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Thank you for subscribing to this newsletter. This is a place for us to update you on what we are doing at South Hams District Council, what things are going on around the District, what's going on nationally and things, you, our residents and businesses, can be doing to reduce your carbon footprint and manage your land to improve the environment and its biodiversity.
If you have anything you would like to include in this newsletter then contact our Climate Change Specialist by email here and follow us on Twitter and Facebook.
News
On 18 November, the Prime Minister announced an ambitious 10 point plan for a 'Green Industrial Revolution'. These 10 key areas are as follows
- Offshore wind: Producing enough offshore wind to power every home, quadrupling how much we produce to 40GW by 2030, supporting up to 60,000 jobs.
- Hydrogen: Working with industry aiming to generate 5GW of low carbon hydrogen production capacity by 2030 for industry, transport, power and homes, and aiming to develop the first town heated entirely by hydrogen by the end of the decade.
- Nuclear: Advancing nuclear as a clean energy source, across large scale nuclear and developing the next generation of small and advanced reactors, which could support 10,000 jobs.
- Electric vehicles: Backing our world-leading car manufacturing bases including in the West Midlands, North East and North Wales to accelerate the transition to electric vehicles, and transforming our national infrastructure to better support electric vehicles.
- Public transport, cycling and walking: Making cycling and walking more attractive ways to travel and investing in zero-emission public transport of the future.
- Jet Zero and greener maritime: Supporting difficult-to-decarbonise industries to become greener through research projects for zero-emission planes and ships.
- Homes and public buildings: Making our homes, schools and hospitals greener, warmer and more energy efficient, whilst creating 50,000 jobs by 2030, and a target to install 600,000 heat pumps every year by 2028.
- Carbon capture: Becoming a world-leader in technology to capture and store harmful emissions away from the atmosphere, with a target to remove 10MT of carbon dioxide by 2030, equivalent to all emissions of the industrial Humber today.
- Nature: Protecting and restoring our natural environment, planting 30,000 hectares of trees every year, whilst creating and retaining thousands of jobs.
- Innovation and finance: Developing the cutting-edge technologies needed to reach these new energy ambitions and make the City of London the global centre of green finance.
There will be more details to come however you can click here for the full press release.
You may have heard about the Green Homes Grant vouchers that homeowners can apply for to help pay for domestic energy saving measures. Originally, these vouchers needed to have been spent by 31 March 2021.
On 18 November, it was announced by the Government that homeowners across England will now have until the end of March 2022 to have energy efficiency upgrades to their homes completed through the Green Homes Grant Voucher Scheme.
To recap, the scheme aims to fund up to 2 thirds of the cost of green home improvements up to £5,000, or 100% of the cost for homeowners on low incomes, up to £10,000. Measures covered include insulation of walls, floors and roofs, double or triple glazing when replacing single glazing, and low-carbon heating like heat pumps.
to find out more and apply click here.
Farm Carbon Calculator
Are you a farmer or grower looking to understand your carbon footprint, or looking for some resources to reduce your greenhouse has emissions? Then a social enterprise called Farm Carbon Toolkit has a useful website containing a carbon calculator specifically designed for farmers.
Farm Carbon Toolkit is run by farmers for farmers. For more information about the group and to access the calculator then click here to go to their website.
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Interim Devon Carbon Plan Consultation Webinar Series
During the consultation of the Interim Devon Carbon Plan, Devon Climate Emergency are running a webinar series for people across Devon.
The webinars are your chance to engage with the experts who wrote the plan, hear more about the priority actions and listen to guest speakers who will be sharing some of the fantastic work which is already going on in Devon. You will also have a chance to ask questions to the panel!
There are launch webinars at the start of December then a variety of sector specific webinars such as energy supply, built environment and transport across the consultation period into February.
Sign up here: www.devonclimateemergency.org.uk/interim-devon-carbon-plan-webinar-series/
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Committee on Climate Change - Sixth Carbon Budget Report
The Climate Change Committee (CCC) will publish its recommendation on the level of the Sixth Carbon Budget in December 2020. To run alongside this publication, the CCC will be holding a series of webinars throughout December. Starting on 9 December will be the online launch event, places are limited but the event will also be livestreamed on YouTube and a link to the event will be placed here in advance of launch.
Following the online launch will be a series of deep dives on the following dates covering a variety of topics
- 14 December: Unpacking the Sixth Carbon Budget – the transition for buildings
- 14 December: Unpacking the Sixth Carbon Budget – the transition for energy
- 15 December: Unpacking the Sixth Carbon Budget – the transition for manufacturing, construction and fossil fuel supply
- 15 December: Unpacking the Sixth Carbon Budget – the transition for transport
- 16 December: Unpacking the Sixth Carbon Budget – the transition for agriculture and land use
On 18 November 2020, Climate Outreach launched a highly detailed study titled 'Britain Talks Climate: A toolkit for engaging the British public on climate change'.
The study provides a very up to date insight into British perceptions of climate change, launched alongside this is a tookit to help people, groups, organisations and businesses use the findings to engage on the topic of climate change.
Survey participants were grouped into seven different segments based on people's core beliefs and the results of this study provides a very good understanding of the British public against a backdrop of growing polarisation.
Most strikingly the study highlights that climate is a concern across all backgrounds to some degree and that climate denial is diminishing. The toolkit identifies ways to engage these different groups.
Some of the key findings of the study were;
- Britons know that climate change is real and that humans are causing it
- Climate change is consistently seen as a concern for 'everybody'
- Certain values and ideas have almost universal resonance across Britain
- All segments acknowledge some (unintended) positive aspects of the Covid-19 lockdown
- Strikingly, no-one wants to go back to ‘normal’ after the worst of the pandemic is over
Click here for the full summary.
Click here for the explore the study in more depth as well as some practical tips for engagement.
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In November, the International Energy Agency (IEA) released a report containing global analysis and forecasting for Renewables to 2025.
The report details strong resiliency for the the renewables sector and continued expected growth in the future, in part due to cost reductions and sustained policy support. Furthermore, despite an uncertain economic outlook globally, investor appetite remains strong.
Most notably, total installed wind and solar PV capacity is on course to surpass natural gas in 2023 and coal in 2024 and renewables are expected to become the leading source of electricity generation worldwide by 2025.
To read this report in more detail, click here.
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