The burning of fossil fuels, such as oil, gas and coal to power our buildings, streetlights and vehicles releases carbon dioxide (CO₂) into the atmosphere, which is recognised as the main green house gas responsible for causing climate change.

In addition as our waste decomposes in a landfill site it produces methane gas (CH₄), another greenhouse gas – twenty one times the strength of carbon dioxide (CO₂).

The county council is committed to reducing it's greenhouse gas emissions and has made reducing carbon emissions one of its key priorities. To support this we took part in the Carbon Trust's, Local Authority Carbon Management Programme in 2005.

This helped us worked out how much carbon dioxide we produce from our activities, how this may change in the future and enabled us to develop a Carbon Management Action Plan (2005), help reduce our emissions over the next 5 years.

A further Carbon Management Action Plan, developed in 2007, set the county council an 11% reduction target in carbon dioxide emissions by 2010. Performance against this plan is monitored annually and reported to the public through our annual Environment and sustainability report 2008 (pdf, 985kb) (opens in a new window) .

During 2009 we have been undertaking a major review our carbon management programme in conjunction with the Carbon Trust, in order to continue reducing carbon emissions beyond 2010 – the end date of our current action plan. The outcome of this process has been outlined in the county council's DCC Carbon Management Beyond 2010 (PDF, 629kb) (opens in a new window)

In addition the county council will be subject to the The Carbon Reduction Commitment - overview (PDF, 113kb) (opens in a new window)  (CRC) from March 2010, which will place new legal duties on the county council to effectively manage its carbon emissions.

This new requirement will have a range of financial and organisational implications for the authority. In particular there will be significant penalties for non compliance, and overall the costs of the scheme will vary significantly based on the county council's performance in reducing carbon emissions compared to other local authorities.

It is clear that an essential element to success within the CRC will be a well defined and effective Carbon Management Programme of cost effective measures. To this end the county council is in the process of developing a new Carbon Management Action Plan with targets to 2020.

For further information contact:

• Corporate Sustainability Officer
  Name: Antony Littlechild
  Email: a.g.littlechild@dorsetcc.gov.uk
  Tel: 01305 224802
  Full details for Antony Littlechild