Camden Council refuses to confirm if it will meet its net-zero target by 2030

Camden Council has refused to confirm whether it will meet its net-zero target by 2030.

In March, the Local Government Association (LGA) revealed that only a third of councils felt confident about hitting net-zero emission targets on time.

In July, Cecilie Booth, executive director of corporate services at Peterborough City Council, said her “instinct” was that “we [local authorities] can’t afford net zero” due to budgetary pressures.

Camden Council previously admitted its journey toward net-zero would be a tough one.

When it published its climate budget in February, the Town Hall recognised the urgency of its “ambitious” target of zero carbon in the borough, but nevertheless identified a funding gap of around £150mn.

When asked by the Local Democracy Reporting Service if the council was confident it could meet its target, a press officer instead referred to its climate budget.

That budget states that reaching net zero by 2030 “remains a major challenge” since the financial investment needed “far exceeds council budgets”.

The press office was approached again about how optimistic the council was about hitting its local emissions goals in time.

At the time of writing, the council had not responded.

Camden declared a climate emergency in 2019, recognising the threat of climate change and its potential for “irreversible damage”.

Its targets include reducing road transport carbon emissions by 80 percent by 2041.

As part of its climate action plan, the council created a Carbon Management Programme to give annual updates on its carbon reduction efforts and other climate-related achievements.

The last review was published in November 2023, which reported that CO2 emissions from the council’s estate and operations had been cut by 59 percent since 2010.

Overall, emissions across the borough had fallen by 45 percent, Cllr Adam Harrison said, hinting at the council’s path to net-zero.

“We know that this won’t be easy, so our [plan] focuses on creating the foundations for a zero-carbon future, while supporting community-led action which realises climate and social benefits, through funding such as the Camden Climate Fund,” he said.

The climate budget report stated that making the council’s own estate zero-carbon would take between £167mn and £200mn in investment.

It added that the national funding landscape for energy efficiency was “limited” and subject to one-off funding rounds, which usually only meet around 25 percent of the cost of retrofits.

However, in July, the Town Hall hailed a reduction of CO2 emissions of “63 percent below the 2009/10 baseline” across its corporate and schools estate.

The full report into Camden’s emission pathway for its own estate, published in February, laid out the conditions needed to cut estate and operations emissions by its target of 82 percent.

These include replacing fossil fuels for heating power with “high-efficiency” electrification, making buildings more energy-efficient, and converting council-owned petrol and diesel vehicles to electric vehicles by 2030.

In the budget report, the council said there was no plan to offset residual emissions should the borough fail to reach its zero-carbon ambition, but strategies for offsetting “will be explored through the latter half of this decade”.