Scarborough Borough Leaders Back Carbon Negative Plan

Sunday, 18 December 2022 07:00

By Matthew Pells with additional reporting from Anttoni James Numminen, Local Democracy Reporter

Plans to achieve a carbon-negative North Yorkshire have been endorsed by senior Scarborough councillors.

A plan to make North Yorkshire Carbon neutral by 2034 and carbon negative by 2040 has been endorsed by Scarborough Borough Councils cabinet.

The council's climate change programme manager - Harry Baross - outlines some of the aims of the plan.

The road map calls for retrofitting 250 thousand homes with energy efficiency measures, having over 75 percent of vehicles become electric and planting over 37 thousand hectares of trees.

Harry Baross - says the plan is going to require buy in from many organisations.

The route map was drafted in consultation with more than 40 organisations including national park authorities, private sector partners, business networks, academia, and community groups.

The report adds that Scarborough Council has already spent £1.69m of funding to improve the energy efficiency of more than 560 properties, used £260,000 of funding to deliver 48 electric vehicle charge points across the borough, planted more than 9,500 trees in the past five years, and provided “training and career opportunities for those wishing to work in the offshore renewables sector”.

Speaking at the cabinet meeting on Tuesday, December 13, Harry Baross, the authority’s climate change programme manager said:

“These actions span the range of teams and services at the council, showing how thoroughly climate change activity has been embedded into our organisation.”

He added:

“On operational emissions, we are expected to drastically reduce our carbon emissions as a council this year, as a result largely of the hydrotreated vegetable oil trial in many of our diesel vehicles.

“This biofuel has around 90 per cent lower emissions than diesel and could be responsible for reducing our emissions by around 800 tons of carbon dioxide equivalent.”