supercharging carbon neutrality through symposia

 

The recent Carbon Neutrality Symposium organised by the Eastbourne Eco Action Network CIC (EEAN CIC) held at Eastbourne Town Hall on Saturday 20th April 2024 is hopefully the start of a regular series of annual symposia to review and reinvigorate the drive towards a carbon neutral Eastbourne by 2030, as mandated by Eastbourne Borough Council’s Climate Emergency Declaration of July 2019.

The Eastbourne Borough Council (EBC) Climate Lead, Councillor James Murray, opened the proceedings and made the point that EBC’s performance on its Climate Emergency Strategy could be usefully compared with other similar councils through the Climate Emergency UK scorecards.

These scorecards, completed for every single UK council, is a mine of useful, granular data about how councils are doing on climate action and a very useful source for EBC to use for its proposed review and refresh of its Climate Emergency Strategy, which will be updated by the end of 2024.

Kate Richardson, Sustainability Lead Officer for EBC, gave a short presentation on where Eastbourne as a borough currently is with regards to carbon neutrality and what the challenges are for the town in reaching that target by 2030. The main challenge is to speed up the borough-wide carbon emissions reduction from its present 6% or 7% reduction per year to more than 12% per year if Eastbourne is to meet its fair share of keeping global carbon reductions to no more than 1.5 degrees Centigrade as mandated by the UN IPCC COP21 Paris Agreement of 2015.

The keynote speaker for the day was Richard Garland from Gradient Consultants, an Eastbourne-based business. His inspirational speech and slideshow  presentation demonstrated the kind of example on sustainability, climate action, and Net Zero that all Eastbourne businesses could follow, and will need to follow eventually in any case, as more Net Zero legislation is applied to a wider range of businesses in the next few years in order to help meet the UK’s legally binding commitment under the Climate Change Act to achieve Net Zero by 2050. As Richard said, “As a business we are de-risking the need to meet current and future compliance requirements within our industry, and we are acknowledging the opportunities of the low carbon transition- the green economy”.

The results of the Carbon Neutral survey by the EEAN CIC were presented by Jill Shacklock, one of the directors of the EEAN CIC. The survey was very much a pilot study that will help inform a subsequent revised and enlarged survey later on. But the initial data reveals how some early wins can be made in advancing carbon neutrality in Eastbourne right now. For example, many people don’t know what the current Energy Performance Certificate (EPC) rating on their property is or how to find out what it is. The government has a website that gives the EPC rating for all UK properties that have one, and each rating includes info about what measures could be taken to improve the EPC rating.

Andrew Durling, a director of the EEAN CIC, gave a very brief introduction to two digital tools that can help local residents and organisations to both discover their carbon footprints and ways to reduce them significantly through simple, practical actions that can be taken right now. The first was Giki Zero and the second was small99. Both tools are free, and were presented as particularly user-friendly and easy to use. Giki Zero allows people to quickly find out their carbon footprint and then select actions which can help reduce it, each selection automatically recalculating the footprint to demonstrate progress towards the 2030 global average target for all citizens.

Small99 is particularly useful for small businesses and organisations of any kind that have little time and resources to devote to in-depth Net Zero action planning. Such planning will need to be demonstrated by all organisations, especially businesses (as Richard Garland’s keynote speech emphasised), over the coming years if they wish to maximise their chances of both complying with Net Zero legislation and in securing more business or funding from other organisations already in compliance with such legislation.

Breakout groups throughout the event allowed for networking and sharing of ideas about how Eastbourne’s carbon neutrality strategy could be improved.

Carbon offsetting is an important aspect of carbon neutrality, and one of Eastbourne’s major carbon offsetting and carbon sequestration schemes was developed by the Eastbourne United Nations Association, which had an information stall during the Symposium. This scheme is entirely administered by volunteers and many local organisations have made donations to it, including EBC.

A full overview of all the actions and initiative currently being undertaken or planned in Eastbourne to further the town’s carbon neutrality strategy can be seen on the One Planet Eastbourne community ecosystem platform developed by the EEAN CIC in collaboration with OnePlanet.

