Climate Emergency Plan 2025-30
1. Introduction
In October 2019, East Sussex County Council declared a Climate Emergency and committed to getting to net zero as soon as possible, and by 2050 at the latest. In 2020, it adopted a Climate Emergency Plan, which was updated in 2023.
This new Climate Emergency Plan covers the five years between 2025/26 to 2029/30 and continues from where the last Plan ended in March 2025.
This new plan:
- Reiterates the Council’s aim to become net zero as soon as possible, and by 2050 at the latest.
- Sets out an Action Plan for 2025/26.
- Explains the governance, monitoring and reporting systems in place.
- Assesses the main risks to delivering the Action Plan.
The unprecedented pressure on the Council’s budget, mainly due to increasing demand and delivery cost for services in social care, means that the focus of the action plan for 2025/26 is on what the Council can deliver as part of its business-as-usual activity, such as replacing end-of-life boilers in its properties and procuring goods, works and services from suppliers.
This position is subject to review as part of the Council’s annual budget-setting process (‘reconciling policy, performance and resources’). The action plan will be updated every year, with the scale of activities to be flexed to fit the budget envelope agreed through the annual Council budget-setting process, as well as in light of changes to legislation and technology.
This new Climate Emergency Plan has been developed in consultation with:
- The Climate Emergency Board, which includes representatives from all Council departments.
- A cross-party working group of elected Members on the Place Scrutiny Committee.
This plan does not cover:
- Carbon emissions generated by the wider community of the county, such as from housing and businesses.
- Embodied carbon, which refers to the carbon emissions associated with the mining, manufacture, transport, construction, repair, maintenance, replacement and deconstruction of materials, such as those required in building works.
- The East Sussex Pension Fund pension fund. This is being addressed by the Pension Committee. The fund itself provides pensions to many other organisations beyond the Council .
2. Community Carbon Emissions
This plan covers actions to address the Council’s own corporate carbon emissions, rather than emissions from the community of East Sussex as a whole. Actions to address community carbon emissions can be found in the East Sussex Climate Change Road Map.
The Council works on a range of programmes and projects, often with a variety of partners, that reduce community carbon emissions. These include actions to reducing fuel poverty through the East Sussex Energy Partnership, improving local bus services, increasing the provision of public on-street electric vehicle charge points, reducing flood risk to residents and businesses, increasing carbon literacy within the community and reducing food waste, amongst others.
3. Terminology
There are six main greenhouse gases (GHGs) that contribute to global warming. Most of these gases arise from combustion of fossil fuels, whilst some originate from refrigeration, agriculture, chemical production and electrical applications.
Each gas has its own global warming potential over a 100-year period (GWP). Carbon dioxide (CO2) has the lowest GWP of all the gases but is by far the most abundant GHG gas, hence the focus on CO2 when discussing climate change. By comparing each gas’ GWP to that of CO2 we can derive a CO2 equivalent value (expressed as ‘CO2e’). For example, CO2 has a GWP of 1, methane has a GWP of 24, therefore we can say that 1 tonne of methane emissions is equal to 24 tonnes of CO2 (expressed as ‘24 tCO2e’). This enables the total global warming potential of a range of greenhouse gases to be presented as a single figure, which simplifies analysis and reporting. In this report ‘carbon’ is used interchangeably with ‘CO2e’.
Figures for CO2e are calculated by multiplying the amount of energy used, for instance in units of kWhs for gas or electricity or litres of fuel used in a vehicle, by the amount of carbon produced per unit. The Council uses standardised conversion factors issued by government to ensure consistency in reporting over time.
The terms ‘carbon neutral’ and ‘net zero carbon’ are sometimes used inter-changeably and sometimes defined in different ways. For the purposes of this report, they are considered to be inter-changeable.
4. UK Climate Change Policy Context
This section presents a short summary of current UK policy relevant to local authorities. For East Sussex, most of this relates to county-wide rather than corporate climate change activity. For a more detailed summary, please see the House of Commons library document ‘The UK's Plans and Progress to Reach Net Zero by 2050’ (November 2023) .
The UK’s primary climate change legislation is the Climate Change Act (2008), which commits the UK to getting to net zero by 2050. The Act includes a system of five-year carbon budgets, forming a pathway to net zero. Budgets are set at least twelve years in advance of the budget period to allow time for planning and investment.
The budgets are developed with the guidance of the Climate Change Committee, an independent body established by the Act, who also monitor and report annually on progress. The Climate Change Committee considers that local authorities have a key role in decarbonising services such as local transport, waste disposal, public buildings and other local services. More broadly, local authorities are seen to have a key role to play in creating change amongst residents and businesses, via their investment and procurement decisions, planning and placemaking responsibilities, and by direct engagement with residents.
