My Department, its agencies and associated non-departmental public bodies have not signed up to the 10:10 campaign to cut carbon emissions in 2010, but are supportive of the aims of the campaign.
My Department has delivered significant reductions in carbon emissions from our buildings and road travel, by 14 per cent. and 30 per cent. respectively over the last two years. In 2007-08 an estates emissions reduction of 10.8 per cent. was achieved. While this proves that such a reduction is possible, my Department continues to bear a significantly increased work load to support those impacted by the recession. While we remain committed to the achievement of the carbon reductions targets from Sustainable Operations on the Government Estate (our progress is detailed in the Sustainable Development in Government report), it is the opinion of my officials that it would be unrealistic for the Department to commit to a further 10 per cent. reduction in a single year from an already low baseline and with an expanding business.
During December my Department has achieved the Carbon Trust Standard, and we remain committed to actively reducing our carbon emissions. We will exploit, where possible, low carbon technologies and we will be shortly relaunching our energy efficiency campaign across our estate.