Locally Determined Contributions

This briefing note aims to explain the role and purpose of locally determined contributions (LDCs) in helping to deliver upon national climate change targets by taking action at a local level. The briefing is aimed at a range of stakeholders who may be involved in developing and delivering LDCs including local and regional authorities, local policymakers, academic and independent experts.

International climate governance and the importance of local action

International climate governance constitutes the voluntary mechanisms and measures aimed at directing social systems towards preventing, mitigating or adapting to the risks of climate change ^[1]. As part of this system, the 2015 Paris Agreement sets a goal to limit global warming to well below 2, preferably to 1.5 degrees Celsius to avert the worst impacts of climate change ^[2]. The agreement introduced a pledge and review system, where countries submit Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) that: set near and mid-term targets for mitigating greenhouse gas emissions; outline plans on how the targets will be reached; and elaborate systems to monitor and verify progress ^[3],[4]. The agreement requires that NDCs are revised every five years with a so-called ‘ratchet’ mechanism (at COP26 the Parties agreed to revise the plans just one year later ^[5]), in an attempt to bring political ambition in line with scientific reality.

NDCs are critical, as many of the decisions and investments needed to tackle climate change are the remit of national government. However, as climate change has multilevel causes and impacts, it is widely accepted that climate governance must be multilevel, with the participation of all social actors, including at the local level ^[6]. In the UK, local authorities (the key political decision-making bodies locally), have therefore started to consider the role of Locally Determined Contributions (LDCs) and how these can accelerate efforts to tackle the climate emergency ^[7].

What are Locally Determined Contributions (LDCs)?

The UK’s NDC outlines how a 68% economy-wide net reduction in GHG emissions by 2030 compared to 1990 levels will be met ^[8]. This aligns with the UK’s longer-term target to reach net zero by 2050 ^[9] and the associated Sixth Carbon Budget ^[10].

At the same time, although there is no UK-wide government guidance which states local authorities must set a climate target or report on progress ^[11], a number of local authorities in the UK are taking the lead on climate change – over 300 have declared Climate Emergencies and have developed or are developing strategies and action plans to deliver ambitious targets ^[12].

According to the UK’s Climate Change Committee ^[13], these “local authority action plans represent the ‘locally determined contributions’ to the national Net Zero target” ^[14].  

The development of such local plans helps to understand where local versus national action on Net Zero is most appropriate. But, in reality, to usefully assess how these plans are contributing to the NDC and longer-term Net Zero target, there arguably needs to be some standardisation of approach to developing LDCs and reporting on progress.  This would also save local authorities, who currently use a range of complex approaches to plan action and track progress, both time and resources.

How could LDCs add value to the UK’s Net Zero goals and ambitions?

The latest Climate Change Committee (CCC) annual progress report (June 2022) warns that tangible action in the UK is lagging behind policy ambition – emissions rose 4% in 2021 as the COVID-19 pandemic economic recovery began ^[15]. 

Recent research shows that UK Local Authorities alone control between 4 and 9% of overall UK emissions (including direct and indirect control via purchased goods and services) ^[16]. In addition, around one-third of all UK emissions are dependent on sectors influenced by local government policies or partnerships ^[17].

Furthermore, local authorities understand local context and can tailor solutions to their area and the needs of local communities. It has been shown that place-specific approaches to the delivery of net zero result in improved economic and social value ^[18]. This should equate to a more favourable environment for net-zero investment (which would be further supported by a transparent and consistent framework for reporting on GHG emissions reductions at the local level). Action driven by local authorities also offers the opportunity to link net zero interventions with other levelling-up priorities such as health inequality and fuel-poverty.

In short, enabling local authorities to take action to influence and unlock emissions reductions within their territorial jurisdiction, is critical both to achieving UK Net Zero in the most efficient way possible, and enabling the UK-government to ratchet up national-level ambition.  Setting an expectation for LAs to submit LDCs would help to formalise the vital role of local authorities.

