Decision - Carbon Reduction Commitment

1.      That the Cabinet Committee agrees that:

(a)       The City Council’s Carbon Management Programme Strategy & Implementation Plan is revised to take account of the CRC, as well as Display Energy Certificates.

(b)       Further work is done to establish how schools will participate fully in the CRC.

(c)       The budget planning process will need to identify the required funding to purchase the CO2 emissions allowances for 2011/12.

(d)       The officer Carbon Trading Group explores the potential to introduce internal carbon trading for directorates for 2010/11 onwards.

1.      There are important, corporate implications of the CRC to the council: mandatory, fines for non compliance, initial costs, budget uncertainty and impacts, schools inclusion, reputation.

2.      Councillor Janio has requested that officers investigate internal carbon trading mechanisms.

1.      The council has no option about whether or not to participate in the CRC.

2.      A dummy trading scheme could be established rather than real internal carbon trading, to see what the implications of trading would be for directorates, and potentially to prepare them for full trading in the future.  The council adopted this approach corporately by participating in the “Carbon Trading Councils” dummy carbon trading scheme last financial year and this helped to develop officers’ understanding of the processes and issues.  However, this could also be resource intensive to introduce, but potentially without real emission reduction benefits.

3.      Alternatively a pilot scheme could be introduced in one directorate or service area.  This would still require some additional resourcing and the selection process might prove controversial.

4.      The development of strong business cases for the appointment of an Energy Data Officer and for the Schools Carbon management Officer job to be made permanent would see this work better resourced.