Setback for green cause
9:48am Thursday 28th August 2008
THE green cause in the county has suffered a huge setback with Herefordshire Council’s shock admission that six years of work to cut carbon emissions has been a waste of time.
Figures used to launch the pioneering, example-setting programme in 2002 were faulty from the off and now there’s no real way to measure what progress, if any, it has made.
So the programme has to start over again with fresh figures and the council faces calls to up its commitment to the environment while it still can.
The admission of the programme’s apparent failure comes in a letter the council’s director of environment Michael Hainge sent to the Herefordshire Civic Forum – a consortium of Hereford, Leominster, Ledbury, and Ross-on-Wye civic societies and Kington Historical Society – that first questioned its performance.
In the letter, a copy of which has been seen by the Hereford Times, Mr Hainge put the problems with the programme down to “deficiencies” in its 2002 baseline figure and the number of staff changes since.
As a result, said Mr Hainge, there was no real way to work out how the programme had done against its carbon reduction targets over the past six years.
The Forum now wants a full debate on the council’s climate change agenda and commitment to the green cause.
But Robert Oliver, chairman of Leominster Civic Society, said that with six wasted years over carbon reduction and a “weak” planning policy on the environment, it was hard to take seriously what significant progress the council could make from a fresh start.
“The council needs to be much more positive and committed in its climate change agenda than it seems to be at the moment. It is clear that there is very little joined up thinking going on,” said Mr Oliver.
Launched in 2002 as both a model of its kind and an example to the county, the council’s programme to cut its carbon emissions set a year-on-year reduction target of 1.25%, taking the total to 12.5% by 2012.
But it is only since April this year that the council has started recording any reduction using new national indicators rather than its own. The first return on these new figures, which in turn will set a new baseline, is expected early next year.
Further problems are already apparent, among them: l The difficulty of assessing vehicle fuel use in relation to service delivery.
l Taking an accurate assessment of gases released from landfill sites where the contents are not known.
l Different meter reading arrangements, bill cycles and “inefficiencies or inaccuracies” in electricity supply.
In 2006 the Council successfully bid for up to £200,000 in match-funding money to cut carbon emissions from its offices and around £211,000 of combined council and match-funded cash has been committed to this work to date.