The Climate Change Act also requires the UK Government to prepare for a changing climate. The Government must publicly report on the impact of climate change and how it plans to adapt to the risks and opportunities posed by climate change. Every five years, the Government produces an assessment of the risks and opportunities from climate change and how it plans to adapt. The current report, the National Adaptation Programme 3, explains the government’s plans to adapt to climate change during 2023 to 2028, including how it will:
- Adapt infrastructure (for example, our electricity networks and railways).
- Protect buildings and their surroundings (for example, from hotter temperatures).
- Mitigate international impacts on the UK (for example, on food supplies imported from abroad).
There remains considerable uncertainty over some key decisions that can only be taken at a national level, for example over the role of hydrogen for transport and heating, and on the role and responsibilities of different sectors in addressing climate change. Currently, for example, there is no statutory requirement for local authorities to reduce their own carbon emissions or to adapt their services to climate change.
In May 2024 the government launched a consultation about expanding the UK Emissions Trading Scheme to cover waste incineration from January 2028 onwards. This would apply to the Newhaven Energy Recovery Facility (ERF), which is part of the joint waste PFI contract between East Sussex County Council and Brighton & Hove City Council.
Under the government’s current proposal, operators of energy from waste facilities must purchase an allowance for every tonne of fossil carbon emitted by their installation. There is a cap on the number of allowances available to purchase and the cap will decrease over time. This will cause allowance prices to rise, to create a financial incentivise to decarbonise. The cost of the Newhaven ERF participating in the UK ETS may run to millions of pounds per year. We have begun exploring possible ways to reduce these carbon emissions while we await the outcome of the national consultation.
5. The Council’s Carbon Footprint, Targets and Progress to Date
The Council provides services used by all residents in East Sussex, including providing care and support to children, families and the elderly; maintaining most of the county's roads; providing library services; and working to boost the local economy. To deliver these services the Council owns or leases a wide range of assets including schools, offices, day centres, care facilities and depots.
Each year the Council publishes a report on its progress to net zero. The report sets out the Council’s carbon footprint, its carbon reduction targets and the progress it has made in reducing carbon emissions. This climate emergency action plan should be read alongside the latest annual progress report.
6. Five Year Strategic Plan: 2025/26 to 2029/30
This section sets out:
- The guiding principles that the Council is working to with its corporate climate change work.
- The main conclusions from the modelling work carried out in 2022 to identify how the Council can get to net zero and how much that might cost.
- The areas of focus over the life of this 5 year plan.
6.1 Guiding Principles
The following sets out the principles that the Council has adopted to guide the development and delivery of this Action Plan:
- Organisational change: climate change is a cross-cutting challenge. The Council will therefore seek to embed climate change throughout the organisation, from relevant policies and decision-making, through to everyday employee and Member working practices.
- Carbon budget: the Council recognises the importance of early action and will aim to cut carbon emissions as quickly as possible, within the constraints of existing resources.
- Carbon hierarchy: Figure 1 illustrates the carbon hierarchy, which sets out the actions that should be taken to address climate change, from the most sustainable option at the top to the least sustainable option at the bottom. The Council will follow the hierarchy in a pragmatic way, prioritising measures higher up the hierarchy, whilst aiming to cut carbon rapidly and at least cost.
- Prioritisation: the Council will predominantly invest in decarbonising assets that are expected to be retained in the long term and will only invest in assets, such as new boilers, where existing assets are due for replacement and/or are particularly energy inefficient. These are identified through a robust and documented process.
- Making best use of resources: the Council will invest in measures that bring the best carbon and financial return on investment, i.e. measures that will reduce energy bills as well as carbon emissions.
- Mobility: the Council will support transport options for staff and Members that reduce carbon, support equality and do not adversely impact on service delivery.
- Offsetting: the Council will only invest in high quality and verifiable offsets. The Council has developed a framework to guide its investment in carbon offsetting and will review the policy as both best practice and markets evolve.
- New build: the Council will ensure that major construction works are net zero in operation, where practicable, to minimise the risk of increasing the Council’s carbon footprint and having to incur further costs to retrofit buildings later on.
6.2 Modelling Results
In 2022 the Council commissioned Currie & Brown, an international asset management and construction consultancy, to investigate ways for the Council to get to net zero and at what cost for scope 1 & 2 emissions. It concluded that the cost of achieving a 13% per year reduction in emissions would be over £200m and would require most of this be spent in the first twenty years. the payback time would stretch well beyond 2050. This is unaffordable at the present time.
6.3 Focus Areas for this 5 Year Plan
The Council has spent over 15 years investing in measures to reduce scope 1 & 2 carbon emissions, which have contributed to reducing emissions by over 73% between 2008/9 and 2023/24. This means there are now fewer cost effective opportunities to invest in. In addition, the new government has set a target to decarbonise the electricity grid by 95% by 2030. If this is achieved then investing in schemes such as LED lighting and solar PV will provide increasingly smaller carbon savings during the life of this climate emergency plan.
