The council's carbon footprint

For the carbon footprint of County Durham as a whole, visit the County Durham's carbon footprint page.

The council's carbon footprint is calculated at the end of each financial year. The most recent figures cover April 2023 to March 2024. We will update this information at the end of July each year with the latest data.

Targets

The Climate Emergency Target for the council is to achieve Net Zero with an 80% actual reduction on carbon emissions from 2008/09 baseline by 2030. That means that in the financial year 2029/2030, we should have a carbon footprint no greater than 16,104 tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent per year which will need to be offset.

* To be offset to be net zero by 2030

Carbon footprint 2023/24

In 2023/24 we undertook a significant exercise to review the boundary of the council's operations and our carbon footprint. This mainly looked at sites that have converted to Academies and were no longer under the council's control and sites which were leased to businesses.

As part of this exercise, we recalculated the original and recent year's emissions baseline based on the new portfolio to ensure that savings were not unfairly being claimed.

Our carbon footprint is split into three scopes.

Scope 1 is direct emissions, which means any emissions that come as a direct result of us burning a fuel such as oil, gas, or petrol.

Scope 2 is indirect emissions, which here just refers to the emissions produced when our electricity was generated in a power station.

Scope 3 is emissions from areas where we can't have full control. In our current reporting these are mainly staff business travel and losses in transmission of electricity.  A major piece of work is underway to look at the wider supply chain Scope 3 emissions of the council.

Annual Carbon Emissions (tonnes CO²e)

The data in the table above shows a reduction from 80ktCO²e to 29ktCO²e from 2008/09 to 2023/24. That's a reduction of 64%. The graph below shows how that reduction has happened year-on-year.

The chart shows annual carbon emissions from 2021/22 to 2023/24 compared with the baseline year. By 2023/24, emissions have consistently decreased year-on-year, reaching a 63% reduction by 2022/23 and further improving to 64% in the current year. The biggest reduction is seen in emissions from electricity, showing the need for continued focus on reducing emissions from heat and transport. The table above contains all of the data used in the chart. All figures are in tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent. 

The dark colours are based on calculations and the intervening years are estimates based on savings data from before the realigning of the operational boundary exercise. 

Where our emissions come from

The council reports its carbon footprint to central Government as CO2 equivalent (CO2e), in line with Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) guidelines on Environmental Reporting Guidelines.

The footprint includes:

• Gas, electricity, biomass, and oil used in:
  • buildings owned and used by us (the council) including schools, leisure centres, libraries, depots, offices and more
  • buildings leased by us or from us where we pay the utility bills
• Street lighting including bus shelters
• Fuel used by fleet vehicles owned and used by us
• Staff business mileage for road, rail, and air travel

The footprint excludes:

• Domestic properties and council owned housing
• Staff commuting to and from work
• Buildings owned by us which are leased to and operated entirely by third parties including academies, industrial units and business centres
• EV chargers in public car parks
• Building and fleet emissions from outsourced waste contracts
• Procurement of goods and services
• Water use (water use is monitored and well managed, but accurate metering is not always available. The total carbon footprint is estimated to be less than 1% of the total footprint)