Green House Gas Emissions

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Green House Gas Emissions

The following graph shows the annual Green House Gas footprint of County Durham from the baseline year of 2005, including the most recent data sets up to 2022. These figures are provided by the Government’s department for Business, Energy, and Industrial Strategy, BEIS. The amounts given are in kilo-tonnes of carbon dioxide, ktCO2. The figures for 2022 show a 54% reduction from 2005 figures.  The data is further broken down into the constituent components of these emissions or carbon dioxide, nitrous oxide and methane.

Climate Emergency Action Plan

On 20 February 2019, Durham County Council declared a climate emergency and pledged to:

    • immediately adopt a new target of 80% by 2030 making significant progress towards making the county and ourselves carbon neutral, taking into account both production and consumption emissions
    • investigate what further actions are necessary to make the county completely carbon neutral by 2050 and pledge to achieve this.

Meeting these two Climate Emergency Targets is the overarching aim of all of the Council’s work on carbon reduction within the authority and across the county.

To ensure that we meet our goals we have drawn up two fully costed action plans, one for the council’s target and one for the countywide target.

Each plan is written in detail for the first two years and presents an outline of what will be required for the rest of the process and will be updated on an ongoing basis. An updated version of the Response Plan will be made public every two years, including two new action plans for the next two years of work toward achieving our two goals.

The Response Plan was submitted to and approved by Cabinet on 12 February 2020, and can be downloaded at Cabinet agenda and minutes 12 February 2020 (item 7).

Further information is available on the Climate- County Durham website and the Durham County Council website on the Climate Change page.

Durham County Council Emissions

The following graph shows the annual carbon footprint of Durham County Council from the baseline year of 2008/09 to the most recent year, 2022/23. These years run from April to March, in line with our financial year. The figures are calculated by the council’s Low Carbon Economy Team using actual invoice data, consumption records, and other information such as business mileage claims. The amounts are shown in tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent, tCO2e. In 2022/23 a reduction of 61% from 2008/09 levels was achieved.

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