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Cooperating with other cities worldwide is a key initiative for the mayoral office in London because the battle against climate change will be won or lost in cities. The role of national governments is, of course, widely debated, analysed and understood. Yet the challenge is so huge that cross-cutting action at all levels will be needed. The central role of city leaders in our rapidly urbanising world will be key to reducing the world’s greenhouse gas emissions. The leaders of large cities have a particular responsibility to act, and national and subnational governments must empower and enable city governments to take on this role.
WHY ARE CITIES SO IMPORTANT?
By 2030, two-thirds of humanity will live in cities or urban areas. Half already do. Even now, cities consume 75 per cent of the world’s energy and are responsible for 80 per cent of carbon dioxide emissions. Moreover, all cities are highly vulnerable to the impacts of climate change, and none more so than fast growing cities in developing countries. About 20 of the 30 largest cities of the world, London included, are situated on low lying coasts. Rising sea levels of a few metres would have catastrophic implications. So there’s an extraordinary responsibility and motivation for cities to act.
But there are also great opportunities for cities. With their concentrations of people and activities at high densities, cities can use resources such as energy, materials and land efficiently. They are the places where high level, knowledge-based activities congregate, with the expertise to tackle climate change. Many cities are the drivers of their national economies, generating a large part of their country’s GDP. Five US cities: New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Boston and Philadelphia, together, make the world’s fourth largest economy. Bangkok and Sao Paulo are home to 10 per cent of their countries populations, but generate 40 per cent of the national wealth. It could be argued that cities, not nations, are the engines of development.
Mayors and their municipalities have the powers and levers to reduce carbon emissions. They control the development of land, have housing powers, regulate transport and often manage public transport systems. They have varying degrees of responsibility for the collection and processing of waste and have responsibility for other environmental infrastructure such as energy and water. They own and manage buildings and vehicle fleets. Significantly, they have huge purchasing power. They are able to form partnerships with private interests as well as mobilising and coordinating community action.
Mayors have responsibilities in areas key to taking swift action to reduce emissions, and can show leadership in taking decisive and radical action. It is at city level that innovation and progress on climate change action is most likely to be achieved.
Although leadership from national governments is crucial in negotiating international agreements, setting frameworks and standards and for providing fiscal and financial incentives, when it comes to practical action on the ground, city leadership must take centre stage.
THE C40 LARGE CITIES CLIMATE LEADERSHIP GROUP
All over the world, city governments are taking their own initiatives, recognising the need to cooperate across national and international boundaries. Substantial carbon reductions have been achieved by 670 municipalities through ICLEI’s ‘Cities for Climate Protection’ campaign. (ICLEI is an international association of local governments and national and regional local government organisations that have made a commitment to sustainable development.) Hundreds of mayors in the USA are mobilising to meet or beat Kyoto targets. While it is often the smaller cities that lead the way, it is in the larger cities where huge reductions in emissions can be achieved. But it is the very largest cities that pose the greatest challenge.
That is why, in October 2005, many of the world’s largest cities met at the C20 summit in London Its aim was to develop long term international collaboration among large cities to drive down their emissions, act as champions and stimulate business and national governments. A set of practical actions were agreed, including creating municipal procurement alliances – buyers clubs – jump-starting the supply and demand for climate change technologies and measurably influencing the markets. The establishment of the Large Cities Climate Leadership Group and these commitments were set out in a short communiqué to the UN climate negotiations in Montreal.
In August 2006, as chair of the Large cities group the Mayor of London, Ken Livingstone, joined with former US President, Bill Clinton, to announce a partnership with the Clinton Foundation Climate Initiative (CCI). The CCI was to become the operational arm of the Cities Group and work on an accelerated programme of carbon reductions in each of the cities.
Participation in what has now become the C40 spans the globe: including Berlin, Buenos Aires, Cairo, Caracas, Chicago, Delhi, Dhaka, Houston, Istanbul, Johannesburg, Karachi, Lagos, London, Los Angeles, Madrid, Melbourne, Mexico City, Moscow, New York, Paris, Rome, Sao Paulo, Seoul and Toronto.This global partnership also includes an affiliated group of smaller cities that are exemplars of innovative practice, such as Curitiba and Copenhagen.
The C40 is not about exclusivity it is about delivery! C40 cities are expected to act as catalysts for change within their country or region. Any initiative or procurement package developed within the C40 cities will become available to other cities, once they are up and running.
SHARING BEST PRACTICE
Retrofits for large buildings – Berlin
We have plenty of best practice to share. The city of Berlin in partnership with Berlin Energy Agency (BEA) has pioneered an excellent model for improving energy efficiency in buildings. The BEA, a leading energy consultancy, partly owned by the government of Berlin, organises retrofits for large government and commercial buildings. Contracts between the building owners and energy systems companies agree to make energy efficiencies of around 24 per cent. They do this by installing hardware such as heating control systems, lights and insulation. So far, 1,400 buildings have been upgraded, delivering CO2 reductions of more than 60,400 tonnes annually.
These retrofits cost the building owners nothing and the buildings make immediate savings. Energy bills are slashed by an average of 26 per cent. It is these savings that fund the retrofit. Average payback periods are between 8 and 12 years.
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| The Copenhagen district heating system supplies 97 per cent of the city with clean, reliable and affordable heating. |
District heating, Copenhagen
The Copenhagen district heating system is one of the world’s largest, oldest and most successful, supplying 97 per cent of the city with clean, reliable and affordable heating. Set up by five mayors in 1984, the system simply captures waste heat from electricity production, normally released into the sea, and channels it back through pipes into peoples’ homes. The system cuts household bills by €1,400 annually and has saved the Copenhagen district the equivalent of 203,000 tonnes of oil every year: that’s 665,000 tonnes of CO2.
