Scope

The aim of this report is to present key data on climate action happening, and climate impacts on, the city of Edinburgh in Scotland. We hope that by raising awareness of local effects of climate change, we can contribute to the impetus to support climate action. And that we can highlight ongoing climate action, that gives us hope.

As the output of a small voluntary local group, D4CAE, the scope of this report is modest, addressing a handful of aspects of climate action and climate impacts. This year’s report, being the very first year, in some ways focuses mainly on finding and documenting data sources, and establishing tools for data extraction, and establishing baselines for some data.

Open access

This report is an open science project - the data, code and text are all being produced in a publicly available repository on GitHub:

https://github.com/data4climateactionedinburgh/abcd_2025

Any amendments will be visible in this same GitHub repo, as commits, in the normal Git version control way. This report file, the text, and all the files in the repository are made available under a Creative Commons Zero v1.0 licence, except of course those subject to ownership by the respective data providers. The files created by D4CAE are thus placed in the public domain, and may be copied, adapted and redistributed without condition. If you wish to cite this work, please cite Data 4 Climate Action Edinburgh as the author.

About the group

D4CAE was set up by Pauline Ward, who is also the main contributor to this report. You can find our blog and contact details on our website:

https://data-4-climate-action-edinburgh.github.io/home/

Over the course of the past couple of years, we’ve explored a range of different projects, some may not have resulted in any visible output, such is the nature of citizen science. However, the group has built good relationships with stakeholders in Edinburgh’s climate action scene and has completed several projects successfully for example: - supported ECCAN to process member data, and to select software for this purpose; - provided data visualisations of survey data to EBRIC (Edinburgh Building Retrofit and Improvement Collective), which they used in a published report.

As for 2025 work, Pauline is currently producing a simplified carbon footprint at the request of one of ECCAN’s member charities (Fountainbridge Canalside Community Trust).

Flood risk

While flood risk maps are available to view via the website of the Scottish Environment Protection Agency SEPA , it has not been possible to include a copy here, nor in a video, as they are copyright, and the copyright is owned by Ordnance Survey, and copying is strictly prohibited - see https://flood-map-for-planning.service.gov.uk/os-terms .

SEPA’s Flood Maps show some alarming features:

• a high level of surface water flooding risk around Waverley train station and many other areas across the city of Edinburgh (‘high likelihood’ defined as a 10% risk in a given year).

• a high level of river flood risk along the River Almond (‘high’ means 10% likelihood).

• a high level of coastal flooding risk (ie 10% in a given year) along the entirety of the shoreline of the Firth of Forth, from South Queensferry, through Leith, right along to Musselburgh.

(SEPA Flood Maps)

Increasing rainfall will increase the risk of surface water flooding and river flood risk.

Rising sea levels will increase the risk of coastal flooding.

Further details on how to use SEPA Flood Maps can be found in the Methods section Methods.html.

ECCAN

ECCAN is the Edinburgh Communities Climate Action Network. They are gathering data on the work of their member charities and other voluntary organisations. We will add that info as soon as it becomes available.

City of Edinburgh Council

The CEC is a funder and close working partner of ECCAN. The council’s 2023/2024 climate duties report provides the following statement on the approach and governance in place with respect to climate change:

“The City of Edinburgh Council declared a climate emergency in February 2019, set a new target for the city to be net zero by 2030 and declared a nature emergency in 2023. To achieve this net zero target and adapt the city to the impacts of climate change, a 2030 Climate Strategy and Implementation Plan was approved in November 2021. The Strategy contains Council and citywide governance and reporting structures and strategic actions to achieve the 2030 net zero target and adapt the city. A Council Emissions Reduction Plan (CERP) (approved November 2021) outlines a phased action plan for reducing Council corporate emissions emissions. A CERP Board, established in 2022, provides strategic leadership and operational accountability for delivery of the Council’s organisational emissions target of net zero by 2030. It is chaired by the Service Director for Sustainable Development and includes Council’s key service areas for each of the strands of the plan (Buildings, Fleet, Waste, Human Resources and Procurement).”