91ÖÆƬ³§

• Rank: Second
• Score: 78.8% (same score as 2021)

91ÖÆƬ³§County Council’s support for businesses webpage offers extensive advice and guidance to local businesses, including a dedicated section for clean growth grants to enable businesses to both access funding and upskill in low carbon and sustainability issues. 91ÖÆƬ³§County Council has also been nominated as the lead authority to disseminate the Community Renewal Fund (withdrawn January 2024), which is a fund to help locations across the UK prepare for the Shared Prosperity Fund to be opened in 2022 to support people and communities in the UK.

Activities taking place in the county include:

• skills support is offered to encourage employers to influence, inform, motivate and inspire local students
• clean growth support is offered to enhance the low carbon economy by enabling business to get involved
• along with the clean growth support advertised on the website, there are also twelve additional support functions offered, including
  • business mentoring
  • free accreditation schemes to support health and wellbeing
  • how to engage businesses with the future workforce
• the webpage also features eight useful online tools for businesses to access, this covers business mentoring, events portals and an innovation platform
• the council also produces a business newsletter which provides information on available grants, support, upcoming events, business news, county council updates and an opportunity to hear from local businesses
• The 91ÖÆƬ³§Growth Hub also has a clean growth and sustainability web page. This offers support and advice to SMEs with energy efficiency, generating onsite energy and innovations in low carbon technology.
• The Growth Hub also features case studies demonstrating the benefits of its services and support, showing how businesses can be positively impacted when using the service and, therefore, encouraging others to use it. 
• There is also strong evidence that the county council works closely with its district councils on this issue, as they have cited the various support programmes and local low carbon growth support as benefitting their localities too.

Worcestershire’s efforts to support local businesses with both reducing their energy spend, making investment in renewable energy more viable and commercialisation of low carbon technologies is reflected in the successful delivery of two European funded programmes; the Business Energy Efficiency Programme and the Low Carbon Opportunities Programme. Regarding the former, 780 businesses have been supported with energy saving measures (as of June 2021), resulting in 18,000 tonnes of CO2 being saved.

• rank: first
• score: 81%

The council has reduced its total Greenhouse Gas Emissions from 76,536 to 45,835 tonnes/CO2e from 2009-2010 to 2019-2020. This overall 40% reduction is due to a 58% drop in Scope 1 and Scope 2 emissions, and a further 30% reduction in Scope 3 emissions, which is largely because of changes in waste disposal. The total emission reduction was 10% greater than was initially pledged from the baseline year in 2009 to 2010.

Other progress that has been made includes:

• the council has invested £3 million through the councils energy efficiency spend to save scheme, which has currently led to an estimated £400,000 in savings per year
• the council has implemented river water cooling and ground source heat systems in the Hive building, which is an award winning public and university library
• both systems use sustainable methods to heat and cool the building using naturally restoring resources
• as of April 2021, the council has achieved 100% renewable electricity for all council buildings
• carbon emissions from transport has reduced by 62% due to reductions in the number of staff claiming mileage, as well as there being fewer fleet vehicles and replacing staff and fleet vehicles with lower emissions models
• the council uses the Joint Impact Assessment (JIA) tool which requires a review of the environmental impacts, including carbon emissions, of all new council projects
• the council has also established a ‘Zero Heroes’ staff sustainability champion scheme, including a section on the staff Intranet which features briefing sessions

Carbon accounting

The Council produces an annual emissions report, which can help lead to a meaningful comparison of emissions over time. This also demonstrates transparency in reporting and showcases the data behind the changes for interested individuals. The council has also listed evidence of which datasets were not collected; however this does lower the accuracy and completeness of the data reported.

The emissions data are also relevant to all internal and external stakeholders, and is translated to help council staff know what action to take, and so that residents can see what work is being done to achieve Net Zero in their local area.

Offsetting carbon emissions

The council has demonstrated good practice by offsetting carbon emissions from its own estate where absolute reductions are not possible. The council has set a budget aside to plant 150,000 trees, which will create two new woodland areas in the county for residents and visitors to enjoy.

This approach offers holistic benefits because, not only will it contribute to balancing the councils’ emissions, but it will also contribute to natural environment and health and wellbeing outcomes.