£200m climate plan takes step forward

A £200 million plan to cut the city’s carbon emissions to net zero by 2030 is now out to public consultation.

The ambitious climate change proposal has won cross-party support, but the city council’s Conservative administration has called on Kent County Council and the Government to deliver major green investment to help it come to fruition. About 1.5 million tonnes of harmful greenhouse gases were emitted into the global atmosphere from energy produced across Canterbury in 2018. This is the rough equivalent of almost 300,000 petrol cars on the road for one year. The city council’s programme seeks to replace all fossil-fuel burning council cars and vans with 100% electric vehicles by 2025 and to “decarbonise” bin collection vans and park and ride buses by 2022.

A total of 13 Canterbury councillors from all political colours unanimously backed the Tory proposals during a virtual meeting of the policy committee last week.

Council leader Ben Fitter-harding (Con) described the climate change programme as “impressive”, adding: “I am so pleased we are able to put this out to consultation and see what our residents make of it.” Canterbury council’s climate change working group has overseen the creation of the action plan after an emergency was first declared in July 2019. Under this, they hope to roll out the first phase of solar panels on council buildings by 2022, increase the number of electric vehicle charging points in the city and “retrofit” homes to make them more energy efficient.

Heat emitted from Canterbury’s three main leisure centres, including Kingsmead, Herons and Whitstable, could also be “decarbonised”. Canterbury’s Liberal Democrat leader Cllr Michael Dixey said the pro-environment programme is an “excellent start”.

In its research, the council’s climate change working group found that about 28,000 tonnes of CO2 were emitted from the authority’s estate from April 2019 to April 2020.

But this represents just 1% of the total emissions from the city in 2018 as councillors said the climate crisis was a “wider issue” than just for the authority on its own.

People living in the Canterbury district can now have their say on the climate action plan in a lengthy public consultation, which will run until April 1. This can be viewed at https:// news.canterbury.gov.uk/consultation-item?id=1&r=20. What do you think? Email kentishgazette@thekmgroup. co.uk.