Carbon reduction: acting on our own emissions and going beyond

by Franco Gonzalez , Carbon Analyst at Oxfordshire County Council

Good data, not just good intentions

 Back in 2019 when Oxfordshire County Council decided to declare a Climate Emergency we established two interrelated objectives. The first was to reduce our own operational carbon emissions to Net Zero by 2030, the second to support Oxfordshire to achieve county-wide Net Zero emissions by 2050.

 Whilst setting targets is an important step, an organisation also needs to have in place good data collection and carbon accounting processes.

Carbon accounting involves identifying the sources of emissions for an organisation and measuring them on a periodic basis. This is an important step as this is how we monitor progress on achieving our climate change objectives.

However, as many organisations can testify, developing processes for carbon accounting is not a straightforward journey. Given the importance of acting immediately, perfect is the enemy of good, and not having perfect data should not be a barrier to commit to act to address climate change. Therefore, having ‘good enough’ data has been the basis of action at Oxfordshire County Council, whilst committing to continuously improve our data and our processes as we go along our journey to Net Zero.

As a local authority we not only consider our own emissions, but we must also lead by example, and work to influence others in Oxfordshire to act on climate change.

The Local Government Association estimates that authorities’ own emissions account for about 2% of countywide carbon emissions, but that they can influence about 33% of the total emissions in their jurisdiction area. In this article I will discuss the first two areas of action and influence highlighted in the figure below: our own operations and our supply chain.

We hope that sharing some of our milestones in this journey will also encourage other organisations, large and small across Oxfordshire, to start accounting their own carbon impacts and implement their carbon emission reduction efforts.

Getting our own house in order

Both our 2030 and 2050 targets became the basis of our 2020 Climate Action Framework, where we set out how we will achieve these objectives. To keep track of our 2030 target, we developed a Carbon Management Plan which outlines our decarbonisation actions and the resulting carbon reduction pathway for the following years.

We operate about 120 corporate sites, more than 60,000 HEAs - highway electrical assets (streetlights, traffic signals, illuminated signs & bollards among others), 402 fleet vehicles and our staff drive every day to deliver the statutory services it is our duty to provide to Oxfordshire. These and the rest of our operation emissions altogether accounted in 2019 for 13,304 tonnes of CO2e each year.

Street lighting and the rest of those HEAs represented about half of our total emissions in 2019 and therefore we made it one of our top priorities for action. In the last few years, we have replaced 54,556 streetlights with LEDs - just over 90% of our stock across Oxfordshire. In 2023 this LED replacement program along with the decarbonisation of UK’s electricity grid contributed to slashing our street lighting emissions by half OCC’s compared to 2019.

The second largest category of emissions for us has been our properties, at 28% of our operational carbon emissions in 2019. Our decarbonization approach here has been based on promoting energy efficiency practices in our operations, rationalizing our underutilized property, delivering low-carbon retrofit measures to our buildings, moving towards smart buildings through leveraging our energy data, and adhering to new low-carbon design standards in any new building work. In addition, we are exploring opportunities to support local renewable energy generation by purchasing the energy for our estate from these local suppliers.   

So far eight of our corporate sites have undergone retrofitting, using a combination of energy efficiency and heat decarbonisation measures, thanks to being awarded Public Sector Decarbonisation Scheme funding. We have conducted a further 46 energy efficiency audits and we’re progressing with more audits that will identify a full suite of measures for all buildings in our estate. These projects will deliver further carbon reduction in 2024 and beyond.

The remaining 21% of our operational emissions are related to our fleets and the miles driven by our staff. The fleet emissions come from council owned vehicles whereas staff emissions are the result of the use of their own vehicles for delivering OCC services.

Our approach to fleet decarbonisation prioritises avoidance of emissions by rationalising the fleet, encouraging sharing of resources, and replacing fossil fuels with zero tailpipe emissions alternatives.

The first step, as ever, is making sure we understand the situation with good data – so we are putting in place an integrated fleet management system and a dedicated team to centralise all fleet information. This ‘One Fleet’ system will allow us to rationalise fleet usage and support the development of a fleet replacement plan. We have established an ‘electric by default’ policy that stipulates that we will work to phase out petrol and diesel vehicles in our own fleet, ensuring where operationally feasible all new vehicle acquisitions are zero-tailpipe emissions by default.

We will consider other ultra-low emission alternatives where zero-tailpipe emissions are not feasible. To minimise the cost on the public purse we will undertake this transition as vehicles come up for renewal.

