Climate Change and Carbon Emissions

What are we doing?

To help limit climate change and support actions to adapt to it, Wiltshire Wildlife Trust has committed to balance its greenhouse gas emissions.  The Trust aims to reduce emissions from its day-to-day operations as far as possible while increasing carbon captured and stored through land management of our nature reserves. 

WWT annually calculates its emissions in line with other Wildlife Trusts, using tools developed by The Wildlife Trusts, aligned with best practice for carbon accounting and based on the Greenhouse Gas (GHG) Protocol.  In the Financial Year 2024-25, GHG emissions across The Wildlife Trusts collectively were 27,903 tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent (tCO2e). You can find out more about this here. 

Wiltshire Wildlife Trust employs a Carbon Reduction Champion in a role shared with Wiltshire Wildlife Community Energy to complete the detailed calculations.  Gathering the data helps identify opportunities to reduce emissions, alongside consideration of other factors for the Trust to meets its objectives as a conservation charity.  ‘Action Lists’ are developed by our Sustainability and Carbon Reduction Group for areas of emissions including energy, travel and transport and procurement and a Net Zero Pathway is being developed in 2026.

While the calculations are sometimes an imperfect measure and improve over the years, they do provide a baseline to help us reduce our emissions

WWT Greenhouse Gas Emissions

Our day-to-day operations emissions for 2024-25 were 755 tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent (tC02e) made up of:

We use activity-based data (e.g., litres of fuel, kWh electricity used), except for purchases, which are based on how much we spend and contain the biggest estimates.  

Emissions from purchasing goods and services (e.g. trees we buy for planting and contractors providing landscaping) are the largest contribution to our 2024-25 emissions but reduced by 261 tCO2e compared to 2023-24, mainly due to a big reduction in spending.  Travel is the next biggest source of the Trust’s emissions and reflects the challenges of operating an organisation covering a large county. 

The Trust’s energy emissions are reduced by purchasing renewable wind/hydro energy and using electricity generated by Wiltshire Wildlife Community Energy owned solar panels at Langford Lakes.  During 2024-25 the solar rooftop panels on Trust buildings generated 14,705 kWh, with an estimated 7,353 kWh used onsite.

Operations emissions included: Scope 1 (direct) emissions are those associated with use of fossil fuel in WWT buildings, vehicles and machinery, also refrigerants used for heating and cooling.  Scope 2 (purchased electricity) emissions along with Scope 3 (indirect) emissions from waste, recycling and composting, water used and sewerage at sites without treatment facilities, staff travel including overnight hotel stays and commuting, working from home, volunteer travel, purchased capital goods and purchased goods and services.  Also included are emissions, auto-calculated from fuel and energy-related activities to cover the extraction, production, and transportation of fuels and energy purchased within supply chain. 

The Wildlife Trusts led on research and development of a tool to calculate emissions from livestock used for conservation grazing which estimates WWT’s animals produced 783 tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent (t CO2e) during 2024-25 of using a widely accepted method.  Conservation grazing is an essential tool for managing habitats on our nature reserves.

The Wildlife Trusts are working to help WWT provide a more complete picture and WWT ‘footprint’, to include an estimate on the carbon captured and emitted over the year by different habitats on our nature reserves.  Research into carbon exchanged by certain of The Trust’s different habitat types remains limited and with massive variation in the estimates.

Our Carbon Reduction Champion also supports Wiltshire Wildlife Community Energy’s Community Fund. 

If you would like to get in touch please email JessicaT@wiltshirewildlife.org