Whatever next? SD-scene newsletter April/May 2007 feature
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Local Delivery

Just twelve months after the publication of Securing the Regions Futures - the Government’s strategy to help strengthen regional delivery on sustainable development - we highlight just some of the ambitious work being done by the English regions to tackle climate change.

In the main feature:

• Regional Response
• Ground Level Action
• Tomorrow's Capital
  

Regional Response

The Government’s draft Climate Change Bill, announced in March by David Miliband, aims to put the UK on the path to becoming a truly low-carbon economy. By setting out legally binding, national targets for cuts in carbon emissions, the Bill will help drive this transition in the UK as well as providing fresh impetus to international talks.

Climate change cannot be solved without action by the international community and nation states but delivery on the ground - at a regional level - is crucial too. The proposal in the draft Bill for a long-term legal framework to reduce emissions has been warmly welcomed by the UK’s regional bodies. The South West of England Regional Development Agency, for example, firmly believes it could catapult the region – renowned for its development of renewable energy technologies - to the forefront of renewable energy development in the UK.

The Bill will also help the South West fulfil its regional pledge to “tackle climate change in an equitable way by encouraging everyone to live within their fair share of carbon”. Similar promises have been made by each of the nine English regions to demonstrate their commitment to combating climate change. Others include a pledge by the North West region to “drive forward a new industrial and cultural revolution to achieve one planet living”; a goal in the West Midlands to be “carbon neutral by 2030”; and in the East of England, to be a “one planet region”.

Ground Level Action

A range of exciting activities and projects – led by partners in Government Offices, Regional Sustainable Development Roundtables, Regional Assemblies, and Regional Development Agencies - are today helping to fulfil these pledges across the country. For example, through the Sustainable Development Partnership and Innovation Fund - which, with pump-priming funding from Defra, has raised over £1.9m in match funding - regional partners are beginning to deliver real change on the Government’s four key priorities; climate change, sustainable consumption and production, natural resource use and sustainable communities.

Highlights from the broad range of projects to have benefited from the fund include; the development of a regional Climate Change Action Plan for the North East; research commissioned in the East Midlands to understand the risks and opportunities of climate change to regional businesses and to help identify climate change actions; the production of a best practice guide on low carbon developments for the construction sector in the East of England; and regional action to encourage local authorities to sign up to the Nottingham Declaration on climate change.

Sustainability South West, an independent charity, which grew out of the South West Round Table for Sustainable Development (itself set up by the regional Government Office), has used the fund for a variety pf projects. As part of its Fair Shares Fair Choice carbon reduction initiative, the region now has a ten-year regional carbon budget, which shows that the South West needs to reduce its CO2 emissions by 30 per cent on today’s levels by 2016. Like others around the UK, it is also working hard to embed sustainable development into local plans, by providing advice and training to local councils.

Tomorrow's Capital

In terms of leadership on climate change, London is making great strides in putting its pledge to be a “low carbon London” into practice. In March this year, mayor Ken Livingston revealed London’s Climate Change Action Plan - ‘Action Today to Protect Tomorrow’. The 232 page document sets out the measures needed to stabilise the capital's emissions at 60 per cent in 2025 (below their 1990 level). It has been described by one green campaigner as "probably the best city-level plan of its kind in the world".

Action by the capital to tackle climate change is crucial. London is responsible for 8 per cent of the UK’s total emissions, some 44m tonnes of CO2 each year. Without change, given London's forecast economic and population growth, emissions are projected to increase by 15 per cent by 2025.

Ken Livingston sums up the message at the heart of the Climate Change Action Plan: "Londoners don't have to reduce their quality of life to tackle climate change, but we do need to change the way we live." Focusing on what can be achieved over the next ten years, the plan sets out a series of measures to enable residents and businesses to use energy more efficiently; to change fundamentally the way London is supplied with energy; to develop more sustainable transport; and to ensure that new development in the city is of the highest environmental standards.

Specific measures to cut emissions include, on the domestic front, the Green Homes Programme, which will include an offer to homeowners of heavily subsidised (and free to those on benefits) loft and cavity wall insulation and a programme for improving the energy-efficiency of London’s social housing stock. However, the top priority for reducing carbon emissions is to move as much of London as possible away from reliance on the national grid and on to more local, lower-carbon energy supply - the goal is for a quarter of London’s energy to be supplied through decentralised systems by 2025. This will be achieved mainly through the installation of combined cooling heat and power (CCHP), energy from waste, and onsite renewable energy, such as solar panels.