£15m pledged for Cambridgeshire County Council to decarbonise

The money was allocated last week as the county council met to decide its budget.

The council is working towards cutting its carbon emissions in half by 2023.

Leader of the council, Conservative Cllr Steve Count, said the council recognised the “climate emergency” and that “we have to commit some hard cash to achieving our aims”.

According to the Conservatives’ budget documents the investment to “decarbonise” the council’s 69 buildings “is expected to be recouped in full from savings delivered on the council’s energy bills”.

The proposal goes on to say “the £15 million earmarked will take all council buildings owned and occupied off fossil fuels (oil and gas primarily) and will be replaced with low carbon heating solutions such as air or ground source heat pumps.

“Allocations within this £15 million will also include energy efficiency improvements to those buildings with new low carbon heating solutions and a contingency for asbestos removal for those buildings where deeper energy efficiency measures will be required requiring changes to the buildings fabric.

“Our aim is to complete this task by 2025.”

The council has also said it plans to replace its fleet of cars and vans with electric vehicles by the same date.

Cllr Count said the plans “will be cost neutral to the taxpayer in the medium term” and were in keeping with what he described as the council’s award-winning efforts to date on environmental issues.

The budget also includes plans for electric vehicle charging infrastructure to be introduced for its main offices by 2025 at a cost of £200,000.

Money was also allocated to support schools dependent on oil to switch to renewable energy and other projects, bringing the cost of the additional green investment plans up to £16 million.

The Conservatives said its budget would also provide £5 million for community-based investments and increase investment in highways infrastructure by £6.4 million.

Leader of the Liberal Democrat opposition group, Cllr Lucy Nethsingha, said the Conservative spending plans “plumbed new depths of cynicism and misinformation”.

She said the £6.4 million for highways was from an expected government grant which she said would be used by any party for that purpose and should not be seen as a Conservative proposal.

She said the £16 million for climate action “certainly looks impressive” and said she was “glad that Conservatives on this council are at last recognising the climate emergency – it is not very long since the previous Conservative leader denied climate change was a problem at all and the council missed serious opportunities to invest in renewable energy as a result”.

But she said the £16 million is “not as generous at it looks,” saying the Conservatives are leaving “the bulk of the cost to be paid for by future generations,” and said it was not matched by revenue spending, saying it only made allowance for £32,000 in revenue for the first year.

And she said there was a lack of detail over what the £5 million for communities would actually be spent on.

The Conservative administration also passed a 3.59 per cent increase in council tax, including two per cent specifically for adult social care.

Ben Hatton, Local Democracy Reporting Service