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How you can take action
Navigate through the sections below to find guidance, tips and resources designed to inspire action.
Climate Actions for Councils
We're facing a climate emergency, and there is just a short window of opportunity left to avoid irreversible climate breakdown. The good news is, we know what the solutions look like. It's down to our leaders at local and national level to implement them.
We've created a list of suggested actions for councils to help cut carbon emissions at the rapid pace needed and build a greener and fairer society for everyone. Actions are shortlisted based on the need for carbon reductions and climate resilience alongside wider benefits to society.
Energy & Buildings
Enhance energy efficiency in buildings to cut energy demand and costs.
- Upgrade council buildings with energy-efficient technologies.
- Encourage and support local residents and businesses to adopt improved insulation, LED lighting, and modern heating systems.
- Facilitate the development of community-led renewable energy sources like wind, solar, and hydroelectric power.
- Use the council estate to generate energy for the council and the broader community, where possible.
- Promote zero carbon energy generation in the local development plan and planning requirements.
- Oppose fracking and other fossil fuel extraction, new fossil fuel infrastructure, and oppose the use of gas extracted through fracking in council properties.
- Ask the Northern Ireland Local Government Officers’ Superannuation Committee (NILGOSC) to divest from fossil fuels and invest in renewable energy projects.
Transport
Improve active and public travel networks.
- Introduce measures to encourage cycling and walking.
- Ban or discourage private cars from the town centre.
- Deliver a rapid transition of the council’s own fleet to electric.
- Encourage car sharing.
- Enable the rapid shift to electric vehicles through EV charging points.
- Require deliveries to council buildings to be made by electric vehicles or bike and consolidate the frequency of deliveries.
- Manage the location and design of new development in the local plan to ensure low-carbon connectivity.
Waste
Minimise waste by reducing consumption, reusing and recycling as part of a circular economy.
- Make a commitment to send zero waste to landfill and generate zero emissions from residual waste incineration.
- Use food waste according to the food waste hierarchy of prevent, reuse and recycle and ensure non-recyclable biodegradable waste is used to create biogas, with priority given to community-owned AD facilities
- Adopt circular economy policies in council contracts, events and services.
- Ban the use of single-use plastic in council offices and premises.
- Promote community sharing and reuse schemes to reduce waste and unnecessary consumption.
- Provide specific support to SME businesses to access funds and expertise to drive a circular low-carbon local economy.
- Support local food production by facilitating urban agriculture, farmers' markets, and community gardens.
Land Use
Use nature-based solutions to help remove carbon from the atmosphere and increase resilience to extreme weather.
- Develop policies to protect existing trees, local green spaces, the green belt and locally designated nature sites.
- Develop tree cover on council-owned land and across the council area, using appropriate native species.
- Develop new quality green spaces in areas where they don’t exist, particularly where people are vulnerable to extreme weather or are deprived of nature.
- Manage council-owned land to increase biodiversity, restore habitats and drawdown carbon pollution, including through phasing out pesticide use and increased planting of wildflowers.
Enabling change
Embed climate action and sustainability all decision-making and investments and involve the public in the council's climate response.
- Screen all decisions, including planning decisions and policies, for sustainability and climate impact.
- Develop a robust Climate Action Plan with interim decarbonisation targets.
- Align all council plans, policies and guidance with carbon reduction pathways and nature restoration plans.
- Improve how the council involves citizens in existing climate decision-making processes, with a plan to move to a fully participative system.
- Develop climate education projects and public information messaging to ensure public support for and engagement in climate action.
- Raise funds for low-carbon infrastructure and community climate resilience, prioritising investment in communities most vulnerable to flooding and other extreme weather.
- Work with other local authorities, government departments and agencies, NGOs, and other allies to secure more regulatory powers, fundraising powers, and finance to deliver a just and sustainable transition to a low-carbon future, and push for a national Climate Action Plan that is commensurate with the climate and nature emergency.
Resources
A suite of resources for local policymakers and change-makers.
We have even more resources available, from case studies to downloadable guides.
Need some advice?
We're here to help. Get in touch if you'd like some help and advice for taking sustainability action.
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