A report seeking Committee approval to adopt the Reading Climate Emergency Strategy 2025-30 and presenting the:

(i)             Reading Climate Emergency Strategy 2020-25 Annual Report for 2024/25; and

(ii)            Reading Borough Council’s Corporate Greenhouse Gas Emissions Annual Report for 2024/25.

The Committee considered a report that sought approval to adopt the Reading Climate Emergency Strategy for the period 2025 to 2030. The report also introduced the annual performance reports for the current Reading Climate Emergency Strategy 2020-25 and the Council’s Corporate Greenhouse Gas Emissions 2024-25. The following documents were appended to the report:

• Appendix 1. Reading Climate Emergency Strategy 2025-2030
• Appendix 2. Reading Climate Emergency Action Plan 2025-2030
• Appendix 3. The Reading Climate Emergency Strategy 2020-25 - Annual Report 2024/25
• Appendix 4. Reading Borough Council Greenhouse Gas (GHG) Report 2024/25

At the invitation of the Chair, Ben Burfoot, Sustainability Manager and Dylan Parkes, Co-Chair of Reading Climate Change Partnership Board (RCCP), delivered a presentation on the work that had been carried out by the Council and the RCCP since the Council’s Climate Emergency declaration in 2019, and on the development of the updated Reading Climate Emergency Strategy for 2025-30.

The report and presentation set out the national and local policy context. At its meeting in February 2019, the Council had declared a Climate Emergency and had set a target for the borough to reduce emissions to net zero by 2030. The Council had subsequently adopted the Reading Climate Emergency Strategy 2020-25 based on the net zero by 2030 ambition. At the same time the Council had adopted its own Carbon Plan for the period covering 2020 to 2025 which had included an interim target for the Council to reduce its corporate carbon emissions by 85% by 2025 on route to net zero by 2030.

The report stated that the transition to net zero would take some time to achieve and that the 2030 date should be considered as a key milestone towards achieving the ambitious net zero goal. The report explained that modelling now focused on 2040 with the ambition of achieving a close to 90% reduction against the 2005 baseline by that year, provided that national policies enabled this to happen. 

The report set out the impacts of Climate Change globally, nationally and in Reading. It stated that the summer of 2025 had been the warmest summer on record for the UK with a mean temperature of 16.1°C meanwhile, the winter of 2024/25 had been the eight wettest on record, and that eight out of the ten of the warmest and wettest winters had occurred since the turn of the century. This demonstrated the reality of global warming which drove a range of impacts, risks and costs at home and abroad including floods, heatwave, storms and wildfires. Consequently, there was an increasing need for the Council and its partners to adapt to the impacts of climate change and to plan for, as well as mitigate, the associated risks.

Reading Climate Emergency Strategy 2025 to 2030

The report introduced the new Reading Climate Emergency Strategy for the period covering 2025 to 2030 (Appendix 1) and recommended its adoption, along with the associated Action Plan (Appendix 2). Developed by the Reading Climate Change Partnership in association with ‘Dialogue Matters’, the updated Strategy had been designed to accelerate progress toward a net zero town that was resilient to the impacts of climate change.

The report explained that the updated Strategy had built on the collective efforts of partner organisations without duplicating existing approaches and strategies that were already driving progress. It recognised that, while significant progress had been achieved, further work would be required beyond 2030 to reach net zero. The updated Strategy remained a five-year plan, with an emphasis on laying the groundwork for a faster transition. It also sought to strengthen partnerships and to enable member organisations to contribute effectively and implement their own strategies.

Reading Climate Emergency Strategy 2020-25 (Annual Report for 2024/25)

The report also introduced the annual report for 2024/25 on the Reading Climate Emergency Strategy 2020-25 (Appendix 3). The annual report had been prepared by the RCCP and reflected the activity of a range of partners across Reading, not just the Council. The annual report set out examples of projects that had been delivered during the period and provided emissions data for 2023 (the latest year for which data was available). The report stated that, in 2023, emissions had fallen compared to 2022. This showed a continuation of the year-on-year reductions which had now fallen to 57% below the 2005 baseline. The represented the lowest level that emissions had been in Reading to date and was the 12^th largest recorded reduction in emissions out of 374 UK local authority areas. The modelling had been carried out using the latest report from the National Committee on Climate Change (7^th Carbon Budget Report) and indicated that a 75% reduction towards net zero could be possible by 2030 from the 2005 baseline if delivery kept on track. 

The annual report for 2024-25 listed a number of achievements over the period of the 2020-25 Strategy by partners in Reading, including several Council-led initiatives such as zero carbon bus travel, a zero carbon depot (including electric waste vehicles), decarbonisation of the Library, Civic Offices and Hexagon Theatre, a Green Events Code of Practice for Reading Festival and the Reading Climate Festival, 12-years of model climate conferences, rewilding and nature initiatives, and an ‘A Rating for Climate’.

The annual report acknowledged good progress toward net zero but warned that current trends made achieving the 2030 target challenging. The UK Clean Power Plan, launched nationally, aimed to deliver a 95% clean energy mix by 2030 and to cut emissions to less than 25% of current levels. This reinforced the need for the Council and its partners to accelerate the transition of heating and transport to electrified sources. Electric heat pumps and vehicles were approximately three times more efficient than fossil-fuel alternatives, presenting a major opportunity to further decarbonise. By replacing boilers and vehicles with electric equivalents at the end of their service life, substantial decarbonisation would be achieved by 2040.

RBC’s Corporate Greenhouse Gas Emissions (Annual Report for 2024/25

The report also introduced the Council’s Corporate Greenhouse Gas Emissions annual report for 2024/25 (Appendix 4). The report tracked the progress made towards the implementation of the Council’s Carbon Plan and the targets set within it. The report highlighted that the Council’s carbon footprint had been cut by 73.4% since 2008/09 (or 75% if renewable energy generated by Council assets is considered). This figure remained ahead of that of the Borough reductions which demonstrated that the Council had been leading by example and represented a small improvement on the previous, albeit accepting that reductions had plateaued over the last three reported years.

The report stated that, should the Council’s emission reductions be achieved in the 2025/26 year, the Council would likely achieve a 75-80% reduction in its carbon footprint against the current carbon plan target of 85% by the end of 2025/26. However, it noted that a greater amount of investment in decarbonisation in the 2025 to 2030 period would be required to realise the Council’s target of net zero by 2030.

The report explained that the most effective way to reduce carbon emissions was to reduce energy consumption and that the Council had been reducing its consumption and emissions consistently against the baseline year. The cumulative avoided costs associated with this, set against the cost if no action had been taken, was estimated as £34.9m to date with the figure for 2024/25 alone at £6.4m.

Resolved -

(1)           That the Reading Climate Emergency Strategy 2025 to 2030 be adopted;

(2)           That the publication of the annual performance report for the Climate Emergency Strategy 2020 to 2025, which showed progress in reducing Reading Borough’s carbon emissions, which had fallen by 57% since 2005, be noted;  

(3)           That the publication of the Council’s Annual Greenhouse Gas Report 2024-25, which reported on the progress in reducing Reading Borough Council’s corporate emissions, which had fallen by 73.4% since 2008/09, be noted;

(4)           That it be noted that, whilst progress was being made, the Council and other partners would need to redouble efforts to reduce fossil fuel consumption and switch to electricity powered heat and transport to achieve net zero;

(5)           That it be noted that 2024/25 had been the eighth wettest winter on record and that the summer of 2025 had been the warmest on record in the UK and that the increased risks that climate change posed for both the Council and residents required the implementation of adaptation strategies.