News / Council’s carbon challenge
SHETLAND Islands Council is set to launch a new initiative aimed at meeting the “rather challenging” target of cutting its carbon emissions by nearly a third by the end of this decade.
The local authority’s environment and transport committee agreed at a meeting on Wednesday to recommend that the council adopt its first carbon management plan.
The project is slated to run until 2020 to fulfil the SIC’s obligations under the Climate Change (Scotland) Act 2009.
It hopes to reduce emissions in key areas such as transport, energy use in council buildings, waste disposal and street lighting.
The council has achieved an annual carbon reduction of 2.68 per cent a year since 2007 – slightly below the 3.23 per cent cut needed to hit its target.
This means that another 32 per cent needs to be cut over the next five years to meet the Scottish Government target of 42 per cent by 2020.
Executive manager for estate operations Carl Symons presented the report at Lerwick Town Hall. He said that the plan should not only benefit the environment, but also “save us money in the longer term”.
He added that penalties could be imposed by government should local authorities not meet reduction targets.
However, Symons admitted that, in the current climate, the task of reducing the council’s carbon emissions at the proposed rate will be “rather challenging”.
Committee chairman Michael Stout said that he appreciated the “hard work” that had gone into the report.
The Lerwick councillor added that the plan should ideally be embedded within the council from a “top-down” level, with seminars a potential idea.
Some topics discussed as possible ways of reducing emissions included car-sharing, bussing SIC employees to and from work and remote working.
Shetland West councillor Theo Smith raised the issue of empty seats going to waste on the daily commute, saying: “If you have 20-30 cars going up to the Ness every day with one person in them, what about putting on a bus?”
Infrastructure manager Maggie Sandison, meanwhile, said: “A practical step we’re looking at is electric pool cars…we would need greater flexibility about using electrical vehicles. We have funding to roll it out as a pilot.”
The report adds that “radical thinking” will be needed for the council to achieve the new target of having annual carbon emission reductions of 4.53 per cent.
The plan will benefit from external investment from the Scottish Government’s central energy efficiency fund.
It came on the same day that the council’s development committee sanctioned a study exploring the development of potential projects involving hydrogen.
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