Our progress so far: the 2025 Suffolk Climate Emergency Plan Progress Overview

16 December 2025

Back in 2021, the Suffolk Climate Emergency Plan set out how your public sector organisations were planning to deliver a more Sustainable Suffolk. It included themes like collaborative action, which includes how support local communities to take action and schools to become more sustainable, and cleaner power, which includes how we plan to decarbonise the electricity grid.

It has now been two years since we last published an official update on the progress of the Suffolk Climate Emergency Plan. As 2025 comes to a close, we are pleased to announce the publication of our latest progress overview report. This report includes case studies of project delivery, high-level statistics that showcase the strides made so far, and commentary from those responsible for delivering this vital work.

There are hundreds of individuals across Suffolk who have a hand in delivering the plan. Alone, they are all incredible individuals taking action for our climate, but together we form a movement that we can all be proud of.

Some of our proudest achievements this year include:

• An awesome Youth Climate Conference, the third of these that we have held. These get better every year with more and more students and teachers being equipped to take action.
• A Sustainable Schools Network with over 250 members. This network has only been active for one year, but it’s immediate growth and success goes to show how needed this resource is and also what a fantastic credit the schools team are to the Sustainable Suffolk movement.
• The pioneering solar canopy we’ve built at Beacon House in Ipswich. This canopy creates £50,000 of solar energy each year and is home to a new battery storage product, making Beacon House one of the first places in the country to benefit from it.
• The progress made towards the creation of an Ipswich Heat Network. This incredible new venture will see energy being generated from the River Gipping and distributed into nearby buildings through a network of insulated pipes. This project has just received £9.8 million of funding, allowing it to progress to the next stage. Construction is hoped to start in 2027/28.
• The sheer number of free assessments we have conducted on people’s homes to find out how they could be more energy efficient. So far, over 400 of these assessments have been carried out. A third of the people who have had an assessment are taking action recommended to them by their report! This makes their home warmer and lowers their energy bills, whilst being fantastic news for the climate as there is less wasted energy.
• An inspirational Suffolk Retrofit Suppliers’ Event. This was a chance for us to get together with the people who are actually carrying out the work to make people’s homes more climate resilient, whether that’s by installing solar panels, heat pumps, insulation or triple glazing. We were able to talk to them about the challenges and opportunities they face as businesses and what we can do to support them.
• Suffolk County Council, who lead our electric vehicle work, were the first local authority in the country to award a contract using the LEVI (Local Electric Vehicle Infrastructure) Fund. This means they were the first council in England to get to the stage of signing a contract with a company that will be putting electric chargers in the ground. This is an incredibly complicated project, and it’s a real testament to how dedicated our team are to helping people make that step to electric vehicles and a healthier planet!
• The installation of ten Plug In Suffolk Car Clubs locations across Suffolk, enabling people across the county to access community electric vehicles that they can book to use by the minute, hour or day.
• The High Energy Users’ Network event, at which large emitters came together to show their commitment to lowering their carbon emissions. Over 50 businesses from Norfolk and Suffolk attended the day to learn and share.
• A huge number of businesses are accessing our advice services for free. For small and medium businesses, accessing this sort of support can be expensive, and there might not be a lot of internal resource to lead a transition to lower emissions. But thanks to our projects, over 1,000 businesses have accessed this.
• A rebrand of our entire programme of work, going from Creating the Greenest County to Sustainable Suffolk, which better represents our collaborative approach to tackling the climate crisis and making our brand more accessible.

However, what we are doing to create a more Sustainable Suffolk doesn’t happen in isolation. There are hundreds of people working hard to make it happen. This includes other partnerships and organisations that are dedicated to our mission. This year, we’ve decided to include the environmental projects and efforts that those partners are taking for the climate, too.

We want to thank all our fantastic partners, theme leads, funders and every person who has been part of delivering this work. Together we are creating a more Sustainable Suffolk, a future where doing the best thing for the environment is also the best thing for our health, our time and our wallets.

Read the full Suffolk Climate Emergency Plan Progress Overview here.