IT system to help Devon County Council with cutting carbon emissions

A council has developed a scheme aimed at encouraging contractors to report carbon emissions while carrying out roadworks.

Last year Devon County Council said it was changing the way it fixed roads to use less carbon as it tried to be net zero by 2030.

Now it has made an IT system, with the University of Exeter, so contractors can report emissions from each job.

It is hoped the transparency will help to make greener decisions.

Victoria Walsh, from Devon County Council, said: "We are trying to measure our carbon emissions through our supply chain, so for our contractors who undertake our work.

"The issue that we very quickly came up against was a lack of consistent standards in the industry.

"So what we want to be able to do is to compare apples with apples, instead of apples with pears. So this enables us to have a consistent method of having data fed back through our supply chain."

Councillor Stuart Hughes, cabinet member for Highways at Devon County Council, said: "We made a commitment that we'll be net zero by 2030 and looking at all our services across the county council. And as for highway management we've actually looked at new ways of working with those contractors to see how we can actually reduce that carbon even more."

Devon is among the UK's largest transport authorities with a road network of more than 8,000 miles, meaning what happens there is being watched by councils all over the country.

The county council's work is now being used to help other councils meet their climate change targets.

Simon Wilson, Future Highways Research Group, said: "Each of the authorities is now measuring carbon in its own way and that fragmentation means it is impossible to get the national picture for carbon from our construction activities on the network.

"This will establish a single framework for calculating carbon across the English authorities."

Devon County Council has said it would not have figures for how much carbon has been cut until later this year.

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