Carbon Footprinting: How big is the problem?

Carbon footprints

Carbon footprints are a way of accounting for the total greenhouse gases (GHG) caused directly and indirectly by a person, organisation, event or product.

The most common GHG is carbon dioxide (CO₂), which makes up 81% of UK GHGs.

• Other GHGs such as methane (CH₄) or nitrous oxide (N₂O) are measured in ‘carbon dioxide equivalent’ (CO₂e), which takes into account the diverse effects different gases have on the environment. 

A wide range of activities produce GHGs. For carbon footprinting purposes these tend to be broken down into 5 sectors:

We have made two carbon footprints: one for the County as a geographical area, and the other for us as an organisation. We are using these as a baseline so we can measure our success.

The County of Cambridgeshire

The latest carbon emissions data from the UK Government shows that carbon emissions just from the county of Cambridgeshire were 6.45 million tonnes CO₂e in 2023. 27% of this was from transport, whilst 24% was from land use, land use change and forestry (LULUCF) and 17% from agriculture. The high emissions from LULUCF are mainly due to the large amount of peatland in the county.

The Council's carbon footprint

As an organisation, we have our own carbon footprint. This comes from the operations we undertake to provide our services to our communities.

We collated data on as many of our operations as possible, and followed the international Greenhouse Gas Protocol and the UK government's environmental reporting guidelines to calculate our carbon footprint. We have included both direct emissions from our own assets (known as scopes 1 and 2) and indirect emissions from our supply chain and others (known as scope 3), where we can. 

The carbon footprint is updated annually to monitor progress. Each year, we also recalculate all previous years’ emissions, using improved methods and better data wherever we can. These annual carbon reports can be viewed below.

Progress

The Council's total known net GHG emissions in 2024-25, for all three scopes, (net, after reductions for avoided emissions) were 32% lower than our baseline year of 2018-19.

Gross emissions for scopes 1 and 2 (direct) have also reduced by 51% in 2024-25 since the baseline reporting year of 2018-19. This is largely down to the Council’s programme of low carbon heating projects at Council buildings.

Scope 3 (indirect) emissions were 32% lower in 2024-25 than in our baseline year of 2018-19, with the largest reduction being due to reduced construction work.

The table below shows Cambridgeshire County Council's greenhouse gas emissions, using the market-based method for scope 2. The numbers indicate tonnes CO₂e.