London maintains lowest CO2 emissions per capita in the UK

The UK capital has maintained the lowest CO2 emissions per capita across the country, despite its rapid population growth, a senior advisor to the mayor has revealed during the Policy Forum for London meeting.

“The main challenge that London is facing is how fast we are growing, with a growth rate of approximately 110,000 people per year,” explained Matthew Pencharz, Senior Advisor for Environment & Energy to the Mayor of London. “We have set ourselves some pretty tough targets of 60 percent CO2 reductions from 1990 levels to 2025, and this is made even harder with the rapid population expansion. However we are still making progress. Since the current mayor was elected back in 2008, we’ve seen a 14 percent reduction in CO2 levels and that is despite the fact that we’ve had about a 700,000 increase in our urban population.”

London’s population of 8.6 million has surpassed its greatest ever level, and demographic projections say that this will grow to 10 million by 2040 and 11 million by mid-century.

This rapid population growth means that the energy challenge in London is vast, with an urgent need to adapt current energy systems into more sustainable ones less dependant on imported fuels, diversify the mix of energy sources, enhance energy efficiency by rationalising use and storage of energy and addressing security of supply and climate change while maintaining competitiveness.

“Our resources are being used up and then some, so we are having to re-evaluate how and the speed at which we are providing vital public infrastructure,” added Pencharz. “We have set out our infrastructure plans for 2050, calculating the funds needed to finance the required infrastructure for a possible population of 13 million. The cost is estimated at £1.3 trillion by 2050 and we are really going to have to step up the momentum towards providing this infrastructure and getting everything moving within national and local government.”

It is estimated that 80 percent of London’s buildings will still be present in 2050, which makes the retrofitting of existing buildings essential to reducing energy bills and CO2 emissions.

To improve energy efficiency in its buildings London has introduced a number of initiatives that include RE:FIT, a public sector buildings retrofit programme that has so far involved 435 buildings across 186 organisations, and RE:NEW, a domestic homes retrofit programme, where 100,00 homes have been retrofitted directly, over 500,000 with wider market delivery, and another 175,000 homes by 2017.

“We also now have the Business Energy Challenge, which is an awards programme for businesses to demonstrate leadership,” added Pencharz. “The programme is a combination of a call to action and a competition.”