Agenda item

Lancaster City Council Energy Strategy

(Cabinet Member with Special Responsibility Councillor Hamilton-Cox)

 

Report of the Head of Environmental Services

Minutes:

(Cabinet Member with Special Responsibility Councillor Hamilton-Cox)

 

Cabinet received a report from the Head of Environmental Services to establish Cabinet’s preferred approach to further delivering the outcomes of the Corporate Plan that relate to energy.

 

Option 1- Continue to deliver this aspect of the Council’s corporate plan in the way that it had been delivered to date. The main risks of this were that there would be no real focus and when opportunities did arise the lack of underpinning strategy would create problems in terms of resourcing, staffing, consultation and ability to deliver real wins to the Council. It was also considered certain that ultimately energy costs would continue to rise, targets for reducing carbon emissions etc would continue to rise, commercially proven renewable technologies would improve and incentives for introduction of renewables would decrease. Not having any planned approach could act against the Council’s best interests and there could be no guarantees that this approach would effectively deliver this aspect of the Corporate Plan.

 

Option 2- Seek to develop a Council energy strategy, subject to consideration as part of the budget. This would help to ensure the Council had in place a clear, agreed and realistic plan for the future that would allow us to protect ourselves against rising energy costs, meet emission targets, generate income and take advantage of available technologies at the opportune moments. It would require a budgetary allocation of around £20,000 to develop the actual strategy. Dependent on the approach chosen it could potentially cost millions to deliver, but potentially the benefits financially, economically and environmentally might far outweigh the initial costs.

 

The options, options analysis, including risk assessment and officer preferred option, were set out in the report as follows:

The development of an energy strategy would require significant officer time as well as the use of external expertise.  If deemed a priority the officer time would be prioritised from existing budgets however it was estimated that the one-off cost of external expertise would be in the region of £20K.  There was currently no specific budgetary provision for this and therefore it would need to be considered as part of the current revenue budget exercise.

It should be noted that once developed, the strategy was likely to highlight areas requiring significant financial investment (potentially into the £millions) and Members should be mindful that difficult financial decisions would need to be taken in order to support the strategy.  However, as the results were unquantifiable at this moment in time, further reports would need to be prepared in order to outline options available including full financial appraisals to justify their support.

 

Councillor Hamilton-Cox proposed, seconded by Councillor Barry:-

 

“(1)      That Option 2 be approved: Seek to develop a Council energy strategy, subject to consideration as part of the budget.

 

Councillors then voted:-

 

Resolved unanimously:

 

(1)        That Option 2 be approved:  Seek to develop a Council energy strategy, subject to consideration as part of the budget.

 

Officers responsible for effecting the decision:

 

Head of Environmental Services

 

Reasons for making the decision:

 

‘Managing the Council’s Resources’ and ‘Environmental Sustainability’ were two of the themes that the Council currently had underpinning the four stated Corporate Priorities.   The development of an energy strategy would require significant officer time as well as the use of external expertise and there was currently no specific budgetary provision for this.  The decision enables the Energy Strategy to be considered as part of the current revenue budget exercise.

 

 

 

Supporting documents: