West Councils Falling Behind Net Zero Deadlines Despite Early Climate Promises

Local TV

Seven years after Bristol led the UK in declaring a climate emergency, new data shows targets across the region are slipping, with emissions rising in some areas.

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00:00Back in 2019, Bristol City Council became the first authority in the UK to formally declare

00:07a climate emergency. Since then, councils across the West, including North Somerset,

00:13Bath and North East Somerset, have set their own net zero deadlines, committing to cut

00:19emissions from transport building, recycling fleets and public services.

00:24Net zero is something we've heard about for the last number of years. It comes from a

00:28concern that we, or many scientists believe, and I share this view, that we are experiencing

00:34strange weather patterns, which is a consequence of the atmosphere heating up, which creates

00:39sort of greater warmth, obviously, but it allows more rain to be held than the atmosphere.

00:43And it does things to the weather patterns, hence the fact we get sort of tremendous rains

00:47and winds and whatever else. So, what is causing this? It's the sort of the buildup of particular

00:52gases from the burning of fossil fuels in particular, so carbon, methane, which comes from a

00:58elsewhere. This is something which is a consequence of industrialisation, which started 250 years

01:04ago. And of course, the modern sort of society, you know, particularly, of course, we drive cars

01:08and whatever else and gas. In North Somerset, a council report presented to its climate emergency

01:15working group confirms the authority is not currently meeting the trajectory required to achieve net zero

01:22by 2030. It also notes that overall emissions rose last year, revising previous reductions.

01:31According to the document, the increase is mainly linked to fuel use from recycling and waste vehicles

01:36and higher emissions from home to school transport. The council says newer electric bin lorries and changes

01:44to recycling rounds, including extending collections to every three weeks, are expected to cut those emissions.

01:51Net zero is an attempt to use devices and burn fuels or to not even to burn them, but to sort of use fuels

01:59which do not sort of produce the sort of the gases, hence the fact, you know, electric cars. But

02:04effectively, there's nothing coming out the exhaust pipe that's going to sort of harm the atmosphere.

02:09But of course, there's a lot more to it than that. One of the biggest contributors to sort of to

02:14gases is the sort of the housing stock we've got. And there's many tens of millions of those, which, you know,

02:20without sort of a major sort of refurbishment, which is going to cost a lot of money, that's going to continue to

02:26contribute because, you know, we tend to use gas boilers and whatever else. So the difficulty that you've got for councils,

02:31and let's face it, most councils, particularly in the West Country, you know, they are cash strapped.

02:36So sort of finding the sort of the additional millions that are required to sort of to incentivise this,

02:42because that's the only way that you can get people to change their behaviour and to sort of to alter

02:46sort of the devices they use and the way that they sort of operate their homes and so on and so forth,

02:50and things like sort of insulation on the roof and the sort of the method of energy for sort of heating.

02:56You've got to sort of provide sort of something to make people want to do this.

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