The Zero Carbon Cumbria Partnership have set an exciting and ambitious target for Cumbria to become Net Zero by 2037, but who are the Partnership and what does it mean for you and your organisation?
The aim of the Zero Carbon Cumbria Partnership is for Cumbria to become the first Carbon Neutral county in the UK with a Net Zero target date of 2037 and a longer term objective to become carbon negative.
The Partnership consists of over 80 public, private and third sector organisations with a presence in the county - including the County and District Councils, National Parks, Forestry Commission, NHS, NFU, United Utilities, Electricity North West and local volunteer groups. A £2.5 million grant was awarded by the National Lottery Climate Action Fund which will contribute to the work of the Partnership over the next 5 years.
The Partnership commissioned Mike Berners Lee, Professor at Lancaster University’s Environment Centre and author of 'There is No Planet B' and 'How Bad Are Bananas?' to compile a Carbon Baseline for Cumbria. The report, which was issued in February 2020, detailed the consumption based* carbon emissions for the county - the bar chart below illustrates how the 2037 Net Zero target date was calculated.
Credit: A Carbon Baseline for Cumbria Small World Consulting
To achieve Net Zero across such a diverse county in just 15 years time will mean a complete transformation in the way that we currently live our lives - from how we travel, what we eat, what we buy, how we use the land and how we power our homes and businesses.
In order to transition to Net Zero by 2037, the report proposes that the annual carbon reduction required from a 2019 baseline would need to be a 13% reduction in energy emissions, a 5% reduction in food and purchased goods, a 10% reduction in visitor travel per visitor day and a 400% reduction in terms of land use, land change and forestry.
To illustrate the scale and speed of the decarbonisation that is required, the report also provided some other useful metrics as illustrated in the table below. These include a 60% reduction in food emissions, a 90% reduction in household fuel use, a 90% electricty decarbonisation and a 100% increase in visitors average length of stay by 2037.
Cumbria is the second largest county in the country and home to almost 500,000 residents. It also contains the most visited UK National Park with around 16 million tourists heading to the Lake District each year. This provides the county with a unique opportunity to demonstrate to a wide audience the benefits of a low carbon lifestyle - for example how much fun active travel can be and how delicious local, sustainable food really is.
If you are one of the 23,600 businesses and enterprises based in Cumbria and are keen to understand what you can do to play your part in the transition to a Net Zero Cumbria, contact Simply Carbon Reduction today to arrange an informal chat about what we can do to offer support.
* A consumption-based footprint includes the emissions from product and service supply chains, regardless of where emissions are physically released during production.