Strategy to tackle county climate change approved
The East Lothian Council Climate Change Strategy 2025-2030 has been adopted following a meeting of full council on Tuesday (28 April).
The strategy is divided into four themes - Governance, Assets, Services, and Place - which broadly describe how we will become more climate-positive. These themes are further arranged into 17 focus areas which set out approaches to become climate ready and help achieve net zero emissions by 2045.
Under the strategy, our organisation will seek to avoid activities which create greenhouse emissions, strive to reduce emissions where the activity is needed, and replace emissions-intensive activities with low or no-emission alternatives where possible.
We will seek to ensure its buildings and vehicles are lower emission, services are planned to be lower impact and resilient to climate-induced disruption and, through partnership working, both nature and the built environment are enhanced to tackle the climate crisis.
East Lothian Council declared a climate emergency in 2019, and the first five-year strategy was published in 2020. Over the course of the 2020-25 strategy, our direct and indirect greenhouse gas emissions (plus transmission losses from electricity) were reduced by about 20 per cent.
A public consultation to collect feedback on the new strategy was carried out last year. Nearly 100 individuals and organisations responded, including the East Lothian Climate Action Network which represents more than 80 groups. In January consultations with children took place with over 250 learners across 15 classrooms answering a survey.