Climate change report 2024-2025

Foreword 

By Councillor Martin Horwood, Cabinet lead for nature, climate and waste reduction.

Climate change poses an existential risk to humanity, and it is already affecting Gloucestershire in many different ways. We face increased risk of more intense and extreme weather, including storms, flooding, and higher temperatures. This threatens our local ecology and food production, impacting all of us but especially those most vulnerable in our communities. 

Gloucestershire County Council  declared a climate emergency in  2019, but we recognise the need 
to intensify our efforts. The new administration will take more steps to reduce greenhouse gas 
emissions and to adapt to the inevitable impact we are seeing  within Gloucestershire. We have an outstanding team here at the county council, already working hard to reduce the council’s own emissions, adapt where we need to and support action within the broader county. This report provides an update on actions and achievements already taken. 

As the report explains, greenhouse gas emissions from our own buildings and the energy we use are being  successfully reduced in part because we now purchase 100% green electricity. However, most of our emissions, like other councils, are generated from procured goods and services from suppliers and contractors, with progress on that front much less clear. That’s why in financial year 2025-2026 we will  implement changes in the way we award contracts to make sure suppliers monitor and commit to  reducing their emissions. We won’t just make these changes ourselves but will  support our suppliers to make them too, especially local small businesses. This is part of a wider commitment to make sure climate consideration is embedded into everything we do. Our Growth Hub service supports local businesses and  our own suppliers to reduce their carbon footprint (page 14).

The good news is that many of the actions we have taken in Gloucestershire to reduce our carbon footprint and adapt to climate change bring other valuable benefits to people who work and live here. These include saving residents money, supporting good physical and mental health, making our air cleaner, supporting businesses to become more efficient, and improving our local environment. See page 24 for the modelled financial value of these benefits. Reducing and recycling food waste (page 17) doesn’t just reduce methane emissions, it produces non-fossil fuel gas and valuable organic fertiliser for local farmers. In our survey of over 3,000 residents, the proportion saying they are recycling their food waste has increased from 63% in 2022 to 83% in 2024. We are enabling residents to travel more easily across the county by supporting active travel initiatives. 

Examples include Thinktravel’s Big Walk and Wheel (page 13), and improved public transport such as the Robin Bus (page 11). These projects support our local communities and reduce carbon emissions. Improving our transport for  those with additional needs has saved the council money as well as reducing travel times (see case study on page 33).

Within the council’s own estate, we are already working to install solar panels on our buildings (page 30) saving the local taxpayer money as well as helping the environment - work that will be accelerated. We are improving health and wellbeing as well as reducing carbon emissions by getting more of our residents on their bikes, with over 827 people taking part in Cycle September,  and over 62,000 miles cycled, see Love to Ride (page 21). As part of the Gloucestershire Archives Green Pledge project, we have worked to reduce our environmental impact. We have also catalogued over 9,000 environmental records and collected new ones that document the significant role Gloucestershire people and organisations have played in environmental matters (page 27). 

We are working fast to introduce the Local Nature Recovery Strategy to help restore nature and increase biodiversity. With the support of local landowners, over 130,000 trees in Gloucestershire have been planted, capturing more carbon, creating more natural shade, and enhancing local environments. Through work with the Gloucestershire Local Nature Partnership, we’re putting in place new natural flood‑management measures, and we want to do much more to prevent catastrophic damage and loss in local communities, adapting to climate change and storing more carbon in the landscape.

This is all good news, but climate change really is an emergency. As the #ShowYourStripes chart shows, local temperatures are already changing dramatically. The chart shows the shift from blue, representing cooler temperatures, to red, showing the warmer temperatures in the last decade. There remains a serious gap between what we have achieved so far and what we need to do to prevent catastrophic climate change and meet our own targets, and we have a lot more to do.

Preventing and adapting to climate change is now one of the county council’s top priorities, and we all need to redouble our efforts to lead the county in facing probably the greatest challenge of our time.