Coventry City Council

Coventry City Council has a long history and tradition of working with the automotive sector and is able to evidence its commitment to improving the local environment and reducing harmful carbon emissions through a range of creative and practical solutions, developed and supported over the years. Complementing this is a strong willingness and drive to tackle environmental and climate change issues working in partnership across all sectors. Through the Coventry Partnership (our Local Strategic Partnership) Coventry's Climate Change Strategy has been developed and is currently being implemented. In addition to this Coventry signed up to the Nottingham Declaration on Climate Change in October 2006 as well as the Covenant of Mayors in 2008.  

Coventry City Council has been committed to reducing harmful emissions from it vehicle fleet for many years. The Council was the lead partners in the Coventry Electric Vehicle project 1995-6 which established the Council's electric car pool. This electric car pool is still operating. In 1996 Coventry was a partner in the European Framework 5 Thermie Programme Zeus Project in which the Council led on the joint procurement work of low greenhouse gas emission vehicles. The City acquired 10 and encouraged local partners to buy a further 12 of these vehicles.  

More recently, the Council has completed year one of the Carbon Trust's Local Authority Management Programme in which an accurate baseline of carbon emissions is established which then allows an accurate assessment to be made of carbon saving projects. Over fifty projects were identified which will reduce the council's carbon footprint by nearly 20% over the next five years. Specifically regarding the Council's fleet of vehicles (we operate a total of 346 vehicles, the majority being light commercial and passenger carrying vehicles), we are liaising with Department for Transport appointed consultants to undertake a 'Green Fleet Review', which will establish current fleet carbon footprint and produce an action plan that will help reduce overall environmental impact and operational costs.  

Other practical steps already taken in reducing vehicle carbon emissions include:

• Introduced a 5% biofuel mix to our fuel supplies which should reduce our carbon output by 180t per annum and we have given an undertaking to analyse our fleets suitability to increase the biofuel mix during the coming year.

• Purchased 4 Toyota Prius hybrid (electric/petrol) vehicles used as pool cars

• Commitment to consider alternative fuelled vehicles for all future vehicle procurement programmes. As a member of the Coventry Low Carbon Fleet Partnership (with Coventry University and the University of Warwick) we are part of the Public Procurement Programme and this has led to identifying a number of electric vehicles on the market that can be successfully introduced into the fleet. For the current year's replacement programme, we have identified  diesel fuelled vehicles which are deployed within a number of operational areas (meals delivery, passenger transport, street cleansing, grounds maintenance and highways), which can be replaced with 12 electric fuelled vehicles. Based on the successful introduction of these vehicles, the intention is to further increase the number of alternatively fuel vehicles across all service areas in forthcoming years.

• Commitment to the use of electric vehicles as members of the local CABLED consortium, that will demonstrate 110 ULCV in the region as part of a TSB programme.

• Recently placed orders for two Vauxhall Corsa 'EcoFlex' cars which have Carbon Emissions of 119g/km.

• Commenced discussions with local large businesses to install additional electric charging stations to speed up the electrification process within the city

 As part of the Council's Travel Plan, some of the Toyota Prius hybrid vehicles mentioned above plus an electric Smart car are being used as pool vehicles by members of staff on Council related business across the city. This is to encourage staff to leave their own vehicles at home and commute using more sustainable means, using the pool cars to do business journeys. The electric smart car is part of a trial of 100 vehicles in the UK. This car was the first one delivered in the UK and was received in December 2007.  

The Council's Travel Plan commits the organisation to some stretching targets on how staff travel to work and has cross political support, which has also been approved by Management Board. 

Finally, the Council has adopted a sector strategy regarding its support for local businesses. Two of the sectors supported by the Council are the Automotive and Environmental sectors. Within our automotive sector we already have companies such as Modec, Microcab and LTI that are producing low emission vehicles and Coventry wishes to establish itself as the major city in the UK that manufactures low emission vehicles and uses them within the city to lower its carbon footprint. Within the Environmental sector we will be working with business and energy suppliers such as EON to promote the production and use of alternative energy sources.