Climate Emergency Action Plan

Climate change is one of the greatest challenges we face, locally, nationally and globally. It is a challenge that will continue to grow over the coming years, becoming ever more critical for future generations. 

The council declared a climate emergency in September 2019 and committed to identify steps we can take to achieve carbon-neutrality as soon as possible.  

In June 2020, the council approved its first climate emergency action plan, with an updated action plan approved in November 2024. It concentrates on what the council can do to make a difference, both to council and borough wide emissions. However, we cannot face the challenge alone and we will all need to work together to help sustain and improve the quality of life of those in the borough both now and into the future. 

The action plan will be reviewed and monitored in line with the corporate action plan process and will continue to develop as our understanding increases of emission reduction and the most effective ways to do this. We will therefore continually monitor and evaluate the progress of this action plan against the intended outcomes, and review and refine it based on lessons learnt and from assessing actions from other councils.

The progress update documents on this page summarise what has happened in previous years. Our latest greenhouse gas emissions report is also available.

Since our climate emergency declaration, some of the things we have done include: 

  • Moved to a greener electricity tariff, where our electricity usage is matched by renewable energy generation 
  • Replaced a number of vehicles and sweepers in our fleet to electric equivalents and moved a number of our petrol driven hand tools over to battery powered versions 
  • Switched fuels for our fleet away from diesel to hydrotreated vegetable oil (HVO), which should reduce the associated direct emissions by up to 95% 
  • Completed a retrofit project for a range of decarbonisation measures at our Romsey depot
  • Planted over 33,300 trees over three planting seasons with support from volunteers. For more information follow
  • Implemented our urban meadow initiative, with the area managed this way increasing each year 
  • Worked with partners to enable fuel poor households living in energy inefficient homes to access to grants to improve the energy performance of their homes and promoted the availability of other initiatives such as Solar Together Hampshire 
  • Launched a two-year community energy programme being led by Community Energy South on behalf of the Council and working with Dragonfly Power 
  • Secured funding to help local rural land-based businesses reduce their carbon footprint 
  • Clarified that our community grants can be used for climate change and environmental projects and awarded funding to support the energy performance of community buildings