Case study: The Carbon Trust (UK)

The issue

Short of resources and with important competing concerns, many UK local public authorities have failed to formulate an adequate response to the issue of climate change. In response, the UK Government has funded The Carbon Trust, which is charged with assisting UK public authorities and private sector organizations to reduce carbon emissions.

Our approach

The Carbon Trust engaged PricewaterhouseCoopers to design a strategic carbon management programme and test it with 16 UK local public authorities. The aim of the programme was to move the issue of climate change up the Local Authorities’ strategic agenda, embed climate change policy within their organisations, and identify projects that would cost-effectively reduce local authority carbon emissions.

The outcome

The local authorities taking part in the programme’s pilot have committed to an average carbon reduction of 13 percent and energy cost savings of 10 percent over the next 3-5 years. In addition, PricewaterhouseCoopers developed a Carbon Management Toolkit, which captured the experience derived from the pilot test and enabled Carbon Trust to roll out the programme to a further 30 local authorities the following year.