About Low Carbon Oxford: A Route Map to 2020
Low Carbon Oxford: A Route Map to 2020 is a report based on Oxford City’s journey towards significant carbon reduction by the year 2020.
Routemap 2020 is a report based on Oxford City’s journey towards significant carbon reduction by the year 2020. Much of the report is based on analysis and actions arising from the Sustainable Energy Action Plan (SEAP) developed by Oxford City Council and supported by Aether.
The Covenant of Mayors is a climate change mitigation initiative founded in Europe. Signatory cities pledge to reduce their emissions by at least 20% by 2020 and 40% by 2030.
Oxford City Council signed up to the Covenant of Mayors in September 2014. By becoming a signatory Oxford City council were required to set a target for 2020 and submit a sustainable energy action plan (SEAP).
Route Map 2020 reports on how Oxford is progressing towards its emissions target and how the city will continue to achieve further reductions moving into the future.
Key findings in the Route Map
- Oxford has made significant progress towards achieving the target of reducing our emissions by 40% by 2020 on a 2005 baseline.
- Taking into account grid decarbonisation: by 2012, Oxford had already secured a reduction of around 9% in absolute emissions.
- The Council have also engaged organisations operating in the city and included in our projections actions that we and others intend to take.
- The analysis predicts that actions that were taken since 2012, and planned before 2020, will deliver a 38.5% reduction. However some of the identified actions, for example relating to domestic energy efficiency, rely on national policy measures and we will have to make a concerted effort to ensure they are secured. In addition, further actions yet to be identified will be needed to the remaining 1.5% savings to meet the target.
- The equivalent figures which will be used in the EU submission and target (i.e. excluding grid decarbonisation) are: by 2012, Oxford had already secured a reduction of around 12% in absolute emissions. Which is equal to around 18% per capita emissions reductions.
Report authors
‘Low Carbon Oxford: A Route Map to 2020’ has been developed by Oxford City Council. The Council would like to acknowledge the support of Aether Ltd in delivering the Sustainable Energy Action Plan which underpins this publication. Particular credit is given to Aether’s Ryan Glancy and Christopher Ahlgren for their contribution.
Date Published
The report was first published on
Dec 2018
Further Information
A full copy of the report is available for download here.
