Amber Valley Borough Council has slashed carbon emissions meaning its goal to hit net zero by 2030 is 'on track'.
Taking climate action, the council has rolled out a range of energy saving measures across its patch after securing a government grant of £700k. The Public Sector Decarbonisation Scheme (PSDS) grant gave the green light for a series of carbon reducing measures to be installed.
Targeting some of the biggest emitters within its building stock, including the council’s Ripley HQ offices and adjoining Old Town Hall, the measures have improved energy efficiency by over 40% and also reduced running costs.
Councillor McCabe, said of the clean-up project: "The energy efficiency improvements demonstrate our commitment to cut our carbon emissions and put us on track to hit our net zero target by 2030 as a well as reduce our operating costs – it's a win, win on all fronts!"
As part of the measures, Ripley’s Old Town Hall received new double-glazed windows, loft and fabric insulation, and efficient LED lighting.
Replacing the old fossil fuelled gas boilers at the Ripley offices, is an 120kw ground source heat pump, while the building’s IT server room has been reconfigured and the cooling system has been replaced with smaller high efficiency air conditioning units.
An independently verified review of the council’s carbon emissions now shows massive improvements from the baseline figure that was measured in 2018/2019, which has reduced from 520.85 tonnes of carbon to 297.15 tonnes for the most recent full year 2022/2023.
It equates to a whopping 42.9% decrease in carbon for the council’s business operations.
Councillor McCabe said: "This has been a fantastic team effort. The initial figures in the report were a call to action and we’ve all worked hard to achieve success – it's success for all and an initiative that we want to expand, over the time, to more constituents."
Contact the team directly on 01773 570222 or email enquiry@ambervalley.gov.uk
