Updated Greenhouse Gas Accounting support for councils webinar – summary blog

Introducing the session was Councillor Andrew Cooper, who was a member of the LGA Improvement and Innovation Board’s Climate Change Working Group and is a Councillor at Kirklees Council. Andrew noted that a third of local areas in the UK had just experienced their hottest year on record. For the first time, the global average temperature stayed consistently above 1.5 degrees centigrade above pre-industrial levels. “Keeping 1.5 alive” has been the goal of people working in the climate field since the Paris Agreement in 2015. The fact that this goal is becoming more challenging means that we must all step up our efforts to respond to the climate emergency. 

Andrew also noted how popular the GHG Accounting Tool has been with local authorities since its launch in 2020, and said that user feedback had led to updates that were going to be discussed today. 

Rachel Toresen-Owuor, Senior Director at Local Partnerships presented an overview of the tool, highlighting that since its launch it has been well established across the sector. Rachel explained how the Tool is based on the international standard the Greenhouse Gas Protocol, and that it takes a standardized approach to annual emissions reporting for operational emissions only, using the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero (DESNZ) emissions factors as the underlying dataset (updated annually).  The forthcoming version (available in July 2024) of the Tool includes a Microsoft Power BI template which is auto-populated as you work your way through the tabs, and additional reporting tabs for contract level reporting for Scope 3 emissions from procured goods and services. There is an extensive Frequently Asked Questions document which was updated after the webinar. 

The next part of the webinar involved Annie Bride and Zahida Aslam from Kirklees Council talking about their experiences of GHG accounting. Annie is a Climate Change Officer and Zahida is an Energy and Utilities officer, and they are both relatively new to GHG accounting. Kirklees Council declared a climate emergency in 2019. It aims to be net zero by 2038, which is 12 years in advance of the national target. This provides Kirklees with a focus on both mitigating and adapting to climate change. 

Prior to using the GHG Accounting Tool, the Council used its own spreadsheets to account for emissions.  Now, it uses the Local Partnerships / LGA Tool to account for organisational emissions (not area wide emissions, i.e. those emissions that are produced in Kirklees, but not by the Council). Before deciding upon the Tool, the council carried out research on the options available in the market. The council chose the Tool because it is user friendly and free to use. They knew that a couple of neighbouring councils were also using it, which meant that they could compare data more easily and benchmark their progress against other councils. 

Another benefit of the Tool was having the option of contacting Local Partnerships through the mailbox ([email protected]). The most recent year of accounting was the first time that the council started to report on Scope 3 emissions. They are hoping that in future years they will increase the subcategories of reporting in relation to Scope 3.  

One of the key challenges that the council faced was data collection. Lots of people within the council were working in different areas, and Annie and Zahida had to piece together different bits of information to provide the full picture. Clarity on ownership or the quality and granularity of data can sometimes be an issue. This can result in lower quality data where lots of assumptions need to be made. 

The clear, straightforward functionality of the Tool saved officers a lot of time and reduced stress, by setting out what data was required from across the council services. 

Next up was Huw Russell, a Director in the Climate team at Local Partnerships. Huw has worked in the waste / resource economy sector since 2009, and said that emissions due to council waste operations can be 30 to 40 per cent of a council’s total emissions.  

In 2021 and 2022 UCL and Cambridgeshire County Council produced the Waste Emissions Calculator, using funding from the LGA Net Zero Innovation Programme (NB there is no further funding available under this Programme). The Calculator has been hosted on the Local Partnerships websites since January 2023. It can be used to identify the main sources of emissions linked to waste, but it is not something that should be used for modelling future infrastructure needs. There are other tools available in the market such as WRATE tool (managed by Golders Associates) which can be used for that. There is also a tool specifically for Energy from Waste facilities which has been produced by Tolvik. 

The Calculator gives the option of accounting for emissions in relation to various types of waste collection, treatment and disposal options. Following user feedback, we have added Anaerobic Digestion as a method of treatment. In a two-tier council scenario, where there is a district with responsibility for collecting the waste and a county with responsibility for treating and disposing of the waste, the district Waste Collection Authority (WCA) should account for emissions produced as a result of collection. The county Waste Disposal Authority (WDA) should account for emissions produced as a result of treatment and disposal. A unitary council (i.e. one-tier), which has responsibility for collection, treatment and disposal, should account for all emissions linked to waste. This is linked to two of the key principles of GHG accounting: influence and control. Councils should focus on accounting for emissions that they have control and influence over.  

Huw said that Local Partnerships had received lots of helpful feedback from councils over the last year or so in relation to the Calculator, and that we are working on producing an update, which will be published in June/July after the 2024 carbon emissions factors have been published by DESNZ. 

Councillor Andrew Cooper then led a Q+A session, which fed into the updated version of the FAQ which can be found on the Local Partnerships website.