Interestingly, the recent local elections held on May 4th can be seen as a triumph for those candidates that campaigned for cleaner air, better active travel/public transport, and faster climate action. As Chris Skidmore, the UK government’s former Net Zero tsar, said, “These elections have shown pro-environment parties and mayors who made net zero central to their campaigns made significant gains”. The Eastbourne Carbon Neutrality 2030 campaign is unanimously supported by all borough councillors, and has popular support amongst the town’s residents, as the recent well-attended Carbon Neutrality Symposium, and the many other events mounted, or supported by, the Eastbourne Eco Action Network indicates.

Making business a force for good

At our recent Carbon Neutrality Symposium held at Eastbourne Town hall on 20th April, our keynote speaker, Richard Garland, a prominent local business owner, gave an inspirational talk about how local businesses can make a very significant contribution towards Eastbourne becoming a truly Carbon Neutral town by 2030. Below is an abridged version of his speech:

 Good afternoon, everyone. I am Richard Garland, and amongst other things I am co-founder of Gradient Consultants. We are chartered surveyors, project managers and compliance consultants, based here in town since 2004. Some of our projects you may be familiar with include the Fishing Quay development on Sovereign Harbour, Costa Drive-thru on Hampden Retail Park and the affordable rental flats in Southfields Road. In 2020 we certified as a B-Corp, the first independent company in Eastbourne and one of the first UK built environment professional firms to do so. B-Corp is a global movement transforming the economy to benefit ALL – people, communities and the planet. We still have to make a profit but the way we go about it isn’t about making profit at any cost – everyone has to benefit along the way. 

Our purpose is our commitment to making a positive impact on the world. As a certified B-Corp, our values are deeply rooted in sustainability, social responsibility, and ethical business practices. We believe what we do in the next 7 years leading up to 2030 really matters and now is the time to act, with our industry being responsible for over 40% of the UK’s carbon emissions. We consider ourselves carbon neutral through our support of Ecologi. Ecologi®  have achieved the Verified Carbon Standard (VCS) and have been our offsetting partner for a number of years. We currently offset the business and personal emissions for all our people . We support tree planting and ecological schemes across the world. In the last 3 years we have offset 138 tonnes of carbon, planting over 2000 trees, and supported global sustainable projects. Our goal is to retain this off- setting, regardless of emissions reduction , but bring it closer to home, which we have already started to do by supporting planting on the Eastbourne escarpment. But we want to go further…

In 2022 we decided to set our ambitions on Net-Zero by 2030. We recognised that at some point in the not too distant future Net Zero will be the new carbon neutrality, so we wanted to be ahead of that journey. We started looking at data collection. I cannot begin to tell you how many articles on how to measure, what to measure, and when to measure from, we read – and at one point we got analysis paralysis – just stuck! And it took a friend to simply say stop thinking and just do something, anything – even if it is simply to walk to work and then make that your first action! This was a bit of a light bulb moment and as long as we could evidence a robust source of data it was worth doing something positive, rather than worrying over the how! We looked and celebrated what we were already doing, which included recycling pretty much everything, making sure our unwanted IT equipment and furniture goes into the circular economy, and pushing our clients to install bee bricks, swift boxes and fruit trees onto their development sites. 

Calculating our Scope 1 and 2 emissions was relatively straightforward for us as a professional services business so I won’t dwell too much on it- the biggest change is the utility companies will help you with this so it is much easier to deal with. In conjunction with our landlord we now have an office that has solar panels, LED lighting, infra-red heating panels, additional roof insulation and film on the windows to reduce solar gain. As for the dreaded Scope 3 emissions, for a firm such as ours this is where the majority of our emissions lurk and a challenging area for organisations in terms of data collection and carbon reduction initiatives. From travel to water to the things we buy, the list was long but eventually we agreed a more manageable list of priority measures, assisted by Small99. Our Pathway to Net Zero covers short and longer term planned activities to reduce our business ‘and personal’ GHG emissions, as well as push for a greater reduction in the emissions of the projects and services we advise on and can influence. At the last count there were 50 + ideas and actions. The priority ones get a champion, an estimated date for achievement and the emission saving impact. As a result we now use local suppliers as a priority. Local sourcing helps us reduce our carbon footprint and supports our community and local economy. We specify nature based materials, including hemp, lime and we now specify Graphenstone paint for all our projects. This paint absorbs CO2, removes pollutants to purify the air and as a mineral based paint it contains no microplastics. We hold our business event at venues close to a train station to encourage guests to make sustainable travel choices.

