The cost of meeting the county’s net-zero carbon target by 2030 is likely to top £300 million, according to a report prepared for a meeting of Herefordshire’s leading councillors.

To help meet the target, and also boost the county’s wildlife, councillors agreed to set up a Herefordshire Climate and Nature Partnership to lead delivery of its climate and nature strategy.

They also okayed a £360,000 funding package from the council’s Climate Change Reserve, of which £50,000 will go on communicating the partnership’s work and the reasons for it to the public.

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The new partnership will oversee a new £200,000 grant scheme which the council will award to projects run by community groups and parish councils which demonstrate how to reduce carbon and boost nature across the county.

Deputy leader Cllr Liz Harvey described the funding package as “massive pump-priming” intended to have a multiplying effect. “It isn’t a large sum of money – I wish it was more,” she said.

A further £40,000 will go on setting up a county nature strategy, while £50,000 will pay for an investigation into how the county’s buildings might be retrofitted to reduce their carbon footprint.

The council estimates that at present, over one-third of the county’s greenhouse gas emissions come from heating homes and other buildings.

The meeting of council department heads also agreed a carbon reduction target of 75% by 2025/26 relative to the baseline year of 2008/09, as a stepping stone to achieving net zero across the county by 2030/31.

The council says it is already more than halfway there. Last year it announced a 49% reduction on the 2008/09 figure, and says it expects the 2020/21 figure to be 59%.

Leader of the majority Independents for Herefordshire group Cllr John Harrington said of the measures: “There is nothing more important than the climate and ecological emergency. This is a good way to back up the sometimes glib pledges we’ve all given in the past.”

But Conservative leader Cllr Jonathan Lester, who chairs the council’s scrutiny committee, suggested the money could be used instead to put the council’s own environmental house in order, for example through taking more sustainable approaches to heating in schools or to fuelling council vehicles.

The Climate Change Reserve it the council’s ring-fenced dividend from West Mercia Energy, a company it co-owns with neighbouring councils.

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