These factors, together with the modelling explained in section 6.2 and the intense pressure as a result of growing demand on the Council’s finances, mean that the Council cannot currently afford to continue investing significant additional amounts of its own capital to reduce scope 1 and 2 emissions. Consequently, the Council is taking a pragmatic approach in this action plan to reducing corporate carbon emissions. This approach includes continuing to embed climate change action and practices into business-as-usual (which also deliver cost savings), and by expanding the range of actions to those that are essential for effective service delivery, notably adapting those Council services that will be impacted increasingly by unavoidable climate change.
The Council’s carbon reduction targets will continue to be to:
- Get to net zero by 2050 at the latest, as this aligns with the UK Government national target.
- Aim for an average of a 13% reduction per year. The Council recognises that this is extremely challenging and may not be achievable, primarily due to the cost, however it also recognises that this is currently the only science-based target available to local authorities that aligns with the Paris Agreement.
In addition, a new target is included in this action plan, which is that by 2030 every relevant Council service will have started integrating climate change adaptation into their service planning, within the constraint of the resources available. The first milestone for this action is set out in table 1 below, namely to ‘develop service-based guidance and tools on integrating climate adaptation and trial these with 3 services’ during 2025/26. The climate risk and vulnerability assessment for the county, which was completed in 2024, will be used to guide which services to prioritise.
7. Annual Delivery Plan: 2025/26
Tables 1 - 13 below set out the climate change mitigation and adaptation actions that are planned to be delivered during the first year of this new plan, in 2025/26. These actions reflect what can be delivered as part of business-as-usual, in the absence of a capital or revenue budget for climate change. The table also sets out the estimated scale of carbon reduction that each action is anticipated to achieve (ie. low, medium or high).
The action plan for 2025/26 provides continuity with the actions set out in the plan covering 2023-25, with the following main changes:
- There will be fewer decarbonisation schemes delivered, because there will be less budget available for capital schemes in 2025/26.
- A power purchasing agreement (PPA) will not be explored further, because the government made it clear in 2024 that PPAs cannot be counted towards an organisation’s carbon reduction targets.
The reason why the plan does not cover more than one financial year is because this is as far as we can reliably predict our finances. The action plan for each subsequent year of this five year climate emergency plan will be developed during each preceding year, which will ensure that the delivery plans are based on the latest data and the lessons learned from each previous delivery plan.
The action plan is not intended to be an exhaustive list of all actions and is deliberately kept flexible so that we can respond to changing circumstances, for example in government policy or funding.
Organisational Change
| Action | Description | Outputs in 2025/26 | Carbon Reduction |
|---|---|---|---|
| Corporate decision-making | Align relevant Council decisions with the commitment to net zero where possible and appropriate | Review relevant Council decisions to align to climate change ambition | Medium |
Buildings
| Action | Description | Outputs in 2025/26 | Carbon Reduction |
|---|---|---|---|
| Decarbonisation schemes | Asset rationalisation, building fabric improvements and heating improvements | Deliver 10 carbon reduction schemes | High |
| Training & maintenance in place | Train site managers and controllers of premises on energy efficiency | 1 x training session | Low |
| New build and major refurbishment | Do not add to the Council’s carbon footprint and future refurbishment costs | Apply the Property Environmental Performance Policy | Medium |
Travel
| Action | Description | Outputs in 2025/26 | Carbon Reduction |
|---|---|---|---|
| Own fleet | Replace smaller fleet vehicles with suitable electric alternatives | Review the business case as vehicle leases need to be renewed | Low |
| Business travel & commuting | Promote staff offers that support cycling, use of public transport and electric vehicles | Increase the take up of existing schemes | Low |
| Business travel & commuting | Install electric vehicle charge points | Review charge point needs and identify potential locations | Low |
Street lighting
| Action | Description | Outputs in 2025/26 | Carbon Reduction |
|---|---|---|---|
| Policies and technologies | Review changes in lighting technology | Monitor technology trials by 3rd parties | Low |
Renewables
| Action | Description | Outputs in 2025/26 | Carbon Reduction |
|---|---|---|---|
| Solar PV on land | Assess options for large scale solar PV on ESCC land | Assess the business case for solar PV on Pebsham landfill site | High |
Procurement
| Action | Description | Outputs in 2025/26 | Carbon Reduction |
|---|---|---|---|
| Reduce emissions from procurement | Embed carbon reduction and adaptation into the procurement of high carbon contracts | Include measurement, reporting and carbon reduction plans in additional contracts (number tbc) | High |
