Dacorum Borough Council notes that the important Climate Summit COP26 is being held in Glasgow this November, with only eight years remaining of the ten that were available when the Climate Emergency was recognised and declared by this council.
1. Dacorum Borough Council notes that the important Climate Summit COP26 is being held in Glasgow this November, with only eight years remaining of the ten that were available when the Climate Emergency was recognised and declared by this council.
2. Council also notes that the local response to the Climate Emergency, while capable of undertaking many urgent and useful actions within its powers and capacity and able to energise local people and businesses, faces critical limitations in key areas for scaling-up change, such as:
- Sufficient and adequate workforce, trained and scaled for deployment to install Ground-Source and Air Source Heat Pumps and other innovative renewables and insulating technologies to reduce CO2 production in housing and other buildings
- Funding for the front-loaded costs of insulation schemes and conversion to renewables of present carbon-intensive systems used in Dacorum, both by the Council and by residents and businesses.
3. These work-streams and others require urgent action by Government, to improve capacity for local authorities to draw on, particularly those authorities like Dacorum with large housing stock, who are required to insulate buildings, adopt non-fossil-fuel sources of heat and power, and to reduce or recycle waste products safely and efficiently.
4. To ensure this council and others can undertake this critical work, local authorities need reassurance from Government that they can confidently prepare budgets knowing that that capacity will be available.
5. Council agrees to ask the Portfolio-holder for Environment to write to the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, and Alok Sharma, President of COP26 to urge a commitment on spending and timing for an urgent and effective scheme of investment in workforce training, technological innovation and industry standards to allow local government to make urgent progress in meeting its challenges meaningfully in the financial year 22/23.