A carbon budget for the Parliament

A carbon budget for the Parliament

What changes would you like to see in Session 6? The parliament, as an organisation, could investigate setting itself a strict carbon (or GHG) budget - ie agree a ceiling for the emissions we generate through activities. We should treat this budget as seriously as we treat financial, budgets. This would require us to really understand and monitor the carbon/GHG costs of our activities, but there may be tools out there (eg Tyndall Centre) that we could use, or adapt, to turn this into a practical proposition. Ideally, individual offices could also be allocated their own budgets, and they can make decisions locally within that budget. How can this help reduce the Parliament’s environmental impact and embrace sustainability? This could incentivise the organisation to implement the measures which are most effective (rather than symbolic) whilst allowing managers discretion to prioritise the activities which are most important to their service - eg, yes you could do that overseas trip if it was crucial, but you'd use up your budget for the year, and would need to implement several other real "savings".

Points

Interesting idea!😃

Having the option of EV hire cars (for staff travelling outwith Edinburgh) would be a step towards this.

It would help all parts of the organisation understand their impacts on carbon directly, especially in relation to business travel as in the example given.

It would take a large amount of time to set up and monitor and I wonder if it would be worth it for an organisation the size of the parliament.

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