| Review options to decarbonise residual waste treatment at Newhaven Energy Recovery Facility | Commission a report of options, to include waste minimisation through to carbon capture and storage | Report in 2025 will enable the Council to consider the most cost-effective means to mitigate the impact of the UK Emissions Trading Scheme | N/a |
Offsetting
| Action | Description | Outputs in 2025/26 | Carbon Reduction |
|---|---|---|---|
| Offset Framework | Consider the purchase of carbon offsets | Review what suitable offsets are in the market & their cost | High |
Staff and Members engagement, behaviour change and communications
| Action | Description | Outputs in 2025/26 | Carbon Reduction |
|---|---|---|---|
| Carbon literacy training | Promote e-modules on climate change to council and school staff | 100 staff to complete the training | Low |
| Staff and Member engagement | Deliver staff engagement events | 2 x engagement events | Low |
| Climate champions | Support change through teams of champions in each department | 2 x cross-organisation champions events | Low |
Climate change adaptation
| Action | Description | Outputs in 2025/26 | Carbon Reduction |
|---|---|---|---|
| Develop and implement an adaptation plan | Implement the Council’s climate adaptation strategy | Develop service-based guidance and tools on integrating climate adaptation and trial with 3 services | n/a |
Monitoring and reporting
| Action | Description | Outputs in 2025/26 | Carbon Reduction |
|---|---|---|---|
| Quarterly progress | Report on progress | Include within the quarterly Council Plan reporting | n/a |
| Annual review & report | Report on progress to Full Council | Annual report included as part of routine reporting. | n/a |
Lobbying
| Action | Description | Outputs in 2025/26 | Carbon Reduction |
|---|---|---|---|
| Lobby government | Lobby for additional resources for climate change, with partners where appropriate | Use government consultations and existing networks to lobby government for significant, non-competitive and long-term additional financial support | n/a |
Financing Net Zero
| Action | Description | Outputs in 2025/26 | Carbon Reduction |
|---|---|---|---|
| Review financing options | Identify and assess additional sources of finance | Research additional sources of finance, assess the costs, risks and benefits and bid for appropriate sources of external funding | tbc |
Aligning work on Climate Change and Natural Capital
| Action | Description | Outputs in 2025/26 | Carbon Reduction |
|---|---|---|---|
| Produce the Local Nature Recovery Strategy | Complete the Strategy for East Sussex and Brighton & Hove | Complete the preparation of the LNRS, formally adopt it and review delivery options | Low |
8. Governance, Monitoring and Reporting
Key performance indicators for our corporate climate change work are set out in table 14. The main outcomes, which will be measured and reported on annually, will be:
- The Council’s progress in getting to net zero.
- The extent to which it is adapting to the unavoidable effects of climate change.
| No. | Outcome | Actions | KPIs |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Climate change embedded into decision-making | Council decisions to align to climate change ambition | % of decisions that support climate mitigation and/or adaptation. |
| 2 | Carbon reduction & cost savings achieved | Decarbonisation schemes | 1) number of schemes delivered. 2) carbon reduction achieved. |
| 3 | Carbon reduction & cost savings achieved | Staff travel actions | 1) % of commuting journeys made by sustainable modes. 2) % of managed fleet and grey fleet mileage made by EVs. |
| 4 | Carbon reduction & cost savings achieved | Procurement actions | 1) % of carbon contract emissions reported by suppliers. 2) % of contract emissions covered by contract carbon targets. 3) reduction in the procurement emissions baseline (absolute & intensity). |
| 5 | Increased awareness and engagement of staff in net zero | Staff and Member engagement, behaviour change and communications actions | 1) % of staff who are aware about ESCC’s net zero targets. 2) % of staff that agree that climate change is being embedded into their team’s way of working |
| 6 | Carbon reduction & cost savings achieved | Funding and financing secured | 1) Value of external funding secured. 2) Value of 3rd party capital secured. |
| 7 | Services adapted to unavoidable climate change | Adaptation plans | Number of services with a climate change adaptation plan. |
Oversight of the Climate Emergency Action Plan is through the officer Climate Emergency Board, which includes representatives from each department and is co-chaired by the Chief Operating Officer and the Director for Communities, Economy and Transport. Progress in delivering the actions in tables 1 - 13 will be reported quarterly, as part of reporting on progress in delivering the Council Plan and the Portfolio Plans. Progress against the KPIs in table 14 will be reported annually.
9. Risks and Challenges
Table 15 [30.3 KB] [pdf] summarises the key risks to delivery of the action plan and how the Council will manage them.
10. Glossary of Acronyms Used
| Acronym | |
|---|---|
| CO2 | Carbon dioxide |
| CO2e | Carbon dioxide equivalent |
| ERF | Energy Recovery Facility (waste incinerator) |
| ETS | Emissions Trading Scheme |
| GHG | Greenhouse gas |
| GWP | Greenhouse warming potential |
| LED | Light Emitting Diode (low energy lighting) |
| PV | Photovoltaic (electricity generating solar panels) |