What's Green in Brum?

Birmingham City Council is pushing its Climate Change Declaration, with targets for 2015. What will it achieve? (By Chris Duggan)

Replicating the Summerfield Eco-Neighbourhood and implementing district heating schemes. But I hope there is much more to the Council’s medium term climate change strategy than this declaration, and look forward to hearing about it in the comments.

The declaration – which it is hoped will be adopted by other councils across the UK – states that by 2015:

• All vehicles procured by the council should be electrically powered or run on liquefied petroleum gas
• There will be at least 500 electric cars running on the streets of the city as we will develop the electric charging infrastructure
• 50 per cent of electricity used by the council should be generated from renewable sources
• The city council’s energy consumption will be reduced by 25 per cent
• Ten per cent of Birmingham homes will be linked to district heating systems
• Ten per cent of Birmingham homes will have retrofit insulation
• There will be at least ten “low carbon communities” similar to the successful example of Summerfield Eco-neighbourhood

Source: BirminghamNewsroom.com

Six years is a long time in politics

• What are the year by year targets? Has the Council signed up to the 10:10 campaign to reduce emissions by 10% in 2010?
• Has progress towards the target of 60% reduction in emissions by 2026 been monitored? Are the results published?

[Update: The BEP Annual Report 08-09 reports a reduction in carbon dioxide emissions of 103,000 tonnes - information on how this was calculated would be helpful.]

Sustainable cars?

• What plans are there simply to reduce car use?
• What evidence is there that switching to electric cars will reduce emissions? If most of our electricity is generated from fossil fuels…

“10% of Birmingham homes will have retrofit insulation”

• 10%? Ten per cent? Did someone miss off a zero?
• What type and degree of insulation is being proposed? Loft insulation? Cavity walls? Solid walls? Windows? Floors?
• What percentage of heat saving per house is planned?

The full declaration (see link below) states that this target has already been exceeded. So why is it included?

We need a whole lot more detail from the Council to show that this is a serious policy proposal that will be implemented, rather than a publicity stunt.

The following quote from the end of the full declaration
is more encouraging, though as it is not part of the headline strategy I wonder if it has been added as an afterthought:

Also, as a consequence to the adoption of this policy:

• All Council departments should be allocated an energy usage and carbon reduction target for each financial year and be required to report on performance at the year end, so placing climate change at the top of the agenda – with a contribution that can be made to a reduction in Council costs; and
• The Deputy Leader be required to report as part of his annual report to the Council, on the total energy usage by the City Council and its contractor partners, to advise Council of the steps taken over the previous year to reduce energy use and of the steps planned for the next year, with the level of impact of these measures.”