Council seeks clarity on cost of strategy

Redesigned suburbs, homes with just wind and solar energy, LED street lights.

These are some ways Christchurch is proposed to fundamentally change in the next 25 years under a new climate change strategy to guide the city’s journey to net-zero carbon emissions by 2045 – five years ahead of the Government’s nationwide target.

Christchurch City Council resolved yesterday to send the new strategy out for public consultation next month.

It is the first major climaterelated strategy since the council declared a climate emergency in May 2019.

To reach net-zero, people will have to change the way they travel, increase the use of renewable energy and reduce their waste.

One of the strategy’s key parts is reducing the city’s dependence on petrol and diesel cars, which produce 36 per cent of the city’s emissions.

Transport as a whole, including air, rail and boat travel, accounts for 54 per cent.

The proposed strategy would direct the council to invest in public transport improvements, redesign suburbs to encourage more walkable neighbourhoods, and consider models of integrated community living to reduce the need to travel for work.

Other notable inclusions in the strategy are:

Sharing climate data and research with Nga¯ i Tahu. Increasing the city’s number of trees. Introducing more wetlands. Rapid prototyping of innovative business ideas. Create new job opportunities in climate mitigation and adaption. Advocating to government for improved building energy efficiency. Current per person emissions in Christchurch are 65 per cent higher than the global average.

While the strategy was under discussion yesterday, several councillors raised concerns about the lack of detail it had on costs.

Councillors decided to ask council staff to provide more detail in the strategy about proposed operational costs, actions and their appropriate timing.

The strategy mostly includes information on what the council hopes to achieve long-term, instead of distinct actions with exact budgets and deliverable time frames.

Cr Yani Johanson said he was concerned the council was asking for feedback while these elements were not directly in the strategy as there massive cost to what was proposed.

‘‘We are really good at adopting strategies and then going, ‘ah, what happened?’,’’ he said.

Cr Sara Templeton, who chairs the council’s committee responsible for climate change, said the council needed to be clear with ratepayers that mitigating the impact of climate change would cost millions.

‘‘Without action now the cost will be much higher and the longer we delay responding, the higher the cost will be,’’ she said.

Deputy Mayor Andrew Turner, whose Banks Peninsula ward is vulnerable to rising sea levels, said developing and funding climate action programmes would be essential to the strategy.

He supported Johanson’s move for more clarity on how much the strategy’s implementation would cost.