Tackling the joint climate and biodiversity emergencies
Worcester City Council declared a climate emergency in July 2019 and committed to work towards making the city carbon neutral by 2030.
An Environmental Sustainability Strategy was drawn up to establish Council and city-wide objectives to reduce Worcester’s carbon emissions and consumption of resources, develop its low carbon economy, protect its natural environment and enhance its biodiversity.
A public consultation informed the development of the strategy, which is periodically updated, with the next refresh planned for summer 2024.
Read the full Environmental Sustainability Strategy.
Reducing carbon emissions
Worcester City Council’s Environmental Sustainability Strategy is supported by an action plan.
The current action plan outlines how we are seeking to decarbonise City Council buildings, reduce emissions from our vehicles, encourage active travel and install more electric vehicle charging points.
Other priorities include reducing waste, encouraging recycling and reuse and enhancing biodiversity.
The Environmental Sustainability Strategy and Action Plan are also supported by a number of other strategy documents and action plans, including:
- pdf Biodiversity Action Programme (122 KB)
- pdf Electric Vehicle Charging Strategy (1.40 MB)
- Active Travel Action Plan
Worcester City Council emissions
As we seek to reduce carbon emissions from the city, it’s important that we reduce emissions from our own Council buildings and operations.
The Council purchases accredited green electricity from renewable sources. Therefore all electricity usage across Council buildings and operations is rated as zero-carbon (this doesn’t include leisure centres, which are operated by Freedom Leisure on the Council’s behalf).
The Council’s main sources of emissions are from:
- our vehicle fleet, mainly the refuse collection vehicles which collect general waste and recycling from all households on a weekly basis,
- the Guildhall
- Museum and Art Gallery
- Crematorium
- Perdiswell Leisure Centre
- St John’s Sports Centre and Nunnery Wood Sports Centre
Emissions in 2022/23 amounted to approximately 1783 tonnes' CO2e.
Worcester’s carbon dioxide emissions in 2021
Emissions for the whole city totalled 376 kilotonnes CO2e in 2021 or 3.6 tonnes per person. This data is produced by central government and is updated retrospectively. 2021 is the most recent data that has been released.
Data from the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero representing a breakdown of carbon dioxide emissions within the scope of influence of Worcester City Council from 2005-2021.
Worcester Carbon Budget
The carbon budget is the total remaining carbon which can be emitted if Worcester is to reach its carbon neutral targets. As the carbon budget shows, an immediate and rapid programme of decarbonisation is needed, with reductions of around 12.6% required from 2020 onwards.
This is summarised in more depth in a May 2023 committee report.
What can you do to reduce your carbon footprint?
Reducing carbon emissions is the responsibility of everyone. Do you know what your carbon footprint is?
What can you do to reduce it?
- Make as many journeys as possible by active travel and public transport
- Make energy efficiency improvements to your home such as installing insulation
- Purchase electricity from renewable suppliers
- Shop second hand as much as possible
- Repair items rather than throwing them away
- Reduce consumption of meat and dairy
Find more information on reducing your carbon footprint.
Contact us
Feel free to email us at
You can also keep up to date with news, events and information on our Sustainable Worcester Instagram and Facebook pages.