To consider the adoption of the Carbon Management Plan which outlines how the Council intends to meet the stated target of a 20% reduction in carbon emissions from the Council’s operations by 2014/15, from a 2008/09 baseline.

That the Carbon Management Plan, as set out in Appendix A of the report of the Head of Housing and Community Safety be adopted.

Maidstone Borough Council was accepted onto the Carbon Trust’s Local Authority Carbon Management Programme Phase 8, which commenced in June 2010 and ran until March 2011. The programme works with Local Authorities by providing technical and change management support to help them realise carbon emissions savings from the services they provide.

The programme comprised 5 set stages;

1. MOBILISE – Building the team and setting the scope
2. BASELINE & FORECAST – Measuring baseline and goals
3. IDENTIFY & QUANTIFY – Identifying the risks and prioritising actions
4. APPROVE PLAN – Designing a cost effective strategy
5. IMPLEMENT THE PLAN – Embedding carbon reduction into daily business

The council signed up to be part of this programme to ensure that the internal carbon reduction targets were met. Although progress was being made, it was felt that a more formal approach looking over a 6 year period was needed to enable, for example, longer term projects to be structured into reaching the targets.

The result of the council’s participation on this programme to date is the production of the Carbon Management Plan, as set out at Appendix A of the report of the Head of Housing and Community Safety, which sets out the activities that will be carried out over the next 6 years to ensure that the carbon reduction targets are met and that carbon management becomes embedded throughout the organisation.

The Carbon Management Plan is set out as follows;

1.  Introduction

2.  Carbon Management Strategy

-  Sets Carbon Management in the context of national and local drivers and other relevant strategic initiatives. It states what MBC is aiming to achieve and the key themes of activity that will enable these targets to be reached.

3.  Emissions Baseline and Projections

-  Provides detail on the scope of emissions included in the baseline and the financial and carbon implications of achieving the targets.

4.  Carbon Management and Projects

-  Outlines the individual actions and projects that will be undertaken to reduce the carbon footprint of MBC and achieve the targets outlined in previous sections.

5.  Implementation

-  Covers how the planned projects will be financed and how MBC plans to embed carbon management through the organisation. Finally it covers how the Carbon Management Plan will be delivered.

The headline facts to note from the Carbon Management Plan are:

-  The baseline being used is from 2008/09 and equates to 5,840 tonnes of CO₂.

-  Maidstone Borough Council has a target emission reduction of 20% over the 6 years of the Carbon Management Plan.

-  The Value at Stake[1] over the plan period is 5,295 tonnes of CO₂ and £1.6 million.

-  Maidstone Borough Council has identified projects which will achieve 88% of the target over the plan period. For a detailed breakdown please see p.17-20 of the Carbon Management Plan. In terms of a breakdown of these projects over the 6 years of the plan, they equate to achieving the following percentage of the target in each year;

o  23% of the target in 2009/10

o  14% of the target in 2010/11

o  23.2% of the target in 2011/12

o  3.4% of the target in 2012/13

o  18.1% of the target in 2013/14

o  5.7% of the target in 2014/15

-  The total funding required to implement the projects identified in the plan is c. £275,537.

-  A number of actions have been identified for embedding carbon management within the organisation and include projects such as the development of a green champion’s network, a green travel plan and a communications plan.

The draft Carbon Management Plan has been accepted and endorsed by the Carbon Trust. The draft Plan has been considered by the Environment & Transportation Overview and Scrutiny Committee and the Committee have recommended that they receive a six monthly review of progress. The Plan will also be presented to the LSP Environmental Quality delivery group to ensure partners proactively support the Plan and its delivery.

The Carbon Management Plan could aim to achieve a lower percentage reduction in carbon emissions over the plan period. This is not thought appropriae as in November 2008 Cabinet agreed reduction targets of 3% per annum and this plan sets out a structured approach which will help to work towards achieving those.

Equally, the draft Carbon Management Plan could have aimed to achieve a higher percentage reduction in carbon emissions over the plan period. Whilst it was hoped at the start of the process that this might be possible, after the results of a Carbon Trust survey which indicated that the energy management at Maidstone Leisure Centre (which makes up 29% of the baseline) was an example of best practice, achieving more than a 20% reduction on the remaining 71% of the baseline was considered to be unachievable.