Plan to take the Yorkshire Dales National Park Authority beyond net zero put in place

Due to go before Members at a full meeting on March 31, the ambitious new Carbon Reduction Plan outlines how the governing body, will eliminate its carbon dioxide emissions over the course of the next decade.

But with all committee meetings cancelled in response to the Coronavirus epidemic, Authority CEO David Butterworth used delegated Urgency/Emergency powers to formally adopt the Plan.

Authority chairman, Carl Lis, said it was the right move, particularly in light of having declared a ‘climate emergency’ at the end of last year.

“The Yorkshire Dales National Park Authority has been moving to a low carbon existence for some time,” he said.

“But having declared a ‘climate emergency’ last September, we must show what we can do in deeds not words. It is called an emergency for a reason.”

The Carbon Reduction Plan commits the Authority to reducing its emissions by 95 percent before 2030, compared to a 2005 baseline. By March last year, the Authority had reduced its emissions by 62 per cent, compared with 2005.

Over the next five years it will install more renewable or low energy technology across its estate of four office buildings, four National Park Centres, including the Dales Countryside Museum, four workshops and ten public toilet blocks.

Carbon dioxide emission from car journeys made by officers, Members and volunteers will be reduced by at least 10 per cent by 2025 and by 50 per cent by 2030 with all the Authority’s leased vehicles switched over to plug-in electric.

Trees will also play a key part with £30,000 a year budgeted to fund new woodlands. The aim being that by 2030, the amount of carbon dioxide sequestered annually from woodlands funded by the National Park Authority will be at least 30 times the amount it emits.

Mr Lis said the Authority’s Carbon Reduction Plan will take it “way beyond net zero”.

“It will not be straightforward but we don’t undertake these actions because they are easy. We do them because they are hard.

“We expect to be judged by future generations on our actions not our words, and we expect others to be judged in the same way.”

“The Authority and its partners have already set out ambitions, in the National Park Management Plan 2019-24, for making the wider National Park more resilient and responsive to the impacts of a changing climate. We look forward to working with others to achieve the objectives in that plan and demonstrate how we are going to get our house in order.”

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