And we waved goodbye to our computer server in October last year, which was no longer needed since moving to the cloud as one of our reduction actions. The server had been running continuously for 6 years and by retiring the server we are saving 118 kgCO2e per year. The biggest impact on the list we are currently addressing is banking and pensions. Moving these financial instruments has the potential to have the greatest impact of all – a sustainable pension is 21 times more powerful than giving up flying, becoming vegetarian and switching to renewable energy.  Our goal is to make a 10% CO2e reduction year on year from 2024 to 2030. This will have reduced our overall emissions by 70% by 2030. With the Scope 1 and 2 emissions reduction prior to 2023 we believe we can achieve the necessary reduction in emissions to at least try and hit Net Zero by 2030.

So why do this, what and who benefits? B-Corp gave us ‘a legal high, we started to see ourselves as activists and ethical leaders. For us it is a climate justice choice . As a business we are de-risking the need to meet current and future compliance requirements within our industry , and we are acknowledging the opportunities of the low carbon transition – the green economy. For example, retrofitting the UK’s existing building stocks, measuring the Whole Life Carbon costs on construction projects, and the impact of Net Zero building standards, are all opportunities for sustainable growth and meeting future Department for Energy Security and Net Zero targets. Clients need us to have taken action because their funders (banks, pension funds, government) will be demanding it of them. We are influencing our supply chain to take action before they require it of us and we are offering to assist them with that change – openness, sharing ideas and transparency will make the journey go quicker! And to close, my advice to anyone at the beginning or on this journey is: do not over-strategise and get stuck in the data. Imagine if we did nothing and just talked about it? Look at what you have done so far, celebrate it and then take another step on your journey – be a force for good whatever you do!

We are grateful to Richard for kindly making available a full transcript of his speech, as well as the slideshow to accompany it.

Commenting on Wealden Local Plan

Introduction

Whether you live in Wealden or on the borders of Eastbourne, Lewes or Rother additional housing growth, in the Wealden area, will affect you. So you should comment on the Draft Local Plan.

“Wealden District Council is preparing a new Local Plan. [it] will be the key planning document for Wealden District. Once adopted, the Local Plan will form part of the Development Plan for the District, replacing all existing local plan policies and will be used to assess and make decisions on planning applications.” There will be 16,000 new houses of which around 8,000 have already been planned for .

It is a challenge to go through all the background documentation. The consultation itself is over 200 pages. So this blog has had to be selective. To begin with here are the top 8 areas in terms of new housing

Most of this will be in South Wealden and especially on the borders of Eastbourne. From this table you can see that much of the local area is already ‘confirmed’. In Willingdon for example all the space is already committed apart from some ‘windfall’. So you may feel it is too late. This is not the case. Within the plan are some policies that have some merit and these should be supported.

Here are some links you will need . The Wealden Local Plan itself including a short video . Then the Consultation Portal – Where you create an account and add comments

Background

The lack of a local plan has made Wealden vulnerable to developers who were likely to win, if they appealed, when their planning submission was rejected. With a plan the council has more control of where housing can go. Without a plan the growth of housing could be higher. If there is a proposed housing development ,that you do not agree with, then you can highlight this in your submission, ideally linking it to the relevant policy.

One of the key concerns is the transport infrastructure. Before reading the rest of the blog you may wish to read this blog, on how over optimistic future predictions , are used by councils and developers to the detriment of residents.

Discussions with relevant district officers, councillors and directors suggest there may be residents who do not support a greener and more active travel agenda . Therefore it is important to support these policies and schemes.

Below are a number of the key chapters in the consultation that are worth commenting on. :-

Chapter 3 is Vision and Objectives

Suggest you strongly support “Sustainable and active travel’ but make points as to how this is not being addressed.

There has been no evidence of any increase in public transport, wheeling, cycling and walking. Many County, District and Borough plans refer to a planned shift away from cars . This has never been delivered. In fact East Sussex CC has not achieved any change in the mix of transport and total vehicle trips have simply increased

Suggest the need for high level plans across multiple sites. There are many examples where each site has its own access road and no attempt made to have public or active travel routes through these developments . For example at Horsebridge there is an area with over 5 different adjacent estates with no co-ordination of the access across them. A house that you want to visit, maybe only a few hundred meters away, but the car may need to exit one estate and then enter another one. On top of this the connections to the Cuckoo Trail, tell cyclists to dismount and push over 200m on sandy narrow tracks to get to the estates. Discriminatory especially to those who use mobility scooters, elderly or with heavy e-bikes

There needs to be a clear strategy to deal with the effect of all this housing growth on the current residents, where the existing streets might have more ‘permeability’ and could then be used as ‘rat runs’.

