Category: Cities and local authorities, Policies and measures

Ealing Council Climate Action Plan Multi-Criteria Analysis

Aether developed a multi-criteria analysis of Ealing Council’s Climate and Ecological Emergency Strategy (CEES) to support the Council with prioritisation and delivery of climate actions to reach their 2030 target of carbon neutrality.

The challenge

Ealing Council declared a climate emergency in April 2019 and set a target of 2030 to reach carbon neutrality for the Council and borough. The target covers all carbon emissions, both produced and consumed, by everyone in the borough. Ealing Council adopted the Climate and Ecological Emergency Strategy (CEES) in 2021 and a two-year action plan was created for 2023-2025 which outlined key activities to push towards the 2030 target.

 

The solution

To aid with the prioritisation and delivery of these decarbonisation actions, Ealing Council commissioned Aether to estimate the implementation costs and wider benefits of the actions and to develop a tool to enable Council officers to refine and update the analysis as new information becomes available. This was developed through a multi-criteria assessment of the CEES actions.

This involved:

  • Stakeholder engagement to realise a political, economic, social, technological, legal and environmental (PESTLE) analysis to understand the broader influences and success determinators of the actions
  • Estimating capital expenditure (CAPEX) and operational expenditure (OPEX) of the actions, including staff time for the Council, asset purchases, external resources
  • Analysing wider social, economic and environmental impacts of the actions beyond decarbonisation, aligned with the 9 priorities identified in Ealing’s Council Plan
  • Qualitative assessment of the GHG emissions impacts of the actions

The analysis was developed in a Climate Impact Action Tool in Excel that the Council can use independently to view and refine the multi-criteria assessment in the future. This includes graphic viewers of the results across actions and detailed dives for specific actions.

A gap analysis of climate actions for the decarbonisation of Ealing was performed to help identify opportunities for further ambition and GHG emissions reductions.

 

The result

Ealing Council has a user-friendly multi-criteria assessment tool established to aid with the prioritisation and analysis of Ealing’s policies under the Climate and Ecological Emergency Strategy. The tool can be used to update analysis as more data is collected. The next steps for Ealing will be to review the impact scores of their actions, consider further actions that could be drafted, and to make demands of Central Government to enable the significant changes that are required to meet the challenges of reaching net zero carbon.

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Kathryn Hampshire

Principal Consultant

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Clare Bayley, Defra

“A heartfelt thank you to all the Aether team for this very comprehensive review – this is certainly turning out to be one of the most beneficial capacity building projects I have ever been involved in.”

Saviour Vassallo, Senior Environment Protection Officer, Malta Resources Authority

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Javier Cano Martín, Professional Unit for Climate Change and Environmental Services, CONAF (National Forestry Corporation), Chile

“Aether is a great partner for work in the area of European Air Emissions. The team was committed, reliable, well organised and had a deep technical understanding and motivated other partners with their good spirit.”

Umweltbundesamt: Environment Agency Austria

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Matthew Dudley, UNFCCC Secretariat

“It has been a pleasure to work with Chris Dore and Richard Claxton from Aether: they did their job in a very professional and timely manner. The workshop was organized and carried out in a cooperative spirit; the information provided to the workshop participants was complete and clear.”

Alina Novikova, UN/ECE Secretariat

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Sefton Council - for the Merseyside Atmospheric Emissions Inventory

“Aether's approach to couple innovative visualisation with high expertise manpower delivered valuable insights for our inventory work.”

Umweltbundesamt (Germany)

“The support provided by Aether for this project was especially remarkable considering the situation of the COVID-19 pandemic. The tools and methods used in order to engage local stakeholders really added value to the capacity building of the national team.”

Shanna Emmanuel, Saint Lucia BUR Project Coordinator

“It is always an absolute pleasure working with Aether. I always know what is expected of me. Their work ethic is of a very high standard and projects are always handled in a very professional manner. I have learnt many skills in terms of project management, quality control and workshop training styles from Aether and I hope to carry these principles forward in my own work. I look forward to collaborating with Aether more in the future.”

Luanne Stevens, Gondwana

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