Leading the way towards a low-carbon Lake District

Here at the Lake District National Park Authority, we are tasked with the challenge of caring for, yet helping people actively enjoy a ‘jewel in the crown of the British countryside’ as described by Environment Secretary, Liz Truss, when she visited the national park earlier this year.

In this role, we are always looking for new ways to help improve the environment and experience for the 41,000 residents and 16m visitors who enjoy the park every year.

That’s why, in 2008, we took steps to address the globally important issue of managing climate change by becoming a local leader in reducing carbon emissions while helping our communities understand the important environmental benefits.

This commitment was underpinned by a strategy to cut our own carbon emissions and bring about a change in the wider community.

So we’re delighted to be able to say that, as an organisation, we have worked together to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions (CO2e), by 39 per cent over the last eight years. Not only that, but we are confident that we will continue to lead by example and achieve our longer term ambition of a 50 per cent reduction by 2025.

Cutting emissions has become a thread that runs through all of our organisational operations. By investing in energy efficient technologies and renewable energy - including biomass boilers at two of our operations and solar PV at our northern office - we have been able to successfully drive down our emissions across all our sites.

We have invested in a fleet of efficient vehicles and reduced the number of miles that staff need to travel by developing a travel hierarchy – a process staff use to decide whether they can travel more sustainably, such as by cycling or car-sharing. We have also installed video-conferencing facilities at our offices, in order to further reduce the amount of travel by car.

By embedding carbon management throughout the organisation, we believe that each day to day decision by every member of staff has an impact on our collective emissions. That’s why, last year we introduced a bespoke Service Carbon Budget database, so staff are now able to take an active part in monitoring the emissions for which they are personally responsible.

In addition to our own efforts, we’ve also been part of a ground-breaking Low Carbon Lake District initiative with other partner organisations in the national park, which encourages visitors and residents to contribute towards an overall improvement to our emissions. This partnership is now meeting its target of reducing its carbon emissions by one per cent per year, each year, equating to an emissions saving of 23,000 tonnes. However, more action is needed in order to continue to meet our future targets. Even small changes, such as sourcing local food and drink, travelling sustainably and conserving energy, all contribute towards a greener future.

Looking ahead to the future, we need to look at adapting the national park to be able to cope with the changes in climate, as we have recently seen with last winter’s floods. This will be addressed through our work with the Cumbria Floods Partnership where changes in land management practice will be explored in order to help reduce the risk of flooding in the future.

We will continue to play our part by looking for new ways to improve our own carbon reduction activities. This summer we are working with Community Energy Cumbria to install community-owned solar PV on the roof of our head office, which will save over 10 tonnes CO2e a year and visibly demonstrate our continued commitment to reducing our environmental impact.

For more ideas of how people can contribute towards a low carbon Lake District visit www.lakedistrict.gov.uk/lowcarbonlakedistrict

Lake District National Park has a fleet of low-carbon vehicles.

Solar panels on the northern area office of the Lake District National Park were installed as part of the build specification in 2014.

Refilling the biomass boiler with woodchip at Lake District National Park head office in Kendal.