Doncaster Council declared a climate and biodiversity emergency in September 2019 and, with a strong history of delivering environment and low carbon initiatives, has since built upon this with a suite of new strategies, policies and commitments to deliver on its net zero carbon ambitions.
These ambitions include the development and publishing of a new Environment and Sustainability Strategy for the borough, a Net Zero Carbon Masterplan and a Doncaster Climate and Biodiversity Emergency Commission Report.
With over £28m of new low carbon projects initiated this year, the decarbonisation of energy supplies and fleet transport would also be an obvious inclusion.
The recent proposal to relocate the council’s pool car fleet, closer to its main civic office in Doncaster town centre, presented a great opportunity to enhance the level of installed solar capacity and replace 20 of its diesel and petrol pool cars with full electric.
The proposal to design and build a 20 space ‘electric only’ carpark with 91kw solar carport to charge the vehicles and also supply electricity to the civic office received planning approval in March and construction is expected to start in the summer.
It will include 20 electric vehicle charging bays and two accessible spaces served by 10 fast charge points. There will be tree planting and additional low level landscaping as part of the scheme.
Debbie Hogg, director of corporate resources, explains: ‘This new electric vehicle infrastructure supports our plans to tackle the Climate and Biodiversity Emergency as we introduce fully electric vehicles as part of our annual replacement of the current transport fleet.
‘We are phasing out the council’s fleet reliance on fossil fuel vehicles and have already put the first 20 electric vehicles on the road. With more environmentally friendly vehicles to come, we are cutting carbon emissions and helping to improve air quality.’
