Climate change

Our plan to tackle climate change

Tackling climate change is an important part of our best city ambition.

Our plan is to:

• reduce our own carbon footprint
  
• reduce pollution and noise
• reduce the level of greenhouse gas emissions from buildings in the city
  
• promote cycling, walking and the use of public transport
• promote a less wasteful, low carbon economy
• reduce flooding and other risks from the impact of climate change
• build sustainable infrastructure
  
• to help residents reduce their own carbon footprints

How you can help

Whether you are an individual or take decisions on behalf of an organisation, making simple changes that reduce your environmental impact will help end our city's contribution to climate change. Lots of support and advice is available.

• individuals can learn more about changes that you can make by visiting Leeds by Example
  
• local community organisations can apply for a grant of up to £50,000 for an eligible climate-related project through our Community Climate Grants scheme
  
• public sector, private sector, commercial, religious, or for-profit organisations may be able to receive support for similar projects to cut carbon emissions from the Leeds City Region Enterprise Partnership's Sustainability Programme for SMEs or the UK Government's Public Sector Decarbonisation Scheme
  

What we’re doing

We are delivering our plan through all of our work. This includes schemes like Clean Air Leeds and Connecting Leeds and our proposed Local Plan Update.

We are setting an example to other organisations and businesses in the city by becoming carbon neutral in our own operation.

We are doing this by:

• purchasing all of our electricity from renewable sources
• replacing the vehicles we use with zero and low emission vehicles
• halving the energy required for street lighting by upgrading to LED
• reducing the amount of meat in school meals
• replacing gas with waste powered district heating in our city centre buildings
• planting large areas of woodland on our own land as well as supporting landowners in rural and urban areas to access funding though the White Rose Forest partnership
  
• only purchasing low emission vehicles by 2025
• preparing for climate change impacts, such as flooding, as part of the planning process
• investing £100 million to improve the energy efficiency of existing council housing by 2025
• halving the carbon footprint of meals served in schools, council cafes and meal deliveries
• no longer accepting food contracts for air-freighted imports. Where we use ingredients that can’t be produced locally, we will reduce the impact of transportation by only using boat, road or rail
• sourcing more of the food that we serve from producers based in Yorkshire and the surrounding counties

How we developed these plans

Consultation

We spoke with a wide cross section of residents and promoted the consultation at over 80 events throughout the city. 7,835 people took part and shared their views on the climate emergency.

We found that:

• 94.8 percent are worried about the effects of climate change on future generations
  
• 94.8 percent believe that the climate is changing
• 93.4 percent believe that climate change is due to human activity
• 84.9 percent think that they have good knowledge about the causes and effects of climate change
  

You can learn more about the consultation by reading the Big Leeds Climate Conversation report.

Citizens' jury

To bring forward ideas for tackling climate change, we have a citizens jury. The jury consists of 25 people from different backgrounds and represents the people of Leeds. The jury have made 12 recommendations to help tackle climate change.

How we make decisions

We are working with the Leeds Climate Commission to become a carbon neutral city. Leeds City Council’s Executive Member for Infrastructure and Climate is also the vice-chair of the commission.

All Executive Board reports include consideration of environmental impacts.

We have a cross party committee that makes recommendations on climate change and sustainability. This is called the Climate Emergency Advisory Committee.

Keep updated

To find out about how we are tackling the climate change emergency, you can follow @LeedsCC_CEAQ on Twitter, read the latest climate action related press releases or sign up to our mailing list.

Register for climate emergency updates