Climate Change Strategy

The Climate Change Strategy is the Council’s roadmap to reducing its carbon emissions in line with the Government's Net Zero targets. The strategy draws together several years of work and research and outlines the steps that will be taken to mitigate and adapt to the impact of climate change.

The objectives that have come out of this strategy are most notably to reduce Carbon emissions from Council operations to Net Zero by 2030, but also to positively influence our environment by embedding climate change avoidance and mitigation, and to promote sustainability and conservation of biodiversity in all Council decisions and actions.

The Council has already taken a number of positive measures on climate change, which are listed in the strategy as ongoing actions.

New actions include

• Supporting communities to take positive action by sharing event information, education, grants, support for voluntary initiatives and signposting sources of funding.
• Focusing on creating and supporting localised services that adhere to the ‘20 minute principle’ – bringing essential services within easy reach of local communities by walking, cycling and public transport.
• Working together with other public sector organisations such as Surrey County Council and our neighbouring boroughs to adopt a joint approach.
• Empowering our members and staff to show leadership and demonstrate best practices in what they do. The Council’s commitment will be demonstrated by how we push ourselves beyond our comfort zone to operate in new ways without compromising our standards.

As part of the strategy, the Council is working on establishing the ‘Runnymede Standard Carbon Baseline’, to measure all future work and emissions against in order to be able to assess the success of the steps to be taken.

• Climate Change Strategy