Climate Change Strategy

Our goal as a Council is for the Borough to be net zero by 2030

In 2019 Chorley Council declared a climate emergency and set the ambitious target of becoming net zero by 2030.

This strategy sets out Chorley Councils vision for the future as a net zero carbon borough and our priorities and programme for action the period January 2022 to December 2024 to achieve that goal.

We must all act now to ensure we are able to cope with and recover from the physical risks that are happening as a result of changes in the climate. These include floods, droughts and heatwaves as well as rises in global temperatures and sea level rise and take steps to reduce the carbon we produce.

What is Net Zero?

Being a net zero borough means that there will be a flat balance between the amount of carbon emitted into the atmosphere and the amount of carbon removed.  This needs a joined up effort from across a number of areas of our lives and the businesses we have in our borough and include transport, energy, and waste.

There are also many ways we can use nature to deliver carbon reductions and also build, our resilience to changes in the environment, such as natural flood defences and promoting biodiversity to thrive.

What is Our Carbon Footprint in Chorley?

Carbon footprints have been calculated for both the Council assets and the borough as a whole (for further information, a detailed report of the carbon footprint for the Council and the Borough 2019 has been published on our website).

The carbon footprint baseline for Council assets has been classified as the year 2019. This year was used as opposed to 2020 because of the significant changes in behaviour and lifestyle, including reductions in personal travel, working from home and leisure observed during 2020 because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The Council's total emissions for 2019 was 1568.03 tCO₂e (tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent emissions), of which the largest contributor was the Council's use of mains gas.

The emissions of Chorley Borough are provided by The Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) and we have detailed data records which date back to 2005, however the 2020 data has still been omitted as only provisional data has been published for that year. The borough's total emissions for 2019 was 651900 tCO₂e (tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent emissions), of which the largest contributor was transport.

We will track our progress towards the goal of net zero by 2030 on an annual basis both as a Council and as a Borough.

Changes in total emissions and emission type will show the success of previous decarbonisation efforts and inform decisions of future actions which must be taken to meet the Council net zero goal.