Tag Archives: NI186

Climate change chart: CO2 data for East Midlands region’s local authorities

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Em_upper_tier_ni186_05_08

Just put this chart together from the data released by AEA through DECC.

The data is *not* for total emissions in each area, but is adjusted to take out large point sources of emissions (power stations, cement works and the like) and motorways. The emissions remaining (basically domestic, transport and commercial) are those used for National Indicator 186, which is reported on by all local authorities and is a ‘core’ indicator for the Local Area Agreements in seven out of the nine upper tier authorities (Derby, Derbyshire, Leicester, Northamptonshire, Nottingham, Nottinghamshire and Rutland).

At the moment that the authorities are largely heading in the right direction; all but Derby reduced their emissions between 2007 and 2008. In the coming days, I’ll be putting up a more detailed comparison with the LAA targets as well as a breakdown of the district councils in the five counties.

CAVEAT 1: eagle-eyed readers will notice these are 2008 figures, yet have only just been released. That’s because there’s a 21-month time delay in the CO2 figures being released (at local authority level anyway, national figures came out in February). While Local Area Agreements end in March 2011, statistics covering that period won’t be available for another couple of years yet.

CAVEAT 2: anyone following these statistics closely should be aware that the baseline year figures (2005) have been adjusted (again) with this data release. All the data in this release (and the chart above) is based on the same methodology, but if you’ve seen any data in previous years this might look a bit different.

Big Society – what does it mean for climate policy?

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UPDATE: The full coalition agreement has been issued today. On renewable energy, there are promises of a grid to support the development of offshore wind power and promotion of a “huge” increase in anearobic digestion energy. As in the earlier agreement, there is no mention of onshore wind farms. The national renewables target is likely to be increased following advice from the Climate Change Committee.

Regional Spatial Strategies will be abolished “rapidly”, and the Infrastructure Planning Commission will be replaced with a new “democratically accountable” body for major projects. Only one wind farm currently in planning for the East Midlands falls into this category

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Yesterday’s announcement of the government’s Big Society programme has removed some of the uncertainty around the Coalition’s local government policy; the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats look set to roll back many of the changes resulting from New Labour’s 2007 Sub National Review. The ?Building the Big Society? document commits government to abolishing the Regional Spatial Strategy and removing planning responsibilities from Regional Development Agencies. This rolls back measures introduced in the Local Democracy, Economic Development and Construction Act 2009 requiring Regional Development Agencies and? Local Authority Leaders? Boards to prepare an Integrated Regional Strategy, bringing together the existing Spatial and Economic Strategies.

building-big-society.pdf

It?s early days to know exactly how this will be implemented, but it seems fair to suggest that the Cameron Government is looking to cut back on the regional tier; the Conservatives? ?Control Shift? (2009) policy paper contained an entire section entitled ?Removing Regional Government?:

Control_Shift_Removing_Regl.pdf

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What might this mean for renewable energy, a significant part of sub-national climate change policy? As mentioned in a previous post, the Conservatives are keen to let the market decide on the mix of energy supplies within a framework of incentives set by government.

Wind has been earmarked as the energy source with greatest potential to contribute to the East Midlands? renewable energy target which local authority planners must currently give consideration to. However, if regional energy targets are scrapped, local authorities may have little incentive to grant planning permission in the face of often vocal and motivated opposition. Power generation sites are not included in the emissions calculations for NI186 which measure many authorities? performance on climate change.?? Any govenrment incentives would have to take these issues into account if wind energy is going to remain a key part of renewable energy growth. (It is worth noting again that the only renewable enrgy source refered to within the initial coalition agreement is anaerobic digestion.)

The Big Society programme marks the new government?s first steps in addressing a fundamental issue which goes to the heart of sub-national climate policy: how best to balance national priorities with greater devolution of power to local authorities. The current approach of regional scale planning to meet regional energy targets appears to be heading towards the exit. If the regional link is to disappear, the challenge for government is reconciling the national renewables target of 15% by 2020 with local accountability and environmental concerns.

What do you need to know about climate change?

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Post originally appeared at http://regenerationem.wordpress.com/

Climate change managed to elbow some other meaty issues out of the headlines yesterday, with the release of the 2050 projections from the UK Climate Impacts Programme, including data specific to the East Midlands. More on that later, but as a few climate change queries have been pinging round the REM office in the last couple of weeks, I thought it might be a good opportunity for a quick catch-up on activity in the region.

If you’re involved in pretty much any area of policy, chances are you need to take account of climate change in your strategy. The region’s Climate Change Programme of Action should be your first port of call: providing the policy context for action in the region, sources of evidence and the regional response in both mitigation (getting our emissions down) and adaptation (responding to the changes which haven’t happened yet, but can’t be prevented). You can also find a handy map of the current partnership arrangements between national, regional and local bodies.

Here at REM, we’re involved in a couple of exciting projects starting this year. IEM is coordinating the production of a document mapping CO2 emissions across the region, as well as the targets for reduction which districts have committed to through within Local Area Agreements. (Click on these links to see more on these indicators and which districts are signed up: NI185, NI186 and NI188). October sees the beginning of a three-year PhD project I’m undertaking at University of Nottingham examining implementation of climate change policy across the region, the first of its kind in the country.

The project is being jointly funded by REM with the Economic and Social Research Council and promises to be a very exciting opportunity to examine how the region responds to a challenging and fast-evolving area of public policy. I’ll be posting a bit more detail on this soon.

…oh yes, about those projected impacts. The full regional breakdown is here, but the broad picture for the region is of hotter, drier summers in conjunction with wetter winters. The East Midlands is already one of the driest regions in the country, so these changes have a potentially significant impact on our large agricultural sector, not to mention the effect of rising sea levels on Lincolnshire. When the figures are laid out like this, hopefully the importance of the issue in all areas of public policy become clear.

New CO2 statistics for East Midlands…which is which?

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Originally posted at http://regenerationem.wordpress.com/

UPDATE: The NI186 figures were revised in November 2009 – more details here.

A new dataset for carbon dioxide emissions by local authority has just been released by the Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC).

Actually, make that two datasets. It’s fair to say that there is potential for confusion between the two, so here is a quick guide to clear up what to use when.

The statistics given most prominence by DECC are for total emissions by local authority area for 2007 (local figures are only available after a two year gap). These figures cover all emissions on an ‘end-user’ basis; that is, only those associated with energy usage within homes and businesses. The emissions from the region’s power stations are allocated to those using the energy being produced (useful for the region as it is a net exporter of energy). The figures for total emissions give the most accurate picture available of how the actions of people within the region are contributing to climate change.

However, this picture includes some sources over which local government has little control; namely transport emissions from motorways and large emitters who belong to the EU Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS). To reflect this, DECC have removed these sources for a parallel set of statistics released in line with National Indicator 186 (NI186)  guidelines. NI186 is a requirement for districts to reduce their per capita emissions which is included in the majority of the region’s Local Area Agreements.

So total figures reflect the scope of the overall problem, but for a focus on local and regional policy it’s the NI186 figures that are the key.

Intelligence East Midlands is working with new data to present some visualisations for the new Climate East Midlands website currently in development. 2007 is the third year of data made available at the local level, so offers an opportunity to begin to study change over time. I’ll be checking back in on the blog once we’ve looked over the figures more carefully. OK, that’s enough of the abstract here’s the latest ‘Act On Co2′ ad from DECC; certainly doesn’t pull any punches…