Key elements of an LDC

A standardised approach to LDCs that can be replicated across authorities and that is aligned to the UK’s NDC, would be both cost-efficient for local authorities and provide vital context on how our national targets can be achieved. However, developing a standardised system will take time, and given the urgency of the climate problem, it is not appropriate to delay action.  The key is to understand what local authorities can do now with the carbon accounting and impact assessment tools that already exist, and to develop LDCs that are as aligned as possible to each other and the national framework. Such an approach can be refined and further standardised going forward.

The key areas for consideration in developing an LDC are as follows :

Key Challenges

There are a number of practical and intellectual challenges associated with moving towards a consistent framework for LDCs, but this does not mean that progress cannot be made.

Resources, capacity, and training

Local authorities currently face a potential funding gap of  £6.4 billion in day-to-day council budgets in 2024/25 in comparison to 2019/20 budgets ^[28]. The skills and capacity required for understanding, using and communicating the relevant data, and identifying and evaluating initiatives represents a significant practical challenge. As a start, a useful way to target existing resources would be to train key personnel around understanding and applying the BEIS data. In terms of project delivery, an officially mandated LDC (and the development of tools for assessing the impact of different projects and programmes) would provide clarity around GHG emissions reductions and should help build the investment case for Net Zero interventions by local authorities.

Powers

In developing a comprehensive LDC for an area, some mapping of where powers lie in relation to transformational sectors, is an essential part of the process of determining how ambition will be met ^[29]. In relation to planning, local planning authorities can assess climate-related aspects of a large number of development proposals, and are therefore able to influence the extent to which the planning system helps to deliver local climate objectives. In Cambridgeshire, for example, Cambridge County Council decided 11 planning applications between March 2021-March 2022 ^[30], compared to 6483 decided by the five district councils ^[31]. It is also critical to understand whether existing powers are being fully utilised, and where key powers are lacking. This can inform the level of ambition in an LDC and highlight where increased powers for local authorities would enable Net Zero to be achieved more quickly and/or with greater overall benefit.

Spheres of Influence

Often, local authorities are in a position to influence net zero projects and interventions, without having direct control over them. For example, local authorities do not have direct control over heat provision in privately owned and rented housing, but do have influence via Minimum Energy Efficiency Standards (MEES) enforcement, building control and planning regulation for new builds. In addition to lobbying for increased powers where appropriate, local authorities can support change by identifying ways to work with partners at other levels of local government and beyond. 

Equity

Just as it does at the international level, considering the UK’s NDC in terms of local contributions raises issues of equity. Addressing questions around what a ‘fair share’ of emissions reductions looks like for local actors is vital to ensuring progress across the board. In the UK, tools like the Tyndall Carbon Budget Report have taken this into account in their methodologies ^[32].

There are also questions around fairness in relation to how authorities choose to deliver their LDCs (focusing solutions on more deprived areas, for example), which need to be decided through a collaborative process of stakeholder engagement.

Finally, local authorities cannot fairly be expected to account in their carbon budgets for interventions in their areas over which they have no or very limited control (national infrastructure projects, for example). BEIS does provide a dataset that excludes projects of this nature, but Local Authorities will need to work together on what they propose to be a fair way of accounting for these in LDCs.

Conclusions

LDCs offer an opportunity to drive delivery of net zero with increased economic and social value, deepen our understanding of how the UK’s national commitments can be achieved and ‘ratcheted-up’, and link Net Zero to a locally relevant place-based agenda. Using consistent approaches to developing and implementing LDCs that are aligned with the national framework would save time and money for Local Authorities and make tracking progress more robust at both a local and national level. However, the imperative is to act as soon as possible, so the focus must be on what can be achieved now with the tools available, using dialogue and sharing of best practise to iterate and improve on the LDC process going forward.

By Sophie Bristow, Climate Policy Researcher, and Fiona Dowson, Sustainability Consultant