From fat-fuelled power plants to shady parks: How cities are preparing for climate change
Good news if you live in Leicester or London: your city is the best-prepared for climate change in the UK.
More than half the world’s population now lives in towns or cities, concentrating vulnerability to the impacts of climate change.
At the same time, urban areas have become responsible for over 70 per cent of global energy-related emissions.
As such, local authorities are becoming increasingly important players in the global climate change response.
A new study from Newcastle University assesses which UK cities are doing the most to tackle climate change. It finds that while some local councils are ahead of the urban climate change planning policy curve, others look increasingly unprepared. So, how’s your hometown doing?
Assessing climate preparedness
Under the National Planning Policy Framework, local authorities are required to publish plans to combat climate change. Councils can implement a wide range of policies under the climate change umbrella: from preparing for extreme weather events such as flooding or droughts, to helping households save energy, or cutting industrial carbon dioxide emissions.
Overall, the study found councils tended to have effective energy efficiency policies, but lag behind on providing renewable energy, cleaner transport, or – perhaps unsurprisingly, given cows’ aversion to heavy traffic – sustainable agriculture policies.
The study covers 30 towns and cities in the UK, with a combined population of around 17.3 million. The researchers scored each the policies between zero and three – with three being marvelous, and zero being pretty dreadful. The map below shows the results.
The more green segments a council’s pie chart has, the better it’s doing at lowering emissions. The more orange segments there are, the more prepared it is for the impacts of climate change. If there’s a lot of white space, the council has work to do.
Image - cities climate policies (note)
Leicester and London scored the best overall, thanks to a number of innovative policies.
For example, the capital funds a range of energy efficiency measures, and recently announced a headline-catching plan to build a cooking-fat fuelled power plant in east London. It is also has a large electric car charging scheme, even if plans to keep the vehicles on the road don’t seem to be going as well as hoped.
Leicester has also taken steps to deal with climate change – allocating extra resources to make sure the city’s traffic lights are working properly to reduce congestion, and planting trees to shade people from heat waves.
While all the measures sound small on their own, together they go a long way to making cities greener and more prepared for climate change.
Winners and losers
The study found some councils were considerably more successful at implementing climate change policies than others.
But while some cities seem to be falling behind, it might simply be because they haven’t been doing it as long. The main reason Derry and Wrexham scored so badly is because they are still working on their plans.
The researchers also found many local auhtorities were keen to lead by example, setting the most ambitious targets for their own departments. The study shows councils were likely to use resources to save energy in government buildings or encourage council workers onto their bikes before pushing constituents to change their behaviour – a much tougher task.
Monitoring progress
While local councils might be good at implementing climate change policies, they aren’t so good at checking up on them.
One of the paper’s authors, Dr Oliver Heidrich, tells us this makes it difficult to know how effective the policies are. He says local authorities “don’t have a rigorous system to monitor and record the consequences of implementing those plans… and that’s a major oversight”. The next step is for councils across the country to develop better monitoring methods so they know what works well and what doesn’t, he argues.
Nonetheless, Heidrich is confident the policies are having some impact. And without the plans, local councils could find themselves woefully unprepared for dealing with worst impacts of climate change.
Residents of Stevenage, Gravesham, Coventry and Bradford take note: this research suggests your local authorities have got some catching up to do.