Oxford City Council has announced the city had hit its target of 40 per cent reduction in carbon emissions.

The council's aim was to reduce in emissions by 40 per cent by 2020 on a 2005 baseline.

It has now set the date for a Zero Carbon Oxford summit which it says will set a 'vision' for reaching Net Zero faster than the Government’s legal deadline of 2050.

The summit will be held on February 4, bringing together leaders from the city’s universities, institutions and large businesses to consider the actions required to accelerate carbon reduction across the city and how early it could be possible to achieve Net Zero.

The Council’s newly appointed Scientific Adviser, Professor Nick Eyre of the University of Oxford’s Environmental Change Institute will provide scientific advice to the summit.

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The summit will also lead to the creation of a new Zero Carbon Oxford partnership for the city, replacing the Low Carbon Oxford partnership established a decade ago.

The council is hosting a summit in response to the declaration of a climate emergency in January 2019, the recommendations of last year’s Oxford Citizens’ Assembly on Climate Change, and the calls for collective action by the Council’s Youth Climate Summit, which took place at the end of November.

Tom Hayes, Deputy Leader and Cabinet Member for Green Transport and Zero Carbon Oxford, said: “This achievement creates a foundation to build upon. While we support the principle of the UK100’s 2045 Net Zero goal, the city’s first zero carbon Oxford summit and a zero carbon Oxford formal partnership, potentially chart the way to an earlier date.

"We want to work ever more closely with the city’s biggest players and, together, we want to get behind a new vision— a vision of a Zero Carbon Oxford by an aspirational date, but nonetheless one which the city council’s independent scientific adviser says is robust and scientifically possible.”