Media enquiries

Please get in touch if you would like to find out more about the Zero Carbon Cumbria, the ZCC Partnership or feature any of our events and activities.

Media contact

If you have a media enquiry, please contact the communications lead for Zero Carbon Cumbria, Helena Davies.

Helena is based with Cumbria Action for Sustainability.

How can we help you?

Briefings

If you want to know more about the work of the partnership or about climate change in general, we’ll be happy to give you a background briefing.

Interviews

Please get in touch if you’d like to interview someone from the partnership.

Contacts

If you’d like to showcase climate action in Cumbria or report on some other aspect of carbon reduction, we may be able to put you in touch with people or organisations to interview.

Training

If you’d like to fully understand the causes of climate change and the solutions, take our ‘carbon literacy’ course. It’s a full-day course (split over two half days, delivered online). It’ll give you the background knowledge and context to help you when reporting on climate action in Cumbria. You’ll come away with an accreditation from the Carbon Literacy Trust.

The partnership's media profile and position statements

The Zero Carbon Cumbria Partnership is a very broad grouping of around 80 very diverse organisations, representing different interests, sectors and walks of life. They’ve come together as they all see the urgent need to reduce emissions to tackle climate change, but they all have their individual viewpoints and perspectives.

For that reason, you may find that the partnership won’t always want to comment on topical issues or aspects of carbon reduction, where it wouldn’t be possible to fairly reflect the views of all its participants.

We’ll always be happy to talk about the work and progress of the partnership collectively.

Quick facts

If you just need some basic facts quickly, here’s your at-a-glance guide, with links to more detail elsewhere on the website.

Zcc Partnership / Zero Carbon Cumbria / Climate change & impact on Cumbria / Net zero

About the Zero Carbon Cumbria Partnership

More than 80 organisations from different walks of life in Cumbria, working together to reduce the emissions that cause climate change.
Partnership manager: Tim Gale, based at the county council.
Steered by a strategic oversight board, led by Steve Curl.
Began in 2019, after climate change was cited as a risk in Cumbria's public health strategy.
Most of the partnership's emission reduction action will be driven by working groups focusing on emissions from different sectors, such as housing, transport, land use and waste.
Secured funding from the National Lottery Community Fund's new Climate Action Fund to help the partnership get up and running. Funding began on 1 Jan 2021, including new employment and support for administration and communications, plus funding for a programme of community-based activities
Partnership is currently developing its plans, setting out the pathway to net zero emissions in Cumbria by 2037, which is the science-based target for net zero.

About Zero Carbon Cumbria

This new brand aims to engage and involve Cumbrians in climate action in the county. Here on this website and on the Zero Carbon Cumbria social media, we’ll share examples of all the great things happening around the county to reduce emissions, to inspire more people to join in the journey to net zero carbon Cumbria.

You may already have started to see organisations across Cumbria using the Zero Carbon Cumbria branding stamp, Doing our bit!, where they’re promoting their carbon reduction activities. This is all part of tying together all the actions people are taking, helping people to see that they’re part of a bigger concerted effort. The logo is freely available for download on this website, including a user guide explaining how it should be used.

Got questions about Zero Carbon Cumbria?

About climate change & the impact on Cumbria

Human activities have warmed the planet by about 1.2 degrees Centrigrade above pre-industrial levels.
Mainly caused by carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from burning fossil fuels - oil, coal, gas.
Began in earnest with the Industrial Revolution.
The amount of CO2 in our atmosphere is trapping the Sun's heat, which is warming the planet - the so-called greenhouse effect.
You sometimes hear people refer to the level of CO2 in the atmosphere as 'parts per million' (PPM). Ideal level is thought to be about 350 PPM. (That's where 350.org gets its name.) We're now at about 415.
As CO2 levels have risen, so has the average global temperature.
The UN's climate experts (the IPCC) say we must keep below 1.5 degrees above pre-industrial levels in order to avoid the worst impacts of climate change.
A warmer planet means more extremes - more extremes of hot and cold weather, more extreme dry spells causing droughts, more extreme wet spells causing floods.
Already at 1.2 degrees we're seeing devastating impacts around the world, from droughts and floods to wildfires and sea level rises.
In Cumbria, we've seen more flooding in recent years, more cold snaps like Beast from the East, more long dry spells, with impacts on people, nature and infrastructure.

About net zero

Net zero emissions simply means we’re absorbing the same amount of emissions that we produce.

Cumbria’s goal is to reduce as far as possible the emissions that cause climate change, and then absorb the remainder (eg through planting trees, changes to land use).

What’s missing?

What other information would you find useful? Please let us know, so we can improve this page for you. Email our marketing team >

Zero Carbon Cumbria - Carbon reduction action across the county.