Green city: Boris Johnson's strategy for a sustainable London

The Mayor wants London to be recognised as a world leader in improving the environment by tackling climate change, reducing pollution, developing a low-carbon economy, consuming fewer resources and using resources more effectively. Importantly, Mr Johnson has announced vast new streams of funding to realise the vision of a ‘Greener London’.

In order to ensure London achieves the highest environmental standards and quality of life, Johnson has announced that the Greater London Authority (GLA) will “concentrate all of its future efforts to ensure that the capital city develops sustainably, balancing environmental issues with social and economic ones”, to deliver improvements that will be shared by all Londoners, including businesspeople and residents.

Amongst the initiatives announced in 'Leading To A Greener London' are plans to accelerate the uptake of greener vehicles. Johnson’s vision of 100,000 electric vehicles on London’s streets by 2015 will be realised by the introduction of 1,000 GLA electric vehicles and 25,000 new electric vehicle charge points.

The Mayor has also pledged million of pounds to help London's buildings retrofit small-scale renewables. One of the key challenges the city faces is in upgrading existing buildings, as London has a higher proportion of ‘hard-to-treat’ homes than in other regions. Retrofitting measures – including loft and cavity-wall insulation, solid-wall insulation and double-glazing, as well as innovations such as smart meters – will be applied to over half of London’s three million homes by 2025. The Mayor claims that by 2015, these measures will result in annual CO2 emission savings of over one million tonnes.

As well as reducing CO2 emissions in residential properties, the GLA will also attempt to improve the energy efficiency of commercial and public sector buildings, which generate around 28 per cent of London’s emissions. One of the key platforms of this initiative is ‘The Better Buildings Partnership’, which will bring the largest commercial and public property owners in London together to deliver a building upgrade programme that will cover energy, waste and water.

The Mayor has also announced the creation of 10 ‘low-carbon zones’ in the city. This will involve business and industry, as well as local authorities, and public sector and community organisations, in the testing of new measures that aim to reduce emissions.

The ambitious retrofit programme could be a big boost to the London economy, and Johnson has announced that he will be setting up a ‘Retrofit Academy' that will ensure that London has sufficient skilled assessors and installers to deliver the programme of works. He hints at measures such as boosting supplier confidence that there will be a steady stream of work for cavity wall and loft insulation installers, through to support of training courses for assessors and installers.

Johnson acknowledges that, up to now, there have been “insufficient incentives for businesses and individuals to take the kinds of action necessary to substantially reduce emissions”. But with the Mayor targeting a CO2 emissions fall by 60 per cent on 1990 levels by 2025, radical new strategies are required to get London businesses on board. Johnson has committed to spending at least £100 million on environmental and climate change programmes over his four years in office.

The Mayor believes that the capital is well-positioned to take a lead and enjoy the benefits of catalysing the green economy. “London has an unrivalled opportunity to benefit from the shift to low-carbon technologies,” he says. And with all kinds of money about to become available in a ‘London Green Fund’ the new measures will not only save energy but also create economic value and up to 15,000 new jobs, it is claimed.

Finally, Johnson asks all Londoners to look forward to the 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games, which provide a great opportunity to showcase the combined efforts towards tackling climate change that Leading to a Greener London outlines; he envisages that the Games will be “the most sustainable ever [delivered] to a huge audience,” adding, “I am determined that by 2012 we will have set London well on its way to being the cleanest and greenest city in the world”.

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