Cabinet set to hear about successes of reducing carbon emissions
St Helens Borough Council is making strides towards reducing its carbon use with a 8.56 per cent drop in greenhouse gas emissions since 2022, councillors will hear next week.
Article date: October 19 2025
The council's Cabinet is set to review an annual update on the work being done to tackle climate change across St Helens Borough as part of its commitment to hitting its 2040 Net Zero goal through the Climate Change Action Plan.
The council itself has been leading the borough wide effort to reduce carbon emissions and in the last year alone saw a 2.3 per cent drop. Compared to the baseline set in 2008, the borough as a whole has successfully cut 938,000 tonnes of carbon emissions.
A key to driving that success has been the use of external funding to support decarbonisation projects with the council securing more than £13.5 million to support building upgrades, a feasibility study for a town centre heat network and home energy improvements.
Councillor Tracy Dickinson, Cabinet Member for Neighbourhoods and Environmental Services, said: "We've made great strides with our commitment to making St Helens Borough meet its pledge to hit Net Zero by 2040 and that is through a lot of hard work from a variety of organisations making changes to the way they operate. As a council we're keen to demonstrate how we can benefit from this pledge and the funding we've managed to pull in to support our plans shows that we can make a difference to the planet without needing to spend lots of council money and in many cases can actually help us to reduce the running costs in the future.
"Striving to reach that 2040 target won't be easy for us all, but we are keen to keep leading an innovative path alongside our partners as this is a continuously growing sector that can unlock high-quality green jobs for our residents and we're already seeing the benefits of that with places like Glass Futures, a world-leading decarbonisation project establishing itself here in our borough. We'll also continue to work with our partners across the Liverpool City Region Combined Authority as we welcome an eco-friendlier public transport model."
Cabinet are set to discuss the plans at their meeting on Wednesday 24 September. You can read the report online here: Climate Change Action Plan Annual Report