The county council’s plan to delay taking action on decarbonisation, otherwise known as the Devon Carbon Plan, continues to achieve its aim as (bear with us) the county council cabinet responds to its consultation on its response to the Devon Climate Assembly’s responses to the subset of Interim Devon Carbon Plan issues it has successfully avoided confronting.
County Hall has so far spent three years talking with other regional stakeholders instead of taking necessary actions of which many only it, as the county’s transport authority, is capable.
Its latest contribution to the process is to agree that winds farms “can be part of providing Devon’s energy needs”, that the county “needs better active and public transport infrastructure” which “should be more affordable and convenient” and that “much more must be done to support people to upgrade the energy efficiency of their homes and businesses”.
Anyone wondering how it has taken the county council three years to grasp these insights need only look at the Devon Carbon Plan’s slippery delivery timetable.
When the county council convened the Devon Climate Emergency Response Group in April 2019 it said it would “act now to tackle [the] climate emergency”, before scheduling the completed Devon Carbon Plan for adoption by November the following year.
Postponement has since followed postponement, as well as a decision to scrap the planned principal public consultation, supposedly to speed up the process.
Yesterday’s update: “We remain on schedule to have the Devon Carbon Plan available for organisations to consider adopting from the end of August 2022”.
