City unveils ploys to beat climate change
Feb 20 2008 by Tony Henderson, The Journal
PLANS to help Newcastle meet the challenge of climate change will be unveiled today.
The first stage of Newcastle’s climate change strategy, to be laid before the city council’s executive, details measures which the local authority is taking in its own operations and services.
It is believed that climate change will bring about far-reaching effects across the range of services delivered by the council.
The second stage of the strategy is due at the end of this year and will outline how the council will work with communities, businesses and other organisations.
The strategy predicts that by 2080, summers in Newcastle will be hotter and drier and winters warmer and wetter.
Soil moisture levels are expected to decline significantly.
Temperatures are set to rise by 2C to 4.4C and rainfall could increase by 30% in winter and fall by up to 50% in summer.
Sea levels are expected to be 6cm higher than at the present time by 2080 under a low-emissions scenario and up to 66cm in a high-emissions case.
The second part of the strategy is being developed by a climate change partnership made up of representatives of the major carbon producers in the city, which held its first meeting recently.
It will draw on a study by the Environment Agency on the likely impacts of climate change, and how the region will have to adapt, which will be released next month.
This follows a similar pilot study in 2006 which looked at the River Wear catchment area.
The strategy says that concentrations of the greenhouse gases carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide in the atmosphere have reached levels which are unprecedented in tens of thousands of years, and that there is no doubt that human activity is the main driver.
In 2004 it is estimated that Newcastle produced 1.8 million tonnes of carbon dioxide.
The first part of strategy is based on carbon savings targets of 2. 56% annually for five years.
Measures to tackle this include energy saving in council buildings, investigations into economically-viable alternative fuels for the 900 vehicles in the council’s fleet, which use diesel, and staff travel patterns.
Future measures will include:
:: Minimising the impact of flooding in the city
:: Ensuring that the designs of new buildings take account of possible extreme summer temperatures and the risk of subsidence due to drier conditions
:: Creating an urban network of trees, green spaces and habitats which can cope with climate change.
The city council is already the major partner in the CarbonNeutral Newcastle programme which has the ambition of making Newcastle the first carbon-neutral city in the world.
