22062 Cambridgeshire County Council Net Zero Decarbonisation of Services

Description

Cambridgeshire County Council (CCC) declared a Climate and Environment Emergency in 2019. Our Climate Change and Environment Strategy was updated in 2022 and includes the following targets: • The organisation to reach Net Zero for scopes 1 and 2 by 2030, • To reach a 50.4% reduction in scope three emissions for the organisation by 2030 (compared to 2018 baseline), and • To deliver Net Zero across the county by 2045. Most of the Council’s greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions fall under scope 3 and our commitment to Net Zero means the Council must reduce its emissions along a 1.5 degree trajectory across scopes 1,2 and 3. Although Scope 3 emissions are indirect emissions from assets not under CCC control, such as those of our contractors and suppliers, it is the Council’s specifications and contracting for these goods and services which drives the creation of these emissions. The Council has a range of assets and statutory duties. Our carbon footprints have identified the services and assets with the largest carbon emissions under scope 1, 2 and 3. We are now seeking external advice, expertise, and experience on the best ways to reduce carbon emissions (or greenhouse gases) to deliver our Net Zero commitments for the following assets and services: Highways, Waste and Recycling, Rural Estates and Schools. Although this work is being commissioned separately via different procurement Lots, suppliers are welcome to tender for all Lots. If tendering for all Lots, you must demonstrate how savings/efficiencies in operational costs have been factored into your costs. The lot structure is as follows: • Lot 1: Schools Decarbonisation (Education Capital) • Lot 2: Highways Decarbonisation • Lot 3: Waste and Recycling Decarbonisation • Lot 4: Rural Estates Decarbonisation. There will be cross over and synergies between lots. It is our intention to bring together the successful consultants in a workshop to draw out the links, interdependencies and opportunities from the work undertaken across all of the Lots. Please factor into your cost’s preparation and attendance at this multi-stakeholder workshop. Lot 1: Schools Decarbonisation (Education Capital) Developing an Investment Programme for Decarbonising Cambridgeshire Maintained Schools. The development of Decarbonisation Plans (DPs) will help us to plan a realistic programme of works which will enable us to have a consistent approach to managing Heat Decarbonisation of the maintained school estate, including its heating and hot water. This will help us to: • Develop a Strategy, including whole life costs, for the Decarbonisation of the maintained school’s estate • Define, agree, and develop a standard approach to decarbonisation plans for the Maintained School Estate. • Prioritise the maintained school’s estate based on recognised Asset Management criteria. Measurement in accordance with the sixth edition of the Code of Measuring Practice, published by the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors. • Collect all the information relating to our maintained school buildings, including energy consumption, fabric efficiency, available headroom on existing grid connection (accounting for any planned extension or modification to the site) and potential options for decarbonising the heating. • Information collected will be used to inform the resource and funding prioritisation of the County Council via the Capital Programme Board and Strategy and Resources Committee (the Executive) so that investment can be committed. • It is important for the County Council to understand how much, on average, each typical FE school (1,2 or 3 FE) will cost to decarbonise. • Information will be used to apply for capital and revenue future Decarbonisation Funding from both Government and non-Government funding schemes using data of the HDPs that are accessible and fit for purpose. Specification–Technical Consultancy Support The Council is looking to deliver low carbon energy efficient buildings across its portfolio through new builds, extensions, and retrofits and is keen to progress decarbonisation planning for its maintained school’s estate and is looking for the technical expertise and knowledge to assist it to develop the following: • An overall high level Decarbonisation Plan including heat, energy, and carbon reduction reporting for its portfolio of 111 Maintained Schools. These need to include a cost estimate for the portfolio to be decarbonised in accordance with the Council’s scope 3 emissions target and Net Zero targets and include estimated timelines and the approach. • An indicative cost per survey based on school size i.e., 1FE, 2FE and 3FE. • An assessment of grid connection upgrade costs where required. Ideally the consultant should engage with UK Power Networks to understand where local grid constraints would necessitate a new substation to enable replacement of boilers with heat pumps. Lot 2: Highways Decarbonisation The Highways Service requires to engage industry specific technical competence capability and capacity to develop an H&T service wide strategy to achieve net zero by 2030 for the Council’s own scope emissions and 50% reduction in carbon emissions from the Council’s scope 3 emissions (included procured goods and services). The following outcomes are required: • An overarching Net Zero strategy for the management and maintenance, operation and administration and; extension and improvement of the highways network including Public Rights of Way, associated assets and direct user services. To include: • Overarching principles under which all new highways and transportation infrastructure will be considered and delivered. • Overarching principles under which all maintenance, management and operation will be carried out. • Weather resilience adaptation. • Green Infrastructure Management principles to support Nature Recovery, biodiversity net gain and carbon sequestration. • Service wide standards for operations and maintenance to ensure Net Zero is fully embedded in the Highways Operational Standards, Asset Management Policy and strategy • Review and alignment of current strategic level policies, standards and guidance used by all highways and transportation teams (Highway Maintenance, Project Delivery and Strategic Transport and Network Management). The types of support the Council requires include: • The consultant is to provide Climate Crisis and Nature Recovery technical expertise capacity and