What we’re doing to help tackle climate change

We have a 2030 target of becoming carbon neutral within our own operations.

Creating a culture of sustainability

We have a programme of installing solar panels and air source heat pumps at our leisure centres.
The electricity for the majority of our our buildings is 100 per cent from renewable energy.
We’ve had 62 EV chargers installed at our car parks.
We have electric vehicles including a food waste truck and two vans.
We give grants for many community climate projects.
We stopped using plastic cups at our council office building in Abingdon. Paper cups are provided for the public. Staff use reusable cups.
We installed drinking water fountains for both staff and the public at our office.
Our arts centre, Cornerstone, is plastic free. All drinks cups are ecoware and fully biodegradable as are the coffee, cups, cup lids and any disposable cutlery.
We promote community and private car clubs.
We lobby government for climate change action (see our official correspondence page)
We provide training for staff and councillors on the climate and ecological emergencies.

How this works day to day

We aim to ensure that climate and ecological implications are considered in all decisions and areas of work. Every Cabinet, Council and Committee report includes a report from staff using a climate impact assessment tool which measures 10 criteria – greenhouse gases, air quality, sustainable transport, land use change, biodiversity, soil and waterway health, climate change adaptation, energy use, sustainable materials and waste. The tool generates a colour-coded ‘climate wheel’ (see example below) which is included in a report alongside a short summary.

What are we doing to help biodiversity?

The council has taken action on biodiversity, creating new wildlife habitats and boosting populations of species for many years. This has been achieved:

By looking after land that we control
By encouraging tree planting
Managing areas of wildflower meadows
By working in partnership with a wide variety of organisations
Through the land use planning system
By providing grants to local community organisations.

Cutting our carbon emissions

We have cut our carbon emissions by 47 per cent since 2009 by changes such as:

investing in energy saving measures in our leisure centres
installing LED lighting at Cornerstone Arts Centre
replacing our waste vehicles with more efficient models
moving to hybrid working and holding more meetings online
by moving to shared, smaller office premises

This is a significant reduction and represents continued and sustained long-term progress in lowering greenhouse gas emissions arising from the council’s operations.

We have published our Nature and Climate Action Plan 2025-2029 which outlines what we are doing to further reduce our carbon emissions to meet our targets of becoming carbon neutral as a council by 2030.

We will continue to monitor our progress on our carbon emissions, and will publish an Annual Greenhouse Gas Emissions Report.

Further information is set out in our Corporate Plan and Local Plan.