Solar panels on a roof of a building

Carbon emitted by West Sussex County Council

We are committed to reducing the carbon footprint of the County Council and this is set out in the Energy Strategy. We aim to continually reduce the tonnes of carbon used within the council.
The target includes looking at reductions in street lighting and signs; energy used to heat, light and power our corporate buildings as well as mileage from staff business travel (including pool vehicles and staff-owned cars).
Related documents include:

March 2020 performance

We have reduced our carbon emissions by 52.9% this financial year. This means we have halved our carbon emissions 3 years ahead of schedule.
 We have achieved this target through a variety of measures. 
In the last quarter the Energy Services Team completed the installation of an energy efficient Combined Heat and Power (CHP) system at Parkside in Horsham. The system generates electricity from gas and uses the heat produced as a by-product to hear the building. It will reduce our carbon emissions by 83.6 tonnes and save an estimated £50,000 of our energy bill over ten years. The installation has been funded through interest-free Salix finance, which is available to public sector bodies to improve energy efficiency, reduce carbon emissions and lower energy bills. The loan will be repaid from the savings made. 
We are also using Salix finance to carry out energy efficiency work, including low energy lighting and heating upgrades in County Council buildings, schools and libraries.  To date we have commissioned £1.3m of works through this scheme.
We have largely completed a roll out automatic meter reading (AMR) for gas and electricity, providing us with more accurate data on energy usage to improve billing and help us to identify more ways of saving energy in our buildings.
We have also invested in renewable energy in locations such as administration hubs and libraries
 Despite this achievements in April 2019, Council acknowledged the threat of climate change and passed a motion that significantly stretched this target and pledged to try to reach net zero carbon emissions by 2030.
We are working on how we will meet this target in future.
We continue to explore measures we can take to make savings. This includes identifying additional energy efficiency opportunities across the corporate estate.

Previous actions include:-
  • Low energy lighting upgrade at Littlehampton Library. We predict an annual financial savings of  £1,767 and an annual carbon saving of 3.4 tonnes.
  • LED upgrade at Horsham Library.
  • Installation of better building management systems, improved insulation and upgraded lighting both in our own buildings but also in street lights across the County.
  • We have invested in renewable energy, and have solar installations on a number of our buildings including Worthing Library, Horsham Library and Northleigh, Chichester.
  • We have also achieved some carbon savings by reducing the number of buildings we own and operate. 
  • Additional funding was secured for some fire station solar projects.