Tackling climate change now !

All parties say they are green these days but locally Labour has ensured that sustainability remains at the top of the agenda.

Labour initiated the local Sustainability Commission which has played a big part in local environmental delivery since it was formed in 2002. We signed the council up to the Nottingham Declaration on Climate Change in April 2005, co-inciding with a city-wide Sustainability Conference on the issue. Signing the Nottingham Declaration committed the council to supporting renewables and to preparing a Climate Change Action Plan for our community on the likely local impacts, and how to further reduce our emissions.

Last year the City Council won the South-East Award for Westergate Business Centre – a brilliant partnership project that incorporated renewable energy into a commercial building. This came following national recognition for the sustainability features of the new Jubilee Library. All the proposed major developments in the city are showcasing Brighton and Hove as a leader in enabling sustainable designs for homes and leisure facilities. It is so vital that we tackle this comprehensively. Our council is demonstrating its attack on Climate Change from every angle.

Our Climate Change Action Plan contains around 100 actions, mainly for the council - and we’ve already started implementing them! An Energy & Water Manager has been appointed. A new Staff Travel Officer is in post to ensure we reduce car use by staff traveling to work and during the working day. Most important of all, we have started work in earnest on a Carbon Management Programme – supported by the Carbon Trust. This is really getting into the detail of what’s going on right across the council: energy use in our buildings and schools, in our vehicle movements, street lighting, procurement policies, waste management – all of it.

We have been galvanizing staff across the council to work on this. There have been two ‘Staff Awareness on Climate Change’ events where employees were encouraged to go along to find out about their carbon footprint and how to reduce it. By the time we’re setting the council’s next annual budget in February we will have a comprehensive list of measures; listing costs, CO2 savings, the lot – and with help from the Carbon Trust we will be investing in more renewables as a result.

Now we want to work with the Carbon Trust on a set of targets for the city, so we can agree with Government how we plan to tackle climate change together. The City's Local Strategic Partnership now has an annual target of 3.5% carbon emission cuts across the city to help meet the Government's 2012 and 2020 targets. We will set out how, in more detail.

Figures from the Audit Commission and Department for the Environment show that Brighton and Hove’s CO2 emissions are below average for the UK. This is due in part to our successful sustainable transport policies. Brighton & Hove has just been awarded Transport Authority of the Year, again, partly because of our superb ‘Quality Bus Partnership’ work and 10 years of increasing bus use, which bucks the national trend. Our emissions from transport are five per cent lower per head than the UK average.

However, we need to focus more on household emissions, as these make up nearly half our total - much higher than elsewhere in the UK. The shortage of affordable housing is one of the biggest issues we face in the South East, and it is particularly acute in Brighton and Hove. That’s why we aim to ensure a large percentage from major developments planned for the city. And part of what we’re demanding is more Combined Heat and Power (CHP) – what Greenpeace sees as the transition to a low carbon energy system – as well as more renewables. A pity then that Green Party Councillors should have opposed CHP on the station site.

Our Sustainability Checklist sets developers on larger schemes the challenge of achieving 15% on site generation from CHP and renewables. A marine hydro turbine is being explored to power the new Wilkinson Eyre bridge as part of the outer harbour development at Brighton Marina.

At Circus Street – the old wholesale market - the preferred developer has put forward an imaginative zero net carbon development, providing 180 homes, office space, a dance studio and a university library. Power will be generated by an on-site CHP and an off-site 1 megawatt wind turbine owned by a community trust. Alternative CHP fuels such as biomass, biodiesel and hydrogen will be considered.

So there is plenty to do and no cause for any complacency, but importantly this Labour led council is committed to showing everyone in this city that we must all play our part in tackling climate change.