County Hall, Northallerton A COUNCIL aiming to cut its net carbon emissions to zero within a decade has been urged to be more ambitious after revealing a £1.7m plan to continue using fossil fuels to heat schools. Ahead of approving a plan to tackle “a significant backlog of maintenance” at dozens of schools across North Yorkshire, the county council’s leaders were told they would face criticism from environmentally-conscious pupils unless they started introducing alternatives to conventional gas boilers, A meeting of the authority’s executive heard the pandemic had raised numerous health and safety issues at schools and the programme of works would lower heating costs for the 34 schools involved, freeing up money to spend elsewhere.