West Northants Council Climate Conference Presentation

West Northamptonshire Council

In the session at Northants CALC's Climate Conference (2022) for West Northamptonshire, Leader of West Northamptonshire Council, Cllr Jonathan Nunn, said that responding to the climate crisis was a “key part of our DNA.” He said that the council had signed up to the UK100 (https://www.uk100.org), “a network of highly ambitious local government leaders, which seeks to devise and implement plans for the transition to clean energy that are ambitious, cost effective and take the public and business with them.” and that it took its climate pledge very seriously. He said that WNC has a portal for individuals – and parish and town councils – to make climate commitments and urged delegates to visit it and to encourage residents to as well.

WNC has committed to achieving Net Zero from its own emissions by 2030 and those of residents and businesses by 2045. It has 12,000 council-owned homes that will all need to be retrofitted to be made sustainable, and that will be a huge task. Martin Wilson, Sustainability Manager at WNC, then explained what the council is doing to reduce its carbon footprint and to offset remaining carbon emissions. He explained some of the big challenges, such as managing four closed landfill sites that the council inherited which produce 4,000 tonnes of carbon emissions per year due to the legacy of how they were capped. The aim is to cut this by at least 50% by 2030. 5 Martin explained that the council’s Net Zero targets run concurrently and that he was interested to work with any person or agency, including parish and town councils, to further accelerate the 2045 target. WNC is preparing a Sustainability Plan, which will be published soon.

You can download the WNC presentation below.