorities”, for just emissions of carbon dioxide. This excludes a number of emissions sources over which local authorities have no influence, which are:
- any large industrial sites which are in the EU Emissions Trading System (EU ETS)
- motorway traffic
- diesel railways
- Land Use, Land Use Change, and Forestry (LULUCF)
The combined impact of these exclusions varies from one authority to another, although for some authorities that impact could be significant.
Councils have some level of influence over almost 85% of CO2 emissions – that’s a huge amount. The key word here though is influence. Councils need to be able to distinguish between emissions that they have control over and those they can only influence. That level of influence may be small in some cases. But councils are uniquely placed to exert that influence by way of the role they play locally - be that with people who live in the area, or those who work in the area, or the businesses they work for.
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If you are a council and you’d like a better understanding of emissions in your area, then GreenGoals can help.
That could be with, for example:
Whatever your needs, GreenGoals can help, so please do get in touch.
That could be with, for example:
- identifying the main sources of emissions in your area
- setting a target for reducing those emissions, or establishing a pathway for reductions if you already have a target
- establishing where you can influence emissions, and how
- creating monitoring reports to help you track progress
- providing advice and support to in-house teams with setting up systems for monitoring and reporting
- working with council officers to develop in-house skills and knowledge
Whatever your needs, GreenGoals can help, so please do get in touch.
