Bristol City Council celebrates carbon reductions

Carbon emissions produced by Bristol City Council have dropped by nearly 80 per cent since 2005, putting the organisation on track for being a carbon neutral organisation by 2025.

A new report, shared by the council, detailing environmental performance for 2018/19 showed that Bristol City Council has also beaten it’s carbon neutral targets for a third year running, with emissions down by over six per cent.

The fall in direct council emissions since 2005 is largely due to making buildings more energy efficient, continued investments in renewable energy infrastructure, such as wind turbines and solar panels, buying cleaner energy for its buildings, and upgrades to street lighting. An increase in the proportion of renewable energy through the national electricity grid has also played a major part in the reduction.

The council says that a range of city-wide projects will help achieve the city-wide carbon neutral target of 2030, including the innovative City Leap initiative, which is the council’s vision to transform Bristol’s energy system and deliver up to £1 billion of investment into energy projects in the coming years.

Kye Dudd, cabinet member for Energy and Transport, said: “We continue to lead by example through our carbon reduction and efforts to clean up our own operations by 2025, paving  the way for a completely carbon neutral Bristol by 2030. It shows the council’s climate leadership in helping to achieve Bristol’s citywide target to be a carbon neutral city by 2030.

“We’re incredibly proud of our energy projects and our ever growing reputation as a leading sustainable city. I’d like to thank officers across a number of teams for their hard work achieving these targets and continuing to deliver projects that take us further in our green ambitions. We are already supporting a number of other private and public sector organisations like Avon Fire and Rescue and neighbouring authorities to reduce their carbon emissions and improve their overall environmental performance and it’s important we lead by example.”