Best practice: Wirral Council's emission reduction trajectory


Wirral Council is planning a 13.4% per year reduction in CO2 emissions - equivalent to halving emissions every 5 years.


Wirral is a borough in the north-west of England. In December 2019, its council finalised and published its carbon reduction strategy [1].

It made use of the Tyndall Centre's carbon reduction trajectory tool which allocates the remaining 420 billion tonnes CO2 budget under the Paris Agreement according to a "fair" (equal per capita) method [2].

This gives Wirral's trajectory of 13.4% reduction per year as an exponential decline, which is mathematically equivalent to halving every 5 years.



References

[1]Wirral Council Cool2: A strategy for Wirral in the face of the global climate emergency (Dec 2019) https://www.wirral.gov.uk/sites/default/files/all/About%20the%20council/climate%20change/Cool%202%20-%20Approved%20by%20Partnership.pdf
[2]Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research Setting Climate Commitments for Wirral https://carbonbudget.manchester.ac.uk/reports/E08000015/

First published: Feb 2020
Last updated: 17 Feb 2020