Climate Emergency Vs Old Sustainability Strategy

What has changed in your approach to Sustainability now that the Council has declared a Climate and Environmental Emergency?

This was the main question put to me a month ago by a Public Sector Best Practice body about my organisations response to the climate crisis. Following my response I was surprised to hear that I was the only Local Authority Officer so far able to actually provide an answer.

The answer I put forward covered two things, urgency and being holistic in order to reach zero. It doesn't matter if you work in the public, private, third sector or run your own business these should apply to everyone!

Urgency

If you look at the Tindal data our area could use up its entire Paris compliant carbon budget within 7 years, so the earlier savings are made the better. Local Authorities love being first to do something.. but as with any emergency it doesn't matter if you are first, it's great kudos winning that badge, but the most important thing is that we all get there.. Better still, even if you are only just nearing the solution, shout out to everyone else to help them find their way too.

Treating something as an emergency is likely to have a huge impact on your work programme and how you manage it. As an example, imagine the typical Gantt chart for your old Sustainability programme, time is on your side so you may have resources stretched over several months or even years.

Now let's rework that programme to what you would do in an emergency. You don't have the time to perfectly line up projects, or spend months working up a perfect programme, you need to deliver now! That nice stretched out Gantt chart will quickly turn into something resembling a solid block. Dealing with this will require far more staff allocated to lead projects, probably right across the organisation and resources front loaded to deliver things quickly.

Think Holistically

Previous sustainability programmes often had gradual % reduction targets, some annual but almost always longterm, for example an 80% reduction by 2050. In contract most of the climate emergency targets that I have seen require an organisation to quickly reach net zero in a handful of years. This shift means that you won't be able to just pick off the easiest things to do and work your way over time towards the difficult ones, you have now to try and find a way to do all of them.

The best example of this difference is how you deal with the energy efficiency of your estate. In the past you may have upgraded the lighting, the next year replaced the boiler, then thought about installing renewables..etc, each year working your way down measures with a diminishing business case until you hit the ones that are just are not viable.

By taking the more holistic approach you need to understand all possible measures (individually financial or not) which can to get you as close to zero (or beyond). If you then blend the payback from these measures and you should then be able to deliver more all in one programme. For example, LED lights often payback in less than 2 years, think Holistic and use the revenue saved during yrs3-5 to improve the business case of other measures.. I've done this in the past and have managed to include triple glazing in a building upgrade package with a combined 8yr payback, individually their was a 44yr payback on the windows, but by blending I was able to achieve an extra 5% reduction on the site which would have never been realised.

Balancing Urgency and being Holistic

This is the real challenge, how do you do things quickly without making it harder to do a better thing later? This is why most organisations need to bring in expertise, follow best practice and share their approach.. The reality is that if you are looking at a problem and asking is this the most we can do and how do we do this the fastest way possible, you are probably 90% there.

Further reading

This is the third article in a set of pieces on Local Councils responding to the Climate and Environmental Emergency, here are the others:

7 Top Tips for Local Council's responding to the Climate and Environmental Emergency

What it means for a Local Council to Declare a climate emergency

The opinions expressed in this article are the author's own and do not reflect the views of the authors employer.