The East Lothian Council Climate Change Strategy 2025-2030 has been adopted following a meeting of full council on Tuesday (29 April).
The strategy is divided into four themes - Governance, Assets, Services, and Place - which broadly describe how the council will become more climate-positive. These themes are further arranged into 17 Focus Areas which set out approaches to become climate ready and help achieve net zero emissions by 2045.
Under the strategy, the council will seek to avoid activities which create greenhouse emissions, strive to reduce emissions where the activity is needed, and replace emissions-intensive activities with low or no-emission alternatives where possible.
The council will seek to ensure its buildings and vehicles are lower emission, services are planned to be lower impact and resilient to climate-induced disruption and, through partnership working, both nature and the built environment are enhanced to tackle the climate crisis.
East Lothian Council declared a climate emergency in 2019, and the first five-year strategy was published in 2020. Over the course of the 2020-25 strategy, the council’s direct and indirect greenhouse gas emissions (plus transmission losses from electricity) were reduced by about 20 per cent.
Prepare for the impacts of climate change
A public consultation to collect feedback on the new strategy was carried out last year. Nearly 100 individuals and organisations responded, including the East Lothian Climate Action Network which represents more than 80 groups. In January consultations with children took place with over 250 learners across 15 classrooms answering a survey.
East Lothian Council spokesperson for Environment Cllr John McMillan said: “Like all public sector bodies in Scotland, we have a legal obligation to reach net zero emissions by 2045. East Lothian must accelerate how we prepare for the impacts of climate change alongside our local and regional partners.
“The Climate Change Strategy 2025-2030 will make use of the latest guidance and best practice to fulfil our statutory obligations relating to climate change and sustainability.
“Climate change has so far been addressed using existing service budgets and grant funding. Continuing to reduce emissions and successfully reaching net zero will be a challenge without significantly more external funding. We are working closely with other public bodies to identify and secure the necessary resources to deliver climate action. Ultimately, all spending will likely save money because inaction will incur a far greater cost than sufficiently mitigating and adapting to climate change.”