Reducing council emissions

As the largest local authority in Europe, reducing our own emissions is important for us to demonstrate leadership in responding to climate change. We have made good progress in quantifying, understanding, and reducing our greenhouse gas emissions. Further information on these activities can be found in our Route to Net Zero Annual Report.

Organisations use greenhouse gas accounting to quantify their greenhouse gas emissions. These emissions are usually presented as CO2 equivalents (CO2e), based on their global warming potential. An organisation’s emissions are referred to as their carbon footprint.

The council’s emissions are those which we emit:

• directly, such as burning fossil fuels to heat our buildings and power our vehicles
• indirectly, such as buying goods and services from others

Whilst we have control of our direct emissions, we only have influence over our indirect emissions.

Direct emissions

In the years 2022 to 2023 our direct emissions were ~40,000 tonnes CO2e. Around half of this was from heating and powering our buildings, a third from powering streetlighting, and the rest from running our vehicles.

Breakdown of our direct emissions

To reduce these emissions, we are improving how we manage our:

• buildings by making them more energy efficient and supporting their transition to net zero
• energy consumption
• vehicles by optimising their use, reducing our milage and delivering value for money for the city

Indirect emissions

Whilst our indirect emissions are driven by our activities, they are created by others in our supply chains and fall outside of our immediate control. This makes them much more difficult to quantify and we are currently unable to provide a complete picture of these emissions.

Our indirect emissions are significantly higher than our direct emissions. The main causes are the:

• procurement of goods and services which we use to support our citizens
• energy used by tenants living in our council housing
• energy from the waste plant we use to manage the city’s waste

To reduce these emissions, we are improving:

• our understanding of our procurement activities and supporting our suppliers to reduce their emissions through providing training and advice
• the energy efficiency performance of our council housing to reduce our tenants’ energy consumption and their emissions
• our city’s waste management system to improve how we collect waste, increase recycling rates, and reduce emissions

Page last updated: 25 October 2024