Climate change is recognised as the greatest international sustainable development challenge, and the most serious environmental problem facing the World. 

Whilst climate change is truly a global issue it is also very much a matter for local concern and action.

Local authorities have a key role to play in tackling climate change by reducing energy use in their own buildings and council managed housing, supporting low carbon and renewable energy technologies, providing more sustainable transport options, determining land use planning policies, raising awareness amongst the public, and providing advice / support on what people can do.

We made a public commitment to play our part in addressing the issue of climate change by signing the ‘Welsh Declaration on Climate Change and Energy Efficiency’ in 2005.

We approved a challenging Climate Change Strategy in 2006 that provides a framework for embedding climate change considerations across all our services and activities.

Our principal objectives in responding to the challenge of climate change are to:

• promote sustainable development: by integrating actions to address climate change as a central part of broader mainstream programmes for sustainable development;
• mitigate the impacts of our activities: by reducing to the minimum extent possible our emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases;
• adapt to the inevitable effects of climate change: by recognising the real and potential impacts of climate change and intervening to moderate harm and exploit opportunities.

Our approach to addressing the impacts of our activities on climate change is based around a series of positive steps, including:

• making a public commitment to tackling climate change;
• adopting a Council-wide strategy on climate change and sustainable energy, using a variety of management tools and operational practices to deliver it;
• promoting sustainable energy and climate change objectives through the Community Strategy, land use plans and operational processes;
• adopting a ‘whole life’ approach to investment and procurement;
• integrating action for climate change across all service areas;
• seeking early wins, where action directed at climate change will have consequential benefits for other objectives, especially reducing long-term costs.

A baseline study carried out by the Carmarthenshire Energy Agency to inform the production of our Climate Change Strategy calculated that our carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions in 2004/05 were 25,900 tonnes, comprising:

The areas with the greatest direct impact are our buildings and transport, whilst additional emissions from the Council housing stock are also significant at around 55,600 tonnes per annum. At the heart of each of these major areas of impact lies the use of energy.

Whilst our emissions are a small proportion of the overall total in the county (some 2%, excluding council housing) the make-up of our carbon footprint is representative of that for the county as a whole.