Our progress so far
Salford City Council has been ranked 88th out of 2,103 businesses and organisations in the Carbon Reduction Commitment (CRC) Energy Efficiency Scheme performance league table.
When compared against all other 193 UK local authorities participating in the scheme Salford is ranked joint third and is therefore top of the AGMA authorities in Greater Manchester.
The CRC Energy Efficiency Scheme is the mandatory UK Government carbon trading scheme, under which all participating organisations need to monitor, report and reduce their annual carbon emissions, and pay a fee of £12 for each tonne of carbon emitted. For Salford City Council this applies to all emissions from their non domestic buildings such as offices, libraries, leisure centres and schools.
For 2010 to 2011, performance in the CRC league table is based on two preparatory measures called early action metrics. Salford City Council has 100% of their emissions covered by the Carbon Saver Gold Standard and 77% of their emissions covered by Automatic Meter Readers, giving an early action metric score of 88.5%.
The total reported carbon emissions for Salford City Council for 2010/11 were 33,453 tonnes and as the first year is just a reporting year, there is no requirement to purchase any CRC allowance to cover these emissions. However for 2011 to 2012, allowances will need to be purchased and if these remain the same then the cost is likely to be somewhere in the region of £401,000.
Reducing carbon emissions is therefore a priority for Salford and that's why the authority is serious in implementing energy saving measures to cut emissions. The council has been active in achieving this via its Carbon Management Programme with an ambitious target of reducing emissions by 40% by 2013.
The authority has completed a number of carbon reduction projects across its non domestic buildings, including improved heating controls, variable speed drives, energy efficient lighting upgrades, installing new boilers, loft and cavity wall insulation, and voltage optimisation.
Energy saving initiatives
A host of energy saving initiatives have been introduced in the council over the last few years. Here are some examples of our current schemes and policies.
We have an energy-saving team, the first to be nationally accredited in the north of England. The team help vulnerable people in Salford save energy by installing free home insulation and claiming grants to replace inefficient heating systems. This also reduces energy use and fuel bills. They team also run energy saving workshops in local venues and provide information to help residents save energy themselves.
Energy performance in council buildings and schools has been improved, for example, voltage optimisers, energy efficient boilers and water controls have been installed and insulation improved.
We now use more energy efficient vehicles in our fleet of council vehicles.
We are developing our recycling service to reduce the amount of rubbish we send to landfill, around half the households in Salford have been provided with new recycle bins for paper, glass, cans and plastics. Bins will be distributed in the rest of the city shortly.
We are developing school travel plans to find more environmentally friendly ways to travel to school.
We are committed to a green purchasing policy, for example, all paper must be at least 60% recycled.
This page was last updated on 24 November 2011
