SustainableAW: Reducing carbon emissions

Adur & Worthing Councils declared a climate emergency in July 2019. As part of this declaration we made a commitment to work towards being a carbon neutral council by 2030.

What does carbon neutral mean?

To become carbon neutral we must reduce damaging carbon emissions where we can, and offset any remaining emissions that we cannot eliminate.

How we are working towards it

Achieving this goal means working closely with partners across the community to make positive changes to how we all live, work and travel, as well as lobbying the government for additional powers.

As a council, we have done the following to support our commitment to becoming carbon neutral:

• adopted a Council Carbon Neutral Plan to set out how it can be achieved:
  • Adur & Worthing Councils Carbon Neutral Plan - Working towards the 2030 target (December 2019) (1,550KB)
• committed to publish annual progress on council carbon reduction through: 
  • the government's voluntary Emissions Reduction Pledge 2020 - on the GOV.UK website
• published information on our first year’s progress against the carbon neutral target:
  • Adur & Worthing Councils - Carbon emissions 2019-20 (291KB)
• joined UK100 Cities: a national network of local authorities committed to switching to clean energy, and taken a pledge to act on carbon emissions across Adur & Worthing:
  • UK100 website
• commissioned a SCATTER report to further understand greenhouse gas emissions in Adur & Worthing and what needs to be done to become carbon neutral:
  • SCATTER Study for Adur and Worthing - Exploring pathways to achieve the carbon neutral target (2,731KB)
• expanded the Sustainability Team, appointing two new Carbon Reduction Officers and a new Sustainability Officer
• held a Climate Assembly and a community led Climate Conference Zero 2030 with Worthing Climate Action Network and Transition Town Worthing:
  • Adur & Worthing Climate Assembly
  • Climate Conference Zero 2030 - on the FuturEcoLogic website