Carbon reduction measures for three council-owned facilities on Executive agenda
Environment08 July 2024
This week’s meeting of North Northamptonshire Council’s Executive will receive a report on a decarbonisation project that will help contribute towards the council’s green targets.
Three facilities - Corby Cube, Corby Swimming Pool and Desborough Leisure Centre - are all set to have works completed to help the sites reduce carbon levels and be more energy efficient.
Following the completion of energy surveys of council buildings, the authority made a grant bid under the Public Services Decarbonisation Scheme (PSDS) for energy improvement works at the three properties.
The council has been awarded a grant of £3,858,419 against a total project cost of £4,384,568.08 under the Government-run scheme.
Now, Executive will be asked to approve the project and allocate £601,000, alongside the grant funds, to the project budget.
If approved, the project will be another step towards the delivery of the council’s Carbon Management Plan. It is estimated that, once the decarbonisation project is complete across the three sites, 690 tonnes of carbon would be removed annually, a 3% reduction of the council’s carbon footprint for its operations of 20,084 tonnes.
The project will see fossil fuel boilers replaced with air source heat pumps and the installation of photovoltaic panels at the facilities, alongside other energy efficiency measures.
This project is a key part of the council’s commitment to becoming a carbon neutral council by 2030, it developed its carbon management plan, which was published in December 2022 and set out intentions to tackle climate change and reduce CO2 emissions.
Since we declared a climate and environment emergency in 2021, we have been working hard on various projects to help reduce our carbon emission levels in North Northants. This includes looking at our facilities and the changes we can make to them - this project is a great example of this and will make a considerable contribution to reducing our annual carbon emissions.Cllr Harriet Pentland, the council’s Executive Member for Climate and the Green Environment
Buildings like the ones included in this project are massive assets to our communities, but they also produce a huge amount of carbon and it is vital that we look at ways to mitigate this - not just for residents now, but for future generations.Jason Smithers, Leader of the Council
If the report is approved, the project team will go out to procurement for a contractor for the whole project, with works needing to be completed by March 2026.
The project team will be working with operators and users of these buildings to minimise the impact wherever possible.
The Executive will meet on Thursday 11 July at 10am at the Corby Cube and the papers are now available online. The meeting will be live streamed on YouTube.