Plus stress more emphasis needed on actively supporting greater biodiversity, perhaps in adjacent areas, to counteract the consequences of this extra urban housing. Perhaps though Section 106 agreements.

There does not seem to be enough on encouraging reaching net zero through the design of housing in terms of their location and the wider community. This would strongly support higher insulation, solar panels, EV charging and heat pumps

Chapter 4 – Spatial Strategy

Suggest you strongly support “4.18 The benefits of a 20-minute neighbourhood concept are extensive, providing health, social, environmental and economic benefits to people and communities. Additionally, the concept would seek to tackle many of the issues that we need to address through our plan such as reducing carbon emissions, helping people to become more active, reducing mental health issues and loneliness, improving our town and village centres, making our settlements great places to live as well as improving access to affordable healthy food.

Support the statement in “4.26 East Sussex County Council’s Local Transport Plan 4 Consultation(12) supports the 20-minute neighbourhood or the ‘complete, compact and connected neighbourhood’ approach by providing a shift towards supporting healthy lifestyles by walking, wheeling or cycling and more active travel, as well as through the design of public places and healthy places through integrated neighbourhoods.

So from the above, mention your support for higher density dwellings in the centres which should have access to a mix of leisure, shopping and business all nearby and accessible by bus or active travel. You could also add support for 20 mph and school streets

Support – “Policy SS9: Health, Wellbeing and Quality of Life”that creates improved connectivity and supports healthier and more active lifestyles

Chapter 5 – ‘Climate Change’

Generally strongly support

CC1 Net Zero Development Standards – New Build. Support Policy but would prefer a clearer steer around residential standards of insulation, solar, batteries and heat pumps. There are no examples locally which could be seen as evidence of the ideal higher standards

CC4 Carbon sequestration, Support Policy but make the point, large areas of land are being urbanised and it is unlikely that sequestration could be achieved in or around the new housing estates

Policy CC5: Renewable and Low Carbon Energy. Agree with the principle of “Support will be given to community led energy schemes where evidence of community support can be demonstrated”

Policy CC6 Water Efficiency . Support the principles though make the point it is partly the cumulative effect of all these new houses which will determine how both water and waste (Southern and South East Water) cope. Some of the pumping stations, pipes and sewage works are already under strain

Policy CC7 Managing Flood Risk. Support the principle though areas such as between Polegate and Willingdon have always been susceptible to flooding. Concreting over will add to the problem across all the low lying estates. Make reference to the work the Environment Agency are undertaking around flooding and rising sea level.

Policy CC8 Sustainable Drainage. Support the principle such as in CC7 but perhaps question whether previous experience shows if this been dealt with in the past

Chapter 9 Infrastructure

Policy INF1 Infrastructure provision, delivery, and funding. “The provision of infrastructure facilities such as those relating to healthcare and education should be provided” Stress there needs to be guarantees of them being built and that you have concerns based on recent sites that the delivery of schools and health centres may not happen. This is due to the higher build costs and the funds that health and education may have. Plus a need to adhere to DfT’s “Guidance on Land Use/Transport Interaction Models”

Policy INF2 Sustainable transport and active travel– Support this policy. However the local housing developments simply fail on the criteria listed. No attempt appears to have new been made to create viable routes through multiple estates . Routes identified in the LCWIP, that are supposed to be on these sites ,have not been taken into consideration. Good examples would be alongside the railway from Hampden Park to Polegate (such as routes 312 and 225). Recent experience shows that proposed bus and cycle lanes are very vulnerable to being dropped through pressure from those who do not support them. They must be installed.

Policy INF5 Safeguarding of Infrastructure– Support the concept but as already mentioned there are many potential active travel routes in LCWIP that have been ignored through planning.

