Sheffield ranks amongst the top cities in Carbon Disclosure Project

Sheffield has received an A- status in its first submission to the Carbon Disclosure Project, ranking amongst the top cities in Europe.

The Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP) is a not-for-profit charity that runs the global disclosure system for investors, companies, cities, states and regions to manage their environmental impacts. The world’s economy looks to CDP as the gold standard of environmental reporting with the richest and most comprehensive dataset on corporate and city action.

In July 2022 Sheffield City Council completed Sheffield’s first submission to the CDP (Carbon Disclosure Project) reporting platform. ‘A-‘is just one off the highest score of ‘A’, meaning that we are at the top end of reporting cities in the European Union.

The scoring takes into account targets and actions on climate mitigation from sectors including energy, transport, waste, water and food, along with strategies and actions in place to adapt to future changing climate.

In recent years, the Council has introduced a range of actions to mitigate against climate change, and to help the city to reduce local impacts of climate change, such as:

• 10 Point Plan – Developed and adopted framework for working with city partners to tackle the climate emergency
• Climate Impact Assessments – Introduced as standard to projects and decision making

• Low Carbon Business Support Programme – Supporting over 260 businesses across South Yorkshire by carrying out energy audits and providing 140 grants for energy efficiency improvements through our EU funded Low Carbon Business Support programme. This reduces their carbon emissions and saves them money
• Heat Network Zoning Pilot Programme – Taking part in a heat network zoning pilot programme with the Department for Business and Industrial Strategy to help inform emerging Heat Network Zoning legislation
• Flood strategy and defence work, including our award-winning Grey to Green scheme in the city centre and working with Sheffield and Rotherham Wildlife Trust  to demonstrate natural flood management approaches in the Limb Valley

Councillor Mazher Iqbal, Co-Chair of the Transport, Regeneration and Climate Policy Committee, said:

“I’m really pleased that Sheffield is headed in the right direction with how the council and other organisations and people in the city are working together to take action against climate change.  Our CDP submission and resulting score demonstrates that we’re getting systems and targets in place and can evidence a number of good mitigation and adaptation actions. We believe all of these strategies have contributed significantly to our A- rating.

“However, we know there is still room for improvement, and the CDP made several helpful recommendations, such as the development and implementation of a detailed climate risk and vulnerability assessment for the city, particularly identifying and adapting to risks faced most by vulnerable groups and having adaptation measures in place to address these risks. It is also recommended that we set a renewable energy target monitoring and measuring our carbon emissions across the organisation. We will work hard to get these into effect as a priority for the organisation and the city. But we’re proud of this achievement and we will keep building on this to be better and better.”

For more information on the Carbon Disclosure Project, you can visit their website here.