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Stirling and Clackmannanshire Inventory and Projections

15 April 2019

Aether has recently finished a project working with Stirling and Clackmannanshire Councils in Scotland, compiling emission inventories for the regions. The two councils wanted to quantify their greenhouse gas emissions in accordance with the Covenant of Mayor’s guidelines for developing a Sustainable Energy and Climate Action Plan (SECAP).

Signatories to the Covenant of Mayors share an ambition to accelerate decarbonisation of their territories and to strenghten their capacity to adapt to climate change impacts. A SECAP translates this political commitment into an action plan which ultimately is used to track progress in implementing climate action. It is an internationally recognised accounting standard at the City and local authority level.

The first step in this process, which Stirling and Clackmmananshire are engaging in as groundwork to becoming signatories, is to develop both a Baseline and Monitoring emission inventory which estimates emissions of greenhouse gases. Along with a ‘business as usual’ projection scenario, the development of emission inventories can facilitate the tracking of climate action progress.

For Stirling and Clackmannanshire, Aether compiled historic inventories for 2006 and 2016 assessing the regions’ energy generation, consumption, and how this translates to CO2e emissions. Emissions from buidlings, transport, public lighting, waste and industry were included in the study. The results of the 2016 inventory indicated that both areas had reduced their emissions considerably over the 10-year period, largely the result of their significant increase in renewable electricity production.

Aether additionally developed two Scotland-specific projection scenarios for the councils to consider how their emissions may vary in the future in accordance with national level trends. Aether has developed similar analysis for other Scottish areas such as Dundee City and Aberdeenshire.

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