Alan Francis, MK Green Party candidate for MK North, addressed the MK City Council Cabinet meeting on 6th Feb 2024 in a debate on the annual Update on the Sustainability Strategy Action Plan.
Alan Francis said:
I commend the council on making some progress in reducing its CO2 emissions but its not far enough or fast enough. The carbon neutral (or net zero) target by 2030 was set in 2018. We’re now half way between 2018 and 2030 but CO2 emissions have not been halved.
Because the easiest interventions were done first and the hardest done later, in order to hit the target we should be well below half by now. That is acknowledged by the red dotted line in the figure in the report – should be about 25% of 2018 levels by now. But as the green line shows its still actually about 62% – so obviously not enough progress being made there.
All of the scenarios in the report show MKCC failing to meet the net zero target by 2030.
What more is the council going to do to ensure that it hits the target by 2030?
The Climate Emergency statement in 2018 was for the whole of MK, not just activities for which MKCC is accountable, reaching net zero CO2 emissions by 2030. MKCC is only directly responsible for about 2% of CO2 emissions in MK. What about the other 98%?
There is lots of data in the report about MKCC activity emissions but very little about emissions from MK as a whole. To highlight 3 items from the list in Annex B, just as examples of this:
33 travel – reduce emissions from transport, agriculture and industry. But when you look at progress there is a blank box, yet the transport sector is the biggest CO2 emitter in MK, around 40%.
86 Strategy – set up Climate Change Partnership. Progress – struggling to engage businesses. Businesses are major players in this and the council needs to do more to ensure that they do engage.
320 Travel – Mass Rapid Transit (MRT). 6 years on and, according to the progress box, we still are developing the Strategic Outline Business Case, which is something that should have been done and dusted by now. We ought to be on to the implementation phase.
So to conclude, what more is MKCC going to do to ensure that MK as a whole hits the carbon neutral target by 2030?
And finally, will the council agree to engage with the recently-formed MK Climate Action Network (MK CAN)? I know that Cllr Mahendran is aware of that because she and I both attended a meeting of it a couple of weeks ago. That seems like a useful way for the council to engage with the wider community.
Note: The MKCC Update on the Sustainability Strategy Action Plan and accompanying reports can be found at:
https://milton-keynes.moderngov.co.uk/ieListDocuments.aspx?CId=139&MId=6837
