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Environmental reporting

Reporting Organisation

Warwickshire County Council is a Tier 1 English local authority providing a range of educational, social, environmental and other services to 0.5m people in the south east of the West Midlands region. It employs circa 18500 staff equating to just over 13000 full time equivalents including almost 5500 teachers.

Main address is:
Shire Hall
Warwick
CV34 4SX

Reporting Period

01 April 2010 – 31 March 2011

Change in Emissions

The overall emissions total is up by 2.5% on the revised 2008-9 baseline.

The accuracy of our data has improved year on year since 2008 and some of this increase simply reflects more accurate data capture than in the baseline year. In addition over the past two years there has been a 13% increase in electricity consumption owing to increased use of IT equipment, the opening of more trunk roads with street lighting and more use of air conditioning. We are confident emissions are now being recorded more accurately than ever.

Over the last two years there has been a 7% reduction in fossil fuel consumption (mainly gas used for heating buildings and diesel fuel used in County owned vehicles) due largely to property rationalisation as part of efficiency savings efforts as well as improved insulation in the remaining buildings.

Approach

We have followed the government’s guidance on how to measure and report greenhouse gas emissions.

Organisational Boundary

We have used the financial control approach.

Operational Scopes

We have measured our scope 1 and 2 emissions. The figures for 2008-9 and 2010-11 are based on more accurate data capture (95%) than 2009-10 which were extrapolated from circa 80% data capture.

Base year

Our base year is 2008-9. The figures for this base year were calculated using the NI185 reporting criteria and guidance. Figures used by DECC for the original WCC baseline on their website omitted the electricity used for street lighting and we discovered inaccuracies in the base data supplied for vehicle fleet emissions. We have recalculated the baseline figure for owned transport and incorporated street lighting emissions and use these revised baseline figures here.

Targets

In April 2010, Warwickshire County Council’s Cabinet approved a target of reducing corporate CO2 emissions by 15% per Full Time Equivalent (FTE) employee by 2015 against a 2002-3 baseline.

Intensity Measurement

We have chosen not to post an intensity measurement as guidance on this has been inconsistent. Internally our Cabinet prefers tonnes of CO2e per FTE, the ERV Kitemark asked us to use net revenue whereas CRC talks about gross costs.

External Assurance Statement

We were awarded the Energy Reduction Verification Kitemark by BSI in June 2011. This was based on gas and electricity related CO2 emissions for 59% of our estate.

Carbon Offsets

We do no carbon offsetting as the costs would be borne from Council Tax receipts and there is fierce competition for these funds.

Green Tariffs

We purchase no green tariff electricity due to its higher cost. The generation part of our supplier (Scottish and Southern Energy Group), SSE Generation Ltd generates more renewable electricity than any other energy company in the UK.