Ceredigion council is “years ahead of schedule” on carbon reduction targets even without Covid restrictions that led to more than £1m less spent on energy in the past year, councillors have heard.

Thriving communities overview and scrutiny committee members heard on Monday, 1 November that the global climate emergency was “a very serious issue for us for all sorts of reasons”, as cabinet member Cllr Alun Williams outlined the progress made on the council action plan to become a net zero carbon local authority by 2030, and its focus on “operational emissions”, where figures for 2020/21 financial year show numbers are down 19 per cent across buildings, street lighting, fleet and business mileage.

Last year the reduction was six per cent.

Cllr Dai Mason said “it was Covid that saved most of the money”, with officers agreeing that much of the savings came from office closures and working from home, and the “most notable reduction was in relation to business mileage” which was down almost 72 per cent to 180 tonnes of C02 and a cost of £297,738 down from more than £1m.

In 2020/21 total cost of energy and fuel reported within the scope of the Carbon Management Plan was £2,415,610.

Ceredigion County Council spent £1,322,919 less on energy in 2020/21 than they did in the previous financial year (2019/20), while a 28.77 per cent reduction in overall emissions was recorded in the past three years.

It was acknowledged that rising utility and fuel prices will impact future years, as will a return to previous working patterns, but savings could be maintained by incorporating many of the practices currently being used such as video conferencing remote attendance, Bethan Lloyd Davies, carbon reduction manager told members.

In response to the argument that there was no point in trying to reduce carbon when large countries like China did not, she said: “As a local authority the expectation is that we lead by example and we should be promoting green ways of working, being greener and reducing emissions.”

Cllr Williams told members: “With the COP 26 conference going on in Glasgow there is no better week to present the latest report on the work Ceredigion is doing to reduce our carbon emissions.

“We’re now in year three of our latest five-year carbon management plan - the third five-year plan we’ve undertaken since 2007/8.

“This plan, like the others, has had a 15 per cent target over the five years.

“However these plans have had a tendency to under promise and over deliver.

“Clearly Covid has had a huge positive impact on our carbon figures for this year, so it’s important to first mention how we were doing with the plan before Covid happened.

“We were actually on schedule to achieve a reduction of around 14 per cent in our carbon emissions, in year three of a five-year plan to achieve 15 per cent.

“So we were almost two years ahead of schedule with our emissions without Covid.”