Overview of Council and Borough Emissions

The Council’s Emissions

To achieve the council’s target to become carbon neutral by 2030 and carbon zero by 2050 we have measured the council’s emissions over three areas;

• Scope 1 - Emissions generated directly via Redbridge’s owned and operated assets. This includes: fuel used by the Redbridge vehicle fleet (petrol and diesel), and, fuel used to heat the Corporate Estate and Vision Estate buildings.
• Scope 2 – Electricity consumed in the Corporate Estate, Vision estate, communal areas of Housing Revenue Account (HRA) buildings, and, street lighting.
• Scope 3 – Other carbon emissions associated with Redbridge’s operations, however, due to their complexity, these emissions should be considered estimations only. This includes emissions from HRA dwellings leased to tenants, and emissions from procured goods and services. These emissions are produced by other organisations, but illustrate the scale of emissions associated with our procurement activities.

Our baseline emissions from 2019 totalled 10,008 tCO₂e, this includes the council’s scope 1 and 2 emissions. Of these 76% arise from the council and Vision operational buildings and communal areas of the council’s housing stock. The remainder of these emissions arise from the council’s fleet which includes refuse collection vehicles and school transport.

Further emissions are attributable to our procured services and council tenants. As Scope 3 emissions, consumption data is unavailable to the council. Over the next decade we will work with regional and national partners to reduce these emissions and develop a reporting framework that more accurately calculates scope 3 emissions.

The Borough’s Emissions

According to the latest figures published by the Department of Business, Enterprise and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) the total carbon emissions in 2017 for Redbridge as a borough was equivalent to one person flying to Singapore and back 1,142 times.

We know that 56% of the borough’s emissions originated from our buildings including residential, commercial, institutional, and, industrial buildings and facilities. Whilst 36% of the boroughs emissions arose from transport in the borough. 

Monitoring

To monitor our progress against reducing emissions and addressing the climate emergency, these emissions will be annually monitored and reported to Place scrutiny.

Further information including a full breakdown of the council's emissions and commitment can be found in our Climate Change Action Plan.