For HGVs and other specialist vehicles such as fire engines, there aren’t yet straightforward solutions for businesses looking to reduce their emissions profile.  We are therefore currently participating in innovation projects such as the Innovate UK funded project HySPERT (Hydrogen Special Purpose Electric Vehicle Platform for Refuse Collection and Fire Trucks). We’ve worked with technology partner ULEMCo Ltd on a feasibility study for a hydrogen fuel cell fire engine.

Our decarbonisation approach for staff business travel prioritises:

• avoiding travel (e.g. by meeting online when possible and offering agile working solutions);
• reducing miles (e.g. by optimising routes);
• replacing travel in cars with either active travel i.e. walking and cycling (e.g. by providing a pool of e-bikes for staff use) or public transport (e.g. using buses and trains).
• When needing to use a car, staff are encouraged to use electric pool vehicles and to car share.

Our objective is to reduce our travel related emissions whilst ensuring the quality of our service provision.

Scope 3 emissions - how we're using our relationships to accelerate change

In June 2023, our cabinet approved our Supply Chain Carbon Emissions policy. This establishes a framework for us to influence and also to support our supply chain businesses in monitoring and reporting their carbon emissions and establishing carbon reduction plans. This framework, which can be accessed here, consists not only in our suppliers reporting their emissions and communicating carbon reduction plans but also in a commitment to collaborate to find carbon reduction solutions and innovations that can support our collective journey to Net Zero.

To identify which suppliers we should approach first, our initial step was to identify those high emissions intensity areas of our supply chain. We did this through conducting a preliminary assessment of our supply chain emissions by calculating them through what is known as an ‘expenditure base’ approach. This method entails the use of carbon factors that account the amount of emissions produced per pound spent in our procurement of goods and services.

Carbon factors are calculated based on environmental economics models known as ‘environmentally extended input-output' models - produced by British universities and the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs . This technique combines macro-economic data on the output of industries and the trade between them with data on the total emissions arising directly from each industry to make estimates of the direct and supply chain emissions attributable per unit of output of each industry.

This method is not perfect as changes in prices as well as inflation, will affect these calculations. It also doesn’t account for the improvements that each sector may implement before these factors are updated (these are published by DEFRA every year with a three-year lag, 2020 figures were published in 2023). Nevertheless, they provide a time-efficient method to make a first assessment of a supply chain’s carbon impact. Again, perfect is the enemy of good.

Based on this initial assessment we have identified the top emitting procurement categories in our supply chain, and which suppliers are the largest emitters. In 2023 we started a process of engagement with these suppliers to encourage them to begin their own journey of assessing their emissions and take remedial action. Happily, we have found that some of our suppliers are ahead of us in terms of carbon management capabilities, though other suppliers are just starting their own processes of estimating their carbon emissions. We are learning from those ahead of us and supporting those lagging behind by sharing our own experiences.

An example of the former case is our ongoing collaboration with our main highways contractor. This supplier is currently supporting us in adopting the principles for assessing the carbon impact of infrastructure projects and schemes from a “whole life carbon” approach, through the PAS2080 standard. The whole life cycle approach takes into consideration all the carbon impacts through the life of an infrastructure project - from the production of raw materials, through construction, operation and use - to the final disposal of materials.

 On the other end of the spectrum, we have one of our main suppliers in the adult care sector, who are just initiating their journey to assess the carbon impact of the energy demand in their buildings. We are supporting them by sharing our ten years of experience in deploying and analysing automated meter readings in our own buildings portfolio.

These engagements have the objective of replacing our first initial estimates of our supply chain carbon emissions - calculated through economic activity - with assessments based on the actual activities conducted by our suppliers.

 At the same time we expect that our suppliers engage in a similar way with their own suppliers - and therefore climate action can cascade through supply chains, gain momentum and accelerate. Our actions will not be perfect and we will probably make mistakes, but sharing our experiences as a collective will help those coming behind us to take action faster.

Based on recent research, we know that small and medium enterprises have restricted capability to engage with Net Zero. To support SMEs in their journey to Net Zero, the UK government has launched the UK Business Climate Hub. This serves as a one-stop-shop for businesses who have yet to start making changes, as well as those who are already taking action to reduce emissions but want to take things to the next level.

By leading through example, through our work in our supply chain and throughout Oxfordshire, at Oxfordshire County Council we want to empower collective climate action. We hope that this article can help motivate other stakeholders across the county and our supply chains to walk with us in our collective journey to Net Zero.  

Please do get in touch if you have any questions or I can be of any help.

Franco Gonzalez

[1] These factors are used by DEFRA to report on UK’s Carbon Footprint, which is reported every year with a three year lag, the 2020 figures were reported in 2023. UK and England's carbon footprint to 2020 - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk)