The Mayor’s draft plan for reducing London’s carbon emissions by 60% over the next fifteen years is out for public consultation. Darren Johnson has set out the key questions that need to be answered:
1)Taking responsibility – will the Mayor take more responsibility for reducing London’s CO2 emissions, having pledged less than half the previous Mayor in his earlier draft?
2) Securing budgets – every major proposal is threatened by cuts from government, the Mayor’s transport and regeneration bodies, and London’s boroughs. This is particularly true of the ‘RE:NEW’ home insulation scheme, that could be cut before it is even rolled out by the boroughs. If the Mayor cannot secure commitments for the next few years, the challenge in future years gets even harder.
3) The role of transport – does transport take a fair share of the emissions reductions? In his previous draft, the Mayor dramatically reduced the reductions expected from transport and shifted responsibility onto homes and the national grid. But transport is an area where the Mayor has the greatest control.
4) Investing in skills – are plans to train Londoners for low carbon jobs, such as installing energy efficiency measures, an integral part of the strategy for London? A shortage of skilled workers is a real threat to the implementation of climate change policies.
5) Consumption emissions – does the plan include the carbon emissions from London’s consumption, and include policies to begin to reduce them? When you add in the carbon in what we buy, use and eat, London’s carbon footprint more than doubles.
Notes to editors
1) The Mayor’s previous draft, published for the London Assembly, reduced his responsibility from the 19.6 mtCO2 reduction by 2025 committed to by the previous Mayor to only 9.2 mtCO2 by 2025. To compensate, the Mayor expects the Government’s contribution to increase.
2) For example, the Mayor’s home insulation scheme ‘RE:NEW’ relies on funding from London’s boroughs to the tune of £22m in 2012/12, £33m in 2012/13 and another £134m in future years. The Mayor’s earlier draft plans for electric cars rely on the Government scaling up its electric car grant for consumers from £230m to £800m, but in August the Government announced it was only guaranteeing an initial investment of £40m. In total, the Mayor’s earlier draft plans needed £60bn of investment including £17bn for plans he is responsible for.
3) Modal shift from cars to public transport, walking and cycling is not expected to achieve the level of cuts the last mayor’s Climate Change Action Plan attributed to it. More faith has been put in technological advances, despite cuts threatening the electric vehicle plans.
4) A Royal Academy of Engineering report, Jan 2010, concluded that a skills shortage was the biggest threat to successful implementation of climate change policies http://www.raeng.org.uk/news/releases/shownews.htm?NewsID=542
5) The Climate Change Action Plan estimated that consumption emissions would add 5-10% onto London’s carbon footprint. However, Capital Consumption- a detailed 2009 report by the Mayor’s London Sustainable Development Commission – shows that the emissions associated with what Londoners consume are higher than the emissions from the energy used in homes, buildings, industry and transport http://www.londonsdc.org/documents/research/Capital%20Consumption.pdf