When a council passes any motion, it reflects the importance that the organisation places on the issue and it signals its intent to address it. Therefore, if a council passes a climate-emergency motion the same can be said for this agenda. The use of the term ‘emergency’ is significant and, by definition, this is not a normal motion. If that is the case, then the actions that a council takes should not be normal either.

Pembrokeshire County Council is a member of the Association of Public Service Excellence (APSE) (opens in a new tab) and in 2019 joined APSE Energy (opens in a new tab) – a collaboration of over 100 UK local authorities who are working towards the municipalisation of energy. APSE Energy was established to help support local authorities to make the most of their assets in the energy arena and to help them take a leadership role within it. The APSE Energy publication Local Authority Climate Emergency Declarations: Strategic and practical considerations for climate emergency declarations, targets and action plans (June 2019) has informed the Council’s approach. This recognises that while an emergency declaration deserves an appropriate response, a local authority cannot abandon everything else in order to tackle climate change as there are other legal duties and responsibilities to fulfil as well as locally identified priorities that it has committed to addressing.

A pragmatic approach, therefore, is being adopted for the route towards PCC becoming a net zero-carbon local authority by 2030. This initially focuses on the carbon emissions that are presently measured by the Council; however, it is recognised that this approach needs to be sufficiently flexible to accommodate changing circumstances – including the reporting requirements yet to be introduced by the Welsh Government as part of its ambition for a carbon neutral public sector by 2030 (opens in a new tab). This initial focus is not intended to limit or preclude other potential wider actions to address the climate emergency, and some of these are identified in Appendix 3.

PCC has, over a number of years, adopted proactive programmes to reduce its carbon emissions, and has previously reported performance in its annual reports. It is proposed that these reported emissions initially constitute the scope of the Council’s commitment to become net zero carbon by 2030. These carbon emissions come from:

(a) non-domestic buildings;

(b) streetlighting;

(d) business mileage.

While the Council is committed to significantly further reduce its carbon footprint it also recognises that however energy/carbon efficient its services become it will inevitably still have a residual carbon footprint. This situation is acknowledged by the ‘Net’ in the Net Zero Carbon equation, as it enables this residual carbon footprint to be compensated for by the generation of renewable energy and/or via carbon offsetting (such as by the planting of trees). This can be summarised thus:

Carbon Footprint - Renewable-energy Generation Carbon Offsetting = Net Zero Carbon

ID: 11704, revised 23/07/2024