capability to support the H&T service in producing its Net Zero Strategy. • Providing project management of the strategy production. Supporting the Council’s highways technical experts in developing the strategy by; • Providing technical input where it is identified the council lacks capability, knowledge and experience. • Work with the councils H&T service and Cambridgeshire Highways teams to support them in developing the Overarching and operational Strategies • Providing technical capacity to support the council where extra resource is needed to progress the strategy development. • Write and present the strategy in an easy to read easily understood style as a document, e-book and slide pack. • Strategy to include a costed, prioritised implementation plan to support funding and business cases to enable future delivery. • Support the team to socialise the strategy within the council and its supply chain partners and commence implementation. • Provide resource to revise policy, strategy and operational documents and processes so they align with the Net Zero Strategy. • Provide guidance to H&T teams on incorporating the strategy aims and objectives within team and group service plans. • Propose outline training and development programme for H&T staff to develop the appropriate knowledge and skills to pursue and deliver decarbonisation. The Council will lead the work through a Governance Board with the Assistant Director Highways Maintenance as project sponsor. The Consultant is required to lead and support the management of the project team through the provision of project management capabilities and capacity as well as provide and or source specific technical expertise. The Project team may consist of internal council staff from various departments and /or external partners. Lot 3: Waste and Recycling Decarbonisation Waste officers are aware of high-level technical solutions that could reduce the environmental impacts of managing waste but currently lack the capacity to develop proposals and detailed business cases with robust assessments of the contractual, cost, environmental and social impacts. The service requires an assessment of its current waste management arrangements and the development of a carbon reduction strategy for the management, treatment and disposal of municipal waste collected in Cambridgeshire, including robust and deliverable proposals that will reduce the environmental impacts of delivering the Council’s waste statutory functions and assist the Council in achieving its Net Zero targets. The proposals need to take account of the constraints of the Waste PFI Contract, the existing infrastructure that is currently used to treat collected wastes, the cost of making the changes, the scale of carbon reductions that the proposals are likely to achieve, the value of the carbon reductions achievable when compared to the Green Book values and the social value impacts of the proposals. Waste officers manage six closed landfill sites at varying stages of post closure management and monitoring. The landfilling operations at these sites have been completed and the land assets are managed by the waste service to ensure that the gases and liquids from the decomposing waste are contained within the sites and not released. There may be potential for these land assets to be used to generate green energy or for biodiversity net gain, providing that the use of the land does not compromise the landfill containment structures or increase the risk of pollution by releasing gases or contaminated liquids from the decomposing waste. The outputs required from this work will be an overarching Net Zero strategy for the waste management service and closed landfill assets and outline business case(s) that the service can take forward for further development with the PFI Contractor using the contract change mechanisms or independently by the council(e.g. for closed landfill assets)to deliver carbon reductions in line with the Council’s Net Zero targets. These outputs will need to provide a range of delivery options to cover the varying levels of ambition and funding available to deliver net zero. Lot 4: Rural Estates Decarbonisation The requirement is to gain an understanding of the rural estate/closed waste sites’ carbon emissions and then to develop a strategy to reach net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2030 for the Council’s scope 1 and 2 emissions and a 50% reduction of its Scope 3 emissions by 2030. The consistency of data in scope 3 is a challenge however as they are a significant part of emissions it is important to collect this where possible and act on it. The two key outputs required are a carbon baseline and a high-level roadmap to net zero. The carbon baseline work will consist of an initial scoping and a full carbon baseline. The initial scoping will support the Council in defining the exercise, setting boundaries, developing a high-level view of carbon emissions across assets, identifying areas of focus and data availability. This will involve working closely with the Rural Estate managers who will provide primary data including lease type, building construction, occupational use, and land use. The full carbon baseline, based on the scoping, will then drill into the assets in more detail. (TCO2e). The high-level road map of possible interventions should be based on the carbon baseline and consider positive impacts, strategic objectives, high level costs, funding, an element of cost benefit analysis and prioritisation, together with a framework for measuring their impact. Areas of focus could include soil, water, biodiversity, flood attenuation and carbon sequestration, the latter might be of relevance to the County Councils own Net Zero requirements. Potential financial benefits of the net zero approach should also be identified. Both the baseline and the roadmap need to be reviewed year on year as part of the regular reporting on the portfolio. The data and the methodology will need to be shared with the Council to allow year on year annual reviews and progress reporting. Tenderers are asked to provide the Council with an estimated price for carrying out the annual reviews. However, should this be a requirement this would be subject to a separate procurement and is out of scope for this contract. In addition, indication of costs of any other suggested support or value add activities (e.g., basic modelling capabilities, monetisation of natural assets, consolidation across consultants) that could be required, should be included.