Policy INF8 Open space, sports and recreation provision– Suggest make the point – There are large areas of open land that have been lost and this cannot be rectified by a few small parks

Chapter 10 Design

Policy DE1 Achieving well-designed and high-quality places. Support the aim however challenge most of the new developments. These are car centric, low traffic neighbourhoods that do not allow through traffic. Most of the current developments have similar housing and add very few community buildings. The road layouts are meandering and do not support more direct routes for active travel . They also do not support bus routes and this will mean when funding runs out residents without a car will struggle. Perhaps building housing for elderly people should be closer to amenities and bus routes on main roads. In ‘Manual for Streets’ it explains the consequences of building ‘car-centric’ estates that make active travel within the estate and to other destinations problematic

Closing comments.

Please read any other chapters and additional documents, if you want to look into this plan in more detail. You have until Friday 10th May 2024 to submit your comments

What to do about Airbourne 2023 carbon emissions?

Airbourne 2023 is now over. But its carbon emissions remain in the atmosphere, adding to global warming. The emissions from Airbourne 2022 were estimated by Eastbourne Borough Council to be 241.5 tonnes C02e from the airshow event itself, and 6,033 tonnes C02e from the transport impact of event visitors. The council decided to offset those emissions through a carbon capture scheme. Eastbourne already does have carbon capture initiatives, primarily those run by Treebourne, a social enterprise that had its beginnings within the Eastbourne Eco Action Network, and which has already planted many thousands of trees across the borough, primarily on council-owned land.

But the scale of the carbon emissions from a festival as big as Airbourne 2023 –  which attracted 750,000 visitors, most of them arriving in Eastbourne by car – was such that they could not be offset within the borough alone. So following conversations between Eastbourne Borough Council, the Eastbourne Eco Action Network CIC, and the United Nations Association Eastbourne, it was agreed that the council would fund the UNA Eastbourne’s carbon offsetting scheme, allocating £7,000 to plant 14,000 tropical hardwood trees in Uganda, capturing 62,240 tonnes of carbon over 10 years. This scheme has been running successfully for many years already, resulting in 175,418 trees planted in Uganda so far.

But the scheme does far more than carbon capture. It was designed in close collaboration with local communities in Uganda to ensure that the scheme has the full consent of those communities and meets their needs. Backed by scientific research and monitored closely by UNA Eastbourne and its Ugandan partners, the trees planted are indigenous to Uganda, grown by Ugandan tree nurseries from seedlings, distributed freely to those communities that want them, and nurtured to full growth by those very same communities who integrate them within their own agroforestry practices on their farms or on land maintained by community institutions such as local schools and churches. The trees not only capture carbon faster and in far greater quantities than trees planted outside of the Equatorial region where Uganda is, but they provide many other benefits, such as enriching the soil and providing a harvest of nutritious fruit and natural medicines for the communities that nurture them.

Importantly, the trees planted under this scheme do not take farmland out of production, nor push out poor farmers onto more marginal land. Local farmers decide if they need the trees, which they value because the types of trees offered under the scheme complement the crops they grow on their farms. The trees protect the crops interplanted between them and enrich the soil, thereby increasing the productivity and income of the farms. Trees and crops work well together within the agroforestry system common on small farms in Uganda, something we should perhaps have a lot more of within the UK.

Tito Wekesa supervising the farmer (left) on planting the Mvule sapling. Behind this Mvule is a 1-year-old Terminalia. All saplings are protected by being in the midst of this banana shamba.

All of us, whether we live in the UK, Uganda, share the same planetary home, so all of us benefit from carbon capture schemes when they are run well, with careful selection of trees, right location, etc. The scheme that UNA Eastbourne runs in Uganda recognises that reality and also delivers a degree of climate justice too, as Uganda, like most countries in Africa, has contributed far less to global warming than rich countries like the UK have historically done, whilst the carbon footprint of most Ugandans is far less than that of most people in Eastbourne.

We can be proud of the fact that a carbon capture scheme devised in Eastbourne is having a significant effect in drawing down carbon from the atmosphere and setting a good example of an effective, fair, research-backed carbon offsetting scheme. But this does not relieve us of the responsibility to reduce the carbon emissions of Eastbourne, and our own individual carbon footprints, as fast as possible. The emissions of festivals like Airbourne, and indeed of all sectors of the Eastbourne economy, have to be much further reduced year on year until the town becomes genuinely carbon neutral, hopefully by 2030. Will we collectively rise to the challenge?

 

This blog post written by Andrew Durling, a Board director of the Eastbourne Eco Action Network CIC