Councillor Briars-Delve (Cabinet Member for Environment and Climate Change) introduced the report and highlighted the following:

a)    The Council had pledged in 2019 to reach net zero emissions by 2030;

b)    Important to produce a transparent annual progress report;

c)    Work with partners on improving the energy efficient in social housing;

d)    Beryl bikes and the electric car club;

e)    Climate Impact Assessment;

f)     Right stuff, right bin campaign;

g)    Climate Ambassadors;

h)    Climate Connections Website and business engagement;

i)     84% of the actions in the 2023/24 NZAP had been completed, or were on track;

j)     Important to include commitments which were highlighted in the report in light green;

k)    Thanks to the officers for their hard work on the programme;

l)     Suggestions had been taken forward from carbon literacy training sessions with Councillors;

m)  New commitments included electric buses and heat networks;

n)    It was hoped that the majority of the Council’s power would come from renewable sources and solar energy would play a large part in this;

o)    Food waste kerb-side collection;

p)    19 new commitments relating to behaviour change including working with schools to gain eco-school status and neighbourhood level community plans.

Supported by Paul Barnard (Service Director for Strategic Planning and Infrastructure), Jonathan Bell (Head of Spatial Planning and Sustainable Development) and Emmanuelle Marshall (Low Carbon City Officer), in response to questions, the following was discussed:

q)    A narrative would be helpful on changes from one plan to the next in the future, and why some commitments had been removed/altered;

r)    Appendix B detailed the challenges faced in relation to the commitments;

s)     BHP10C had been expanded to include what had previously been included in BHP10E;

t)     IT infrastructure and the suggestion that other companies such as Google have done more work to be ‘greener’ than Microsoft;

u)    Environmental benefits of working from home;

v)    The go green travel plan;

w)   Work was underway through the relevant Cabinet Member (Councillor Coker), the Councillor Bus Champion (Councillor Kevin Sproston), Plymotion and more to encourage people to use buses and bikes more;

x)    Plymouth was the most successful in the country for bikeability;

y)    Public realm works included opportunities for improvements of transport infrastructure;

z)    Richard Stevens, CEO of CityBus, was working with the Council on the ZEBRA 2 bid for electric buses;

aa)  Bus shelters were not Council assets, new ones were being installed with ‘green roofs’;

bb)Carbon literacy training was moving away from the accredited course, to adapt a more flexible training sessions and to deliver the training ‘in-house’, and the possibility of introducing this into the Councillor induction process;

cc)  Carbon literacy training for community groups;

dd)Work was ongoing with the procurement team on a weighting factor for environmental impact, when tendering for contracts to be brought back to Committee;

ee)Climate Emergency Planning Statement built on what was included in the Joint Local Plan, in relation to planning applications;

ff)    Mixed bins should be installed as standard in new schemes across the city;

gg)  Suggestion that the word ‘new’ be included in T5F;

hh)Challenges of introducing food waste collection.

The Committee agreed to:

1.    Support and endorse the Plymouth City Council Net Zero Action Plan 2024-2027.