Wiltshire Council has set out the progress it has made towards being carbon neutral by 2030.  Cllr Dominic Muns, Cabinet Member for Environment, said:

“It’s fantastic to see how much we have achieved as an organisation since we pledged to become carbon neutral. However, we’re not complacent and we know there is more to be done to achieve our pledge to become carbon neutral as an organisation by 2030, and to seek to make the rest of the county carbon neutral as well. We know this isn’t something we can do alone, and we’ll need to work collaboratively with residents and businesses across Wiltshire.

“Our achievements to date include but are not limited to, reducing the council’s greenhouse gas emissions by 88%, replacing 87 fossil fuel council fleet vehicles with ultra-low emission vehicles, installing solar panels on council premises with capacity of 3,313 kWp representing a saving of nearly £650k in 2023/24, working with farmers on regenerative land management, energy efficiency retrofit installations on over 200 council homes and 30 carbon neutral or low-carbon affordable homes delivered so far, with 350 in the pipeline.

“We’re also increasing our delivery to support the rest of the county to become carbon neutral and we’ve made good progress already with schemes such as Solar Together to support household clean electricity generation, which has seen over 3,400 registrations by residents and businesses this year alone. This was the third scheme we’ve ran in Wiltshire and all of the schemes combined are estimated to lead to a reduction of 22,000 tonnes of CO2 over the 25-year guaranteed lifetime of the solar panels installed. We’re also delivering the Home Upgrade Grant scheme in partnership with EDF to give help those who on low incomes and not connected to the gas grid to improve their home energy efficiency.

“The climate emergency and our commitment to reducing carbon emissions is considered in everything we do as an organisation and we hope the work we’re doing will encourage and inspire others to do what they can too.”