Appendix B - PKC Briefing Note - High Carbon within PKCs Purchased Goods & Servic
Perth and Kinross Council · 23 October 2024
Back to Climate Change and Sustainability Committee — 23 October 2024 and its agenda
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Perth and Kinross Council Briefing Note – High Carbon within PKC’s purchased goods and services Introduction In November 2023, the Climate Change and Sustainability Committee requested officers to circulate a briefing note on high carbon within PKC’s purchased goods and services (Report No. 23/329). This briefing note outlines the outputs of the analysis carried out by a consultant (CO2Analysis) on the Council’s procurement and finance spend data. Methodology The Council provided detailed extracts from its finance system covering suppliers, purchase orders, invoices and journaled transactions for the past four financial years (2019/20, 20/21, 21/22 and 22/23). Artificial intelligence was then used to extract the product data from the descriptions. The AI calculated the carbon footprint of the matched products using MRIO data from CenSA (now University of Leeds as used by DEFRA). This document focuses on the latest financial year (2022/23) outputs. Outputs Perth and Kinross Council’s annual climate change report to the Scottish Government (Report No. 23/329) highlighted a carbon footprint of 40,471tCO2e for 2022/23. Please note that the figures illustrated in the table below have been updated to reflect a change in the methodology by SSN used to estimate homeworking emissions. As a result, although the 2022/23 footprint had been reported as 39,798tCO2e, it has now been updated to 40,471 tCO2e. Table 1: Perth and Kinross Council’s 2022/23 Carbon Footprint (tCO2e) Scope 1 Scope 2 Scope 3 Total Scope 3 sources reported to date Scope 3 Employee Commuting Total Footprint 9,719 4,730 26,022 20,653 5,369 40,471 The results of the analysis showed an additional 152,126 tCO2e for Scope 3 emissions. Incorporating this to PKC’s 2022/23 carbon footprint would result to a new total of 192,597 tCO2e. The Council’s updated carbon footprint for 2022/23 is shown in Table 2 below: Table 2: Perth and Kinross Council’s 2022/23 Updated Carbon Footprint (tCO2e) Scope 1 Scope 2 Scope 3 Total Scope 3 sources reported to date Scope 3 Employee Commuting Scope 3 purchased goods and services/capital goods Total Footprint 9,719 4,730 26,022 20,653 5,369 152,126 192,597 The Top Suppliers and their footprint according to PKC’s spend for 2022/23 are explained in Figure 1 below: APPENDIX B
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Figure 1: Supplier Breakdown Tayside Contracts is a commercially based local authority contracting organisation providing catering, cleaning, roads maintenance, vehicle maintenance and winter maintenance throughout Perth and Kinross. BAM Nuttall Ltd is the main contractor for the Cross Tay Link Road, part of the Perth Transport Futures infrastructure upgrade programme. hub East Central Scotland (hubco) is a public/private partnership organisation delivering new community infrastructure across Perth and Kinross. Projects include the multi-million pound Passivhaus design and building contracts Riverside Primary School, Perth High School and replacement Blairgowrie Recreation Centre. The tier 1 and Tier 2 supply chain is managed directly by hubco. The Top Cost Centres (PKC Departments) in relation to their annual spend and respective carbon footprint are illustrated in Figure 2 below:
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Figure 2: Top Cost Centres Recommended actions PKC’s top 10 suppliers are the largest and easiest group to engage with. Existing contracts need to be managed down and new contracts can be developed with condition that will reduce carbon in line with PKC’s climate change strategy and action plan. In addition to the above, engagement with internal cost centres/departments is vital in achieving our carbon emissions reduction targets. A key action as a result of the analysis, is to use a representative group to pilot creating carbon reduction plans. Informing all departments and cost centres of their current usage is also essential in raising awareness of the carbon impact of activities across PKC. Last, measuring savings for pilot departments and showing progress along with cash savings resulting from stopping purchasing, reducing usage and substituting products/services is also recommended as a key action. Using the data provided, departments can review every item purchased to look at what they can: • Stop purchasing • Reduce purchasing by using more efficiently • Substitute for a lower carbon alternative which should be significantly lower cost or have longer life Assessment caveats Although the analysis has proven to be a useful to understand PKC’s spend from a carbon perspective, there are a number of caveats which concern the validity of the assessment results. These include, but are not limited to, the following: • Some PKC data such as those from the Health and Social Care Partnership were not included in the analysis due to the sensitivity of personal data involved
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• Although the data not included only represents a small percentage of PKC spend, it is still not included meaning the analysis was not made on all PKC spend • Due to the different finance systems across Council departments, it is believed that not all data has been captured due to the consultants being unable to extract line data which was required for the effective carbon impact analysis • The analysis is a useful internal tool for the setting of departmental carbon reduction plans, however, it cannot be used to report on the Council’s Scope 3 emissions as part of its annual report to the Scottish Governments due to the uncertainties mentioned above, but also the time constraints associated with the analysis of the data and the annual submissions deadline.