Carbon Literacy is an awareness of the carbon dioxide costs, greenhouse gas emissions, and impacts of everyday activities. We're a Carbon Literate Organisation. In 2023, we received our Bronze Carbon Literacy Organisational Award. We offer this training in-house to our staff and councillors. We can offer this course to our community leaders and our town and parish councils.
The challenge
The Council has embraced Carbon Literacy training, achieving the bronze award in the Summer of 2023. This internationally recognised training programme is delivered in-house by a small group of officers and has been tailored specifically to the Council. We have committed through our Sustainability Plan (refreshed in 2024) to be a Gold Carbon Literate Organisation by 2030.
Project summary
The Council have internally trained specialist staff to deliver the official Carbon Literacy toolkits. Many tool kits are used by the Council as we deliver this to staff, leaders, elected members, and we now deliver this in the community too, including our town and parish councils. The small cost of licenses has been covered via UK Shared Prosperity Funding. When launching into the community, UKSPF was used to deliver training to 300 members of the public and five of our large Town Councils. This service is now embedded, and we continue to roll this training out.
The accredited course introduces people to the science behind climate change and equips learners with information and tools to act in their own lives and communities. It features sections on greenhouse gases and their relation to climate, how the climate is likely to change, and the potential effects this could have on our local area, the UK, and other parts of the world.
The training gives learners the ability and motivation to reduce emissions on an individual, community, and organisational basis.
Impact
As of Summer 2024, over 270 staff and members have completed the course, with departments such as Planning Delivery leading the way and making this a mandatory training requirement for all staff.
When launched in 2020, staff who had attended the course wanted to continue 'climate conversations', and the Sustainability Staff Network was born. This is now the largest staff network at the Council. The Sustainability Team lead a Sustainability Staff Network, which now has nearly 300 members of staff. The network is made up of staff representatives from across the Council who meet every other month to network and attend learning technical briefings on a sustainable theme. These are themed on the UN Sustainable Development Goals.
The other element of Carbon Literacy has been launching the community offer in 2024. For Carbon Literacy Action Day the Council took the approach to work with neighbouring local authorities to share resources to deliver the course to community leaders.
How is the approach being sustained?
Internally trained staff enable the continued service provision. The staff induction pack enable all new staff to be introduced to the course, using the Council's learning and development platform to capture new starters and assists with administering the course participants and sign-ups. The community outreach is also being led by the Sustainability Team. New elected members are also able to take up the learning opportunity with a particular focus on executive members and committee leads.
Lessons learned
Carbon Literacy needs to be both top down and bottom up. Advocates include the executive member for climate change, and a service director who is the sponsor feeding into the Council's climate management team. The course toolkit is easy to use but needs dedicated officers to administer and deliver the course.
Relevant links
Our Carbon Literacy webpage and progress reports below gives a narrative on the programme.
https://www.centralbedfordshire.gov.uk/be-green
https://www.centralbedfordshire.gov.uk/info/168/sustainability/1624/climate_literacy_courses
https://www.centralbedfordshire.gov.uk/info/122/climate_change/672/climate_change
Contact detail
Email: [email protected]