The council's carbon footprint

This page is about the carbon emissions from the Council and its activities. For the carbon footprint of County Durham as a whole, visit the County's page.

The council's carbon footprint is calculated at the end of each financial year. The most recent figures cover April 2021 to March 2022. This webpage will be updated at the end of July each year with the latest data.

Targets

The Climate Emergency Target for the council is to achieve 80% actual reduction on carbon emissions from 2008/09 baseline by 2030. That means that in the financial year 2029/2030, we should have a carbon footprint no greater than 21,154 tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent per year.

Carbon footprint 2021/22

Our carbon footprint is split into three scopes.

Scope 1 is direct emissions, which means any emissions that come as a direct result of us burning a fuel such as oil, gas, or petrol.

Scope 2 is indirect emissions, which here just refers to the emissions produced when our electricity was generated in a power station.

Scope 3 is emissions from areas where we can't have full control. There has been a significant change in this since our baseline year of 2008/09 as Local Authorities no longer have control over all of our schools and some other services. Scope 3 also includes business travel, as we can not control the type of vehicle our staff choose to use, though we do encourage active and public transport or use of our electric pool cars whenever possible. Although some emissions have moved into scope 3 from scopes 1 and 2, the total footprint still covers the same total scope.

Annual Carbon Emissions (tonnes CO²e)

The data in the table above shows a reduction from 105ktCO²e to 45ktCO²e from 2008/09 to 2021/22. That's a reduction of 57%. The graph below shows how that reduction has happened year-on-year.

The chart shows annual carbon emissions from 2008/09 to 2021/22. Reduction from the baseline year has progressed steadily to 57% in 2021/22. The biggest reduction is seen in emissions from electricity, so we need to do more work on heat and transport. The table below contains all of the data used in the chart. All figures are in tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent.

More information on the council's carbon footprint can be found on the Durham Insight: carbon emissions page.

Where our emissions come from

Durham County Council reports its carbon footprint to central Government as CO2 equivalent (CO2e), in line with Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) guidelines on Environmental Reporting Guidelines.

The footprint includes:

• Gas, electricity, biomass, and oil used in:
  • Buildings owned and used by us (the council) including; some schools, leisure centres, libraries, depots, offices and more
  • Buildings leased by us or from us where we pay the utility bills
• Street lighting including bus shelters
• Fuel used by fleet vehicles owned and used by us, such as refuse collection vehicles
• Staff business mileage for road, rail, and air travel

The footprint excludes:

• Domestic properties and council owned housing
• Staff commuting to and from work
• Buildings owned by us which are leased to and operated entirely by third parties including some industrial units and some schools
• Procurement of goods and services
• Water use (Water use is monitored and well managed, but accurate metering is not always available. The total carbon footprint is estimated to be less than 1% of the total footprint.)
• Fugitive gasses (These are monitored separately. It is our intention to include them in the main footprint report in future.)