Conclusions and recommendations
1. The record of civil departments in tackling their carbon emissions has remained very poor overall. We recommend that all departments set out a credible set of actions for delivering the 12.5% reduction target as urgently as possible.
(Paragraph 11)
2. We welcome the fact that the Government has now removed QinetiQ from the historic baseline against which it is measuring progress in reducing emissions. What is harder to understand is why it has taken several years for the Government to accept and act on this point. It is unacceptable that the Government allowed what was essentially an accounting anomaly to distort its headline performance so profoundly. To avoid such inaccurate reporting in the future, the Government must ensure that where departments acquire or dispose of significant parts of their estate, they clearly recalculate the baseline of emissions from which they are measuring their progress.
(Paragraph 14)
3. While it is encouraging that the Government appears to have found evidence of additional carbon savings to offset the removal of "the QinetiQ effect", these new figures should be treated with caution, until the SDC has examined and commented on them. We recommend that in future the Government ensures it submits the correct figures to the SDC in time for examination and inclusion in the annual Sustainable Development in Government report.
(Paragraph 16)
4. We recommend the Government ensures that the basis on which departments report their emissions is made consistent. In particular, if the main targets on carbon emissions are to refer solely to offices then those major parts of the Government Estate that are not offices—notably large areas of military bases, prisons and courts—should be removed from the figures, and the baselines adjusted accordingly. In that case, the Government must also ensure that these other parts of its estate are subject to an equivalent set of targets and reporting requirements. Alternatively, the Government should enlarge the definition of the target to encompass them. In either case, PFI prisons should be required to meet the same target and reporting requirements as state-run prisons.
(Paragraph 19)
5. Departments have made excellent progress on increasing their use of green electricity contracts. We commend the clear interest this shows across Government in demonstrating leadership on green procurement. At the same time, the contribution these green electricity contracts are making to the construction of new renewable capacity—and thus on decreasing carbon emissions—is in fact highly uncertain, and may be very marginal. We note that the Government is awaiting advice from Ofgem on whether departments' use of "green tariffs" should be counted as reducing their emissions. If Ofgem confirms that they should not be counted in this way, we recommend that the target requiring departments to increase their sourcing of renewable power is revised wholly to exclude the purchase of "green tariff" electricity.
(Paragraph 25)
6. We are extremely
disappointed with progress on generating electricity from on-site
and district renewables. We recognise and support the Government's
commitment to taking "a leading position in implementing
self-generation renewable energy" through a renewable energy
strategy that is currently in development; however, it is a serious
failing of the Government that it is only now developing such
a strategy. Given the wider contribution to micro- and district
renewables of taking a lead through public procurement, Government
use of self-generated renewable power must be scaled up enormously
as a top priority. We recommend that this be made a key feature
of departmental delivery plans, with a senior individual—such
as the Chief Sustainability Officer—being made responsible
for delivering this strategy across Government. (Paragraph 28)
7. The degree of confusion within Government as to how the target of making its offices carbon neutral by 2012 is to be met, how much this will cost, and even how it will be defined and what it will measure, is wholly unsatisfactory. These essential issues must be worked out urgently. In particular, each department's delivery plan should indicate what proportion of its effort will be met by offsets and what by self-generation in each year going forward. These projections should be updated annually.
(Paragraph 35)
8. In meeting this target from 2012 onwards, it is important the Government does as much as possible to reduce its own emissions, rather than simply relying on buying carbon offsets. This is the surest way to guarantee that the stated amount of emissions are actually being reduced, and should also prove to be better value for money in the long-term. OGC should publish calculations of the amount of money the Government expects to spend on offsetting its own emissions every year from 2012, and should use this to support the financial case for accelerated development of on-site and district renewable generation to cut departmental emissions at source. The Government should also look at capping the use of offsets to meet this target, as a further means of forcing progress in self-generation. (Paragraph
36)
9. We welcome the Greening Government IT programme.
We recommend that this programme is made one of the single highest
priorities of the Chief Sustainability Officer, reporting to the
Cabinet Secretary. This would be to give it the attention it deserves,
given that increased use of IT would appear to be the biggest
single factor in the upward trend in emissions from civil departments
(up 22% since 1999-00). (Paragraph 38)
10. Even though reducing the embodied emissions in Government IT will have no effect on departments' recorded emissions, it is important that the Greening Government IT programme explicitly focuses on minimising them, given that most of the carbon emissions arising from IT come from its manufacture and disposal. We recommend that this programme includes efforts to minimise demand for new IT equipment overall, to increase the proportion of IT equipment that is reconditioned rather than bought all-new, and to procure new equipment with the lowest embodied emissions.
(Paragraph 39)
11. In terms of tackling
the emissions from Government IT in operation, we would expect
to see an emphasis on tackling the energy consumption of both
IT equipment itself and the air conditioning required to keep
it from overheating. In addition to improving the energy efficiency
of IT use, however, we recommend that departments review their
demand for electrical equipment, and reduce it where possible.
