Telford & Wrekin Council declared a climate emergency in 2019. As part of the response to this, the council committed to ensuring that its operations and activities will be carbon neutral by 2030.
The council has already taken a number of steps to help meet this ambitious goal, across all service areas, resolving to make climate change the ‘golden thread’ that runs through all of its operations. The council’s ‘Becoming Carbon Neutral’ Action Plan, published in February 2020, included measures to explore the replacement of pool vehicles with ultra-low emission vehicles.
At that time, the council had 31 pool vehicles averaging approximately 268,000 miles a year, equating to approximately 72 tonnes CO2 per annum. It was established that, if these were to be replaced with ultra-low emission vehicles, there was the potential on average to save 52 tonnes CO2edependent on the vehicle type.
Since then, the first six electric vehicle (EV) vans have been delivered and have been operational since November 2020, saving 6 tonnes of CO2 per annum. The council will procure a further three EV vans in 2021.
