Older Buildings Increase Scarborough Borough Council's Carbon Footprint

Friday, 24 June 2022 06:00

By Matthew Pells

The amount of Carbon emitted by Scarborough Borough Council has gone up this year after falling during the lockdown.

The council's Climate Change Review says most of the rise is down to activities that were paused during lockdown restarting.

But Climate Change Programme Manager - Harry Baross - says it's also party due to the council taking over the running of some of the borough's older buildings.

A report presented to Councillors said:

"The carbon footprint declined in 2020/21 as a result of whole-scale reductions in Council activity. In 2021/22 the carbon footprint rose
substantially, largely due to taking on the operation of Scarborough Spa and Whitby Pavilion. Excluding these buildings and portraying a more like-for-like carbon footprint for 2021/22 has a gross footprint of 2485.80tCO2e and a net footprint of 1667.48tCO2e, bringing the footprint more in line with 2020/21."

The council's Climate Change Programme Manager - Harry Baross - says some of the changes to working practises made during the lockdowns are continuing to have positive effects.

The council report says that overall Carbon dioxide emissions in Scarborough in 2019 fell to 4.4t per capita. The large scale trends remain that electricity emissions are seeing the greatest reduction, while transport emissions remain slow to fall. A recalculation of land use emissions in the national assessment show that land use in the borough has transitioned from being a source of carbon dioxide in 2005 to a carbon sink in 2019. The largest single contribution to Scarborough’s carbon emissions remains gas use in domestic properties.

The report states:

"Scarborough’s carbon dioxide emissions per capita remain the lowest in North Yorkshire, which has a regional average of 6.0t per capita, and below the national average of 5.9t per capita."

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