Climate Change - what we're doing to reduce our carbon footprint

Climate Change is on our news channels and feeds every day, floods, fires, severe weather, it’s not only affecting us here in Wrexham but is a global problem and one that we’re determined to play our part to make a difference.

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Buildings Transport and Mobility Land Use Procurement (how we get our goods and services)

We declared a Climate and Ecological Emergency in September 2019 and since then we’ve been working on four key areas where we can reduce our carbon footprint and become carbon neutral by 2030.

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Buildings

We own a lot of buildings and we’re progressing with plans to reduce the energy consumption in them

We’ll spend around £67,000 installing Building Management Systems (BMS) into some of our schools to monitor and effectively manage services such as heating, ventilation and air conditioning. This will include a programme of 10 schools, of which 3 are our large high schools, deriving a wealth of benefits in terms of reducing our carbon emissions from the heating of our buildings.
Schools will also benefit from lighting upgrades, we have programmed for 4 primary schools and 1 large high school to have a full LED lighting scheme installed, at a cost of more than £150,000.
Within our large depot on Ruthin road we will be looking at the potential to install a battery storage system to link with their existing Solar PV installation – which could cost around £200,000.
The Environment Depot at Abbey road will look to have Solar PV installed to support the expansion of the number of electric vehicle charging points for the ever expanding electric fleet.
We will be spending £55,000 on the newly refurbished Crown Buildings, will have a large PV system installed, which will support the reduction in carbon emissions from the building.

Transport and Mobility

We’ve already got quite a few electric vehicles and our environment department has just increased the number of vehicles by purchasing new electric vehicles including a new electric bin wagon.
The environment fleet is one of the largest in our organisation and can be seen on our roads every day so this is a huge leap forward!
You can read more about our latest additions here.
We’re increasing the number of publicly accessible charging points.

Land Use

We own lots of land and associated buildings across the county borough and making sure we ensure it’s of high quality and is offering the best environment for the ecology of the area is important.
Trees are an important and widespread asset in all our communities and we will continue to expand tree planting and replacing trees with equal or better specimens as trees come to the end of their natural life. We’ll also plant more woodland areas and support groups and organisations who want to set up their own community gardens.
By doing this we’ll be offsetting any carbon we do produce and begin to see change.

Procurement (how we get our goods and services)

This is perhaps the most central part of our plans but the one that will not be seen by the public – buying goods and services from food for school meals and refuse vehicles to paper and ink. It all has to be produced and developed and we’ll be changing the way we look at contracts to take into account the value the bidders can bring to support our carbon neutral targets.
Becoming carbon neutral to reduce our impact on climate change

Cllr David A Bithell, Lead Member for Environment and Transport, said, “We’ve come a long way, even during the most challenging year ever faced by the Council.

We’re determined to continue this work to reduce our carbon footprint and will continue to work alongside our partners at the Public Services Board, Welsh Government and Economic Ambition Board to make sure it’s done in a sustainable and well managed way.”