What is Weymouth and Portland Borough Council doing?

If you would like to know more about the science of Climate Change a good source of information is the Met Office (opens in a new window) .

• WPBC Carbon Management Plan (pdf, 1Mb) (opens in a new window)

• Nottingham Declaration (opens in a new window)

What action is the Council taking?

Adapting to Climate Change

In 2010 the council undertook an exercise to consider the impact of the following climatic variations across all of our services:

• Intense rainfall events and flooding (fluvial, pluvial and groundwater)
• High speed winds
• Snow and ice conditions
• Heatwaves and higher temperatures
• Droughts and/or reduced water availability
• Coastal flooding and erosion

These areas of change arise from predictions by a local climate impacts profile provided by the UK Climate Impacts Programme (opens in a new window) .

Addressing the Causes

A Carbon Management Plan not only addresses what is believed to be a major contributor to climate change but also provides the council with an opportunity to cut costs.

The council has enrolled on the Carbon Trust's Local Authority Carbon Management Programme for 2010/2011 and will produce a Carbon Management Plan by the end of March 2011. This plan will provide options for the council to reduce the carbon emissions associated with its operations and will outline and quantify a number of projects for implementation.

Throughout this process, energy saving projects will continue to be identified and implemented as this year also marks the starting point for actively pursuing a reduction in energy use.

The financial benefit of developing and managing a carbon management programme is likely to be hundreds of thousands of pounds.

Actions - Previous Energy Saving Projects

Although the Carbon Trust programme provides a framework for achieving significant energy savings, this does not mean that that the Council nothing has been done up to now. Energy saving projects that have been implemented in recent years are:

Voltage Optimisation

In 2007 a voltage optimiser was installed in the council offices. The cost was circa £10,000, it has a life circle of a minimum 30 years and the maintenance costs are nonexistent.

It is difficult to give an exact saving due to many operational changes in the offices but it is estimated that a reduction of 40,000kwh has been achieved. This equates to a payback period of approximately two years.

Swimming Pool Boilers

Two new Hamworthy high efficiency boilers were fitted in 2006 to replace twelve 31 year old units.The cost was circa £40,000, the savings in the first year was 674,592 kWh.

Which equates to £20,000 in monetary terms, payback period on this basis would be two years.

Biomass Boiler (Lynch Lane Nursery)

The biomass boiler was installed in 2007, in the last year this gave a 35% saving in gas consumed. There will be substantial further reductions now a heat control system has been installed.

Low Energy Lighting

The council is carrying out a programme of installing low energy lamps throughout its building portfolio.

IT Initiatives

By implementing power saving features on PCs so they 'Power off" outside of working hours the council will reduce associated CO2 emissions by 150 tonnes.

VMware project for server virtualization - Saving £17k per year in energy costs