(Paragraph 40)
12. We recommend that the Government abolishes its energy efficiency targets, since by measuring energy use per square metre these give misleading pictures of departmental performance, thus rendering the targets meaningless. Similar problems might recur even if the target were changed to a per capita measure. For this reason we recommend that the Government replaces its energy efficiency targets with targets for reducing absolute levels of energy use.
(Paragraph 44)
13. By highlighting patchy information systems and lack of compliance with mandatory policies, the SDC's report reveals fundamental failings in the Sustainable Operations on the Government Estate target and monitoring regime, raising questions about its ability to effect progress and to hold failing departments to account.
(Paragraph 47)
14. At the same time, we recognise that Office of Government Commerce is taking steps to improve these systems, notably the collection of real-time data from Government buildings. We look forward to seeing considerable improvement in performance as a result in the next two years. In particular, if the new role for OGC, including the Centre of Expertise for Sustainable Procurement, is to mean anything, we expect to see a sharp rise in compliance with mandatory policies such as "Quick Wins".
(Paragraph 47)
15. We find it unacceptable that 15% of executive agencies do not report performance against their Sustainable Operations on the Government Estate targets, even though this is mandatory.
OGC must ensure that all executive agencies report to the SDC
each year. All executive NDPBs either report their performance
separately, or do so within individual subsections of their parent
departments' reports. (Paragraph 50)
16. We welcome the Government's commitment to ensuring that all outsourced operations are retained within the Sustainable Operations on the Government Estate regime, with their environmental performance subject to their contracting department's target and reporting requirements. At the same time we note that this only applies to outsourced operations that take place on property owned by Government bodies. We recommend that the Office of Government Commerce reviews the practicalities of the Government's mandating suppliers of services not based on site to report their environmental data in respect of these contracts.
(Paragraph 52)
17. While we are encouraged to learn that there is much activity to improve the sustainability of other parts of the public sector, the fact remains that there are no systematic and comprehensive assessments of progress. In the interests of public accountability, and in order to help to drive up performance consistently throughout the public sector, we recommend that OGC, relevant departments, and the SDC develop comprehensive annual assessments of progress in important sectors such as NHS bodies and schools.
(Paragraph 53)
18. We invite the House of Commons Commission and the Administration Committee to consider how to ensure the House of Commons sets and meets demanding targets for improving the sustainability of the Parliamentary Estate, and for reporting its performance annually.
(Paragraph 55)
19. Considering the significant nature of the Government's response to this year's SDiG report, we agree that the Sustainable Development Commission is playing a significant role in stimulating Government to improve its performance.
(Paragraph 57)
20. At the same time, we recommend that the SDC reviews whether its presentation of performance in the annual SDiG reports could be made more straightforward, including—where necessary—being more critical.
(Paragraph 58)
21. We recommend that the SDC looks again at its practice of simply reporting the data as given to it by departments. Currently, where it has reservations about the figures, it only expresses these in separate commentary sections. For example, the SDC's press release on the recent SDiG report stated that "overall carbon emissions from offices have fallen by 4% since 1999", despite the fact that this figure had been discredited elsewhere in the report. (Paragraph
59)
22. The departmental delivery plans that the Office of Government Commerce is overseeing are a major step forward. They should not be a one-off exercise, but should be done annually, to set out clearly what progress each department is making, and a revised series of actions needed to meet their targets in the light of that progress.
(Paragraph 62)
23. We welcome the reform to incorporate sustainability goals in the personal objectives of the Cabinet Secretary and all Permanent Secretaries. We expect this to have a tangible effect on the forcefulness and coherence of departments' response to these issues, and look forward to the increase in accountability for such performance to Parliament this should bring. We recommend the Government clarifies which minister has overall responsibility for this agenda—preferably a senior cabinet minister. We also recommend the Government indicates how performance against these objectives will be reflected in terms of career rewards and prospects.
(Paragraph 65)
24. We hope that these new personal responsibilities for sustainability will also provide a mechanism for encouraging senior civil servants to treat their departments' sustainable development action plans (SDAPs) seriously, and see to it that departmental policy is more consistent with sustainability objectives. In the future we may choose to review, department by department, the extent to which SDAPs are being integrated into departmental policies and activities.
(Paragraph 66)
25. Beyond the senior civil service, personal responsibility for sustainability issues must be increased at all levels. This will require more training and incentives. The evidence we have received highlights the important role that operational staff in procurement and facilities teams have to play. We recommend that OGC works with civil service unions to ensure that staff are trained, motivated, and empowered to take a leading role in mainstreaming sustainability in Government operations.
(Paragraph 69)
26. The sixth annual SDiG report reveals, behind the figures, very poor progress in tackling carbon emissions from the majority of departments. The Government response has announced many promising reforms; that there was a Government response to the SDC for the first time was itself a big step in the right direction. What is crucial now is that departments make good on this promise by adding detail to these plans and accelerating progress in tackling carbon emissions and increasing on-site and district renewables. In particular, rapid progress needs to be made on reducing demand for electricity, and increasing on-site and district generation of electricity from low and no-carbon sources.
(Paragraph 70)
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