Conservative-led Wokingham Borough Council has been inspiring local authorities across the UK with their plans to achieve carbon neutrality by 2030.
Council officers from strategy and delivery, together with Cllr Gregor Murray, executive member for climate emergency, received extremely positive feedback after hosting their online conference last week. They discussed how local authorities can achieve carbon neutrality, using their ambitious new Dinton Activity Centre as a fantastic case study.
Over 350 attendees from across the UK, including many representatives from other local authorities, were impressed with the presentations given by panellists from the council, together with their project partners RCDC, HLM Architects and Reds10, who offered a detailed overview of their new net-zero carbon activity centre at Dinton Pastures.
This project is the Council’s first net-zero carbon building which is as part of its ongoing energy efficiency improvements being made to all council buildings.
“Our new activity centre is a great example of what it really means to integrate the commitment of becoming net-zero carbon throughout our operations and how our new policies and commitments can be transformed into practice,” said Cllr Gregor Murray, executive member for climate emergency.
“To deliver this project, a lot of collaboration was needed between the council, the architects and the contractors. This is the type of partnerships that will help us to achieve net-zero carbon by 2030 and we hope that by sharing details of our project we can inspire other local authorities across the country to make these types of changes and help us as a country to reach carbon neutrality.
“We cannot achieve this without our residents and businesses and we’re committed to supporting them to improve their energy efficiency.”
- Reducing carbon dioxide emissions from domestic and business properties is just one of the council’s eight key priorities that are part of its long term goal to reach carbon neutrality by 2030:
- Reduce carbon dioxide emissions from transport
- Reduce carbon dioxide emissions from domestic and business property
- Generate more renewable energy in the borough
- Create a local plan that specifies net zero construction and infrastructure
- Increase the levels of carbon sequestration the borough through greening the environment
- Engage with young people and support sustainable schools
- Reduce waste sent to landfill
- Encouraging behaviour change
The new activity centre at Dinton Pastures supports many of these prioritises, generating more renewable energy and improving the energy efficiency. Many new trees will also be planted and charging points for electric vehicles will also be installed around the centre.
Wokingham Borough Council’s conference ‘From policy to delivery – How local authorities can achieve net zero carbon’ can be viewed at cutt.ly/NhIU64E (part one) and cutt.ly/mhIIaWu (part two).
To find out more about the council’s commitment to climate emergency visit the council’s website and search Climate Emergency. To sign up to the council’s new Climate Emergency newsletter launching in the new year visit cutt.ly/shK8Cpq.
