It’s a welcome start, but a long way still to go

I READ with interest your story on the council announcing a £10m solar farm (Newbury Weekly News, January 28). Of course, as a Liberal Democrat and personally, I’m delighted as it’s a small part of something we proposed as an amendment during last year’s budget, ie large scale hybrid solar farms.

So, despite them ridiculing the idea at the time, clearly, officers or maybe even the Conservative executive heard and the first step has begun.

I also noted that councillor Steve Ardagh-Walter says “this is a statement of our intent”.

I hope so, as all parties committed to this by declaring a unanimous climate emergency.

It is however important that the public and administration understand the scale yet needed for a carbon-neutral district.

The announcement says this “offsets around 30 per cent of our footprint”. That sounds impressive, but it depends on what “our” means.

It refers just to 30 per cent of West Berkshire Council’s footprint, not 30 per cent of West Berkshire as a whole. You can see this because it covers 4,400 homes and West Berkshire has approximately 65,000.

The actual amount that needs offsetting means you must also add West Berkshire Council and other commercial carbon on top of this.

So, the announcement is around seven per cent of homes and likely just three to four per cent of West Berkshire as a whole. A welcome start, but does not get anywhere near carbon neutral by 2030.

The good news is that these carbon offsetting schemes have a downward trend in costs to build.

Therefore, they don’t just reduce carbon, but pay for themselves and then more.

They are really ‘invest to save schemes’ so can be safely scaled up.

For me, it’s a far safer bet than the

£100m that was originally earmarked for commercial property purchase and the high-risk return associated with that.

ADRIAN ABBS

Liberal Democrat shadow portfolio holder for the environment, climate change and public protection