Issue - meetings

The Committee considered the following report:

“1.0     Purpose of Report or Summary of Main Issues

1.1       The purpose of this report is to inform Members about a proposal to map the opportunity to develop a Local Carbon Offset Fund. 

2.0       Recommendations

2.1       The Committee is asked to approve the proposal to map the opportunity to develop a Local Carbon Offset Fund.

3.0       Main report

3.1       NI has set an ambitious climate target of achieving Net Zero emissions by 2050 and the Northern Ireland Climate Change Adaptation Programme 2019-2024 includes a number of adaptation actions under key priority areas. Councils across NI have a key role to play in delivering of resilience and emission targets. According to the UK Committee on Climate Change, ‘more than half of the emissions cuts needed rely on people and businesses taking up low-carbon solutions – decisions that are made at a local and individual level. Many of these decisions depend on having supporting infrastructure and systems in place. Local authorities have powers or influence over roughly a third of emissions in their local areas’.

            Moreover, a recent report Accelerating Net Zero Delivery demonstrates the economic and social value of locally tailored approaches. Councils are the closest level of government to communities, workers, suppliers and consumers and are well placed to deliver holistic, tangible, large scale climate solutions. However, implementing this ambition is challenging for councils due to resource limitations and capacity constraints.

3.2       The public sector can’t deliver the volume of funds required to deliver Net Zero commitments, new funding and revenue models are needed to deliver at scale and at pace. Belfast City Council (BCC) has been working in partnership with PCAN and the Grantham Institute, LSE and the UKCICC to better understand how it can mobilise the necessary finance to decarbonise heat, transport and industry across the City as well as support investments in resilience measures.

            At the same time, many organisations across NI have set ambitious net zero targets. Whilst these will mostly be delivered through emission reductions, it is likely that most organisations will need to off-set the emissions they cannot avoid or reduce by paying for a carbon credit, which allows them to pay for an equivalent amount of emissions to be reduced or removed elsewhere. Most off-setting projects are located in developing countries but there is anecdotal evidence that there is an appetite among NI companies to off-set their emissions via local projects.

3.3       This project would be a collaborative exercise between Belfast City Council, Derry City and Strabane District Council, Antrim and Newtownabbey Borough Council, Mid and East Antrim Borough Council, Ards and North Down Council, and Fermanagh and Omagh District Council and Newry, Mourne and Down District Council.

            Working in partnership, these Councils have identified a need to carry out a desktop review to quantify the opportunity for establishing a regional Carbon Offset Fund that could be used to finance a pipeline of climate investments across NI. These could range from investments in energy efficiency,  ...  view the full minutes text for item 11