After years of little steps Carmarthenshire Council has taken a big stride towards a key environmental goal by cutting its carbon emissions by 12%.
The reduction in 2025-26 was the largest since the Covid pandemic when council services and travel were curtailed.
The authority has a target of being net zero in carbon emissions by 2030, which means replacing street lights and heating systems in council buildings with more environmentally-friendly ones, switching council vehicles to cleaner alternatives and installing solar panels to generate clean electricity, among other things.
The weather plays a part – demand for heating tends to fall during mild winters, like last year’s.
And cutting emissions generated by the council’s large fleet of refuse lorries, vans and other vehicles remains a big challenge.
Overall the council estimates it’s cut emissions by 45% since 2026-17 – the baseline year it’s measuring from. Therefore lot of work is still needed to reach the 2030 net zero target.
And there is cost. A council report estimated £39 million is needed every year to meet the 2030 target. The trade-off is lower ongoing energy bills, and the fact that boilers and council vehicles need replacing irrespective of whether it’s with cleaner alternatives.
Cllr Aled Vaughan Owen, cabinet member for climate change, decarbonisation and sustainability, told councillors at a scrutiny meeting significant progress was being made.
“Importantly this work is not just about carbon, it’s helping to reduce energy costs, improving energy security, strengthening resilience to climate change and creating healthier environments for our residents and future generations,” he said.
Speeding up work to tackle stubborn fleet and business journey emissions, he said, was crucial.
A report on the 2025-26 progress said carbon emissions from council buildings and street lights fell by 17% and 16% respectively while fleet and business journey emissions crept up by 0.5% and 0.3%.
It said: “Increasing service demand, the limited availability of suitable low-carbon alternatives for some specialist vehicles, infrastructure requirements and financial constraints continue to present barriers to rapid decarbonisation,” said the report.
It also pointed to a separate multi-agency report covering Carmarthenshire and Ceredigion which said climate change was no longer a future risk but “a current and escalating challenge that we are already feeling the effects of”, such as last summer’s heatwaves and their associated crop yield impacts and bouts of winter flooding.
Nature projects that took place in Carmarthenshire in 2025-26 included the planting of 16,367 trees on council-owned land. The report said trees sequestered carbon over their lifetime, improved soil health and helped attract wildlife.
In addition 200 tonnes of steel-making slag, which the report said was known to absorb carbon, were deployed at the Millennium Coastal Park to create an area of species-rich habitat. It was a compensation project linked to a planning application.
The place, sustainability and climate change scrutiny committee accepted the report, with Cllr Kevin Madge saying: “We are going in the right direction.”