Other best practice examples
Other examples of best practice include the city of Seattle, which sets the standard for US Green Buildings, Shanghai’s carbon neutral quarter, being built in Dongtan, lake water air conditioning in Toronto and Tokyo’s decentralised energy programme.
It is these extremely effective means of reducing emissions that can encourage others to implement change.
THE NEW YORK SUMMIT
The C40 held its second summit in May 2007 hosted by Mayor Bloomberg in New York. Thirty two Mayors attended with representatives from over 50 cities as well as senior executives from the world’s largest companies and financial institutions.
Many delegations declared it the most productive conference they had ever attended. The range of discussion topics included:
- Transport – congestion charging, bus rapid transport, car free days, hybrid and hydrogen bus engines
- Waste – recycling and renewable gas production
- Water – wastage and energy used in delivery of water
- Energy – use of renewables, decentralised energy and combined cooling, heat and power systems
- Buildings – retrofitting of existing buildings and low and zero emission homes for the future.
On almost every topic covered, the world’s leading city in that field was on hand to enable other cities to learn from its experiences.
The power of procurement
The Summit also saw the launch of the first C40 procurement package, the Energy Efficiency Buildings Retrofit programme, developed by the Clinton Climate Initiative. This exemplifies the approach of negotiating deals between customers, suppliers and financial institutions to establish economies of scale, reduce costs and accelerate the introduction of technologies. In this instance, 16 of the world’s largest cities, four of the world’s largest energy services companies and five of the largest banks come together to offer city authorities and the owners of public and private buildings an energy audit, with recommendations for energy and emission reductions; a comprehensive discount on the goods and services to achieve these reductions and the financing to pay for them, paid from energy savings and underwritten by the banks. This procurement package will be followed by others on transport and waste with more to come. This is a new way of doing business that scales up and catalyses markets for public goods and services.
THE 2007 TRANSPORT AND CONGESTION WORKSHOP
Summit attendees agreed to hold workshops between summits. The first, on transport and congestion, will be held in London in December 2007. The workshop, co-hosted with Stockholm is discussing and comparing best practices among the transportation and congestion experts from C40 municipal governments.
In particular, the workshop will draw on experiences of specific cities. Bogotá recently introduced a Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) system through the city, consisting of 850 buses used daily by 1,400,000 passengers. The system has reduced travelling time by 32 per cent, taken 2,109 public service vehicles off the road, and reduced greenhouse gas emissions by 40 per cent. Such is the success of the ‘Transmilenio’ system that it is being expanded to 130 km of dedicated lanes to transport 1.8 million passengers a day.
Also speaking will be representatives from Seoul, drawing upon the success of their car free day’s initiative. This is a voluntary scheme, encouraging residents to participate as often as they can, and yet already two million cars are staying off the road every year, decreasing traffic volume by 3.7 per cent. The initiative delivers a reduction of about 243,000 tonnes of CO2 emissions, a reduction rate of 9.3 per cent and equivalent to about six per cent of total CO2 emissions per year in Seoul.
A number of Chinese cities have also been developing the car free day initiative including Shanghai and Beijing. Beijing recently tested the impact of emissions reductions by taking 1.3 million of the city’s three million vehicles off the road for several days.
Paris’s Deputy Mayor will also discuss recent experiences of introducing a bike scheme that has revolutionised the streets and the way people get around the city. Over 10,000 brand new self-service bicycles went up for rental at 750 ranks across the city in July. One survey has recorded that in its first two months, the ‘Vélib’ bikes (short for vélo-liberté) were used five million times.
LOOKING FORWARD
Further workshops are planned for 2008 on port and airport emissions. Four of the world’s largest container ports are in Asia, with three of them in China (Shanghai, Hong Kong and Shenzhen), while Asian airports such as Hong Kong, Beijing and Shanghai are growing rapidly.
Adaptation to climate change is also a crucial area of engagement. Many cities are already hit hard by the climate change. C40 has an important role to play in ensuring that best practise is shared between cities and that adaptation measures are consistent with reducing emissions. Asia is under threat from flooding, storm surges and sea level rise. Cities in the low lying areas along the east and south China coast, and the delta areas of South and South East Asia are particularly vulnerable. The economic benefits of wise adaptation strategies that dovetail with mitigation measures should be a focus for cities in 2008
CONCLUSION
As the climate debate shifts from whether the scientific evidence demands global mandatory targets to what level those targets should be and the measures to meet them, the need to work with different spheres of government will become more apparent, and the role of cities will become critical. The potential of the C40 to make deep cuts in carbon emissions and to reconfigure global markets for cutting edge technologies, will take on global significance.
To achieve this potential and reach the highest reduction targets, national and subnational governments need to put cities in the driving seat. They need to open up a new era of municipal enterprise by collaborating with and empowering cities. In the spirit of this, it would be a step forward if cities could be included with national delegations at the COP and MOP meetings.
Cities consume 75 per cent of the world’s energy and are responsible for 80 per cent of carbon dioxide emissions.
It is at city level that innovation and progress on climate change action is most likely to be achieved.
Towards a low carbon London
The Greater London Authority was set up in 2000 with a new brand of political leadership: a directly elected mayor. From the very start, the Mayor set an overarching vision “to develop London as an exemplary sustainable world city”. All strategies and policies – transport, housing, energy, waste and the London Plan – have taken that vision as their starting point, together with initiatives such as the introduction of congestion charging. In February 2007, all policies and implementation programmes were pulled together into the London Climate Change Action Plan, setting the ambitious target of reducing London’s carbon emissions by 60 per cent by 2025. The Action Plan is a comprehensive, holistic approach addressing transport, new and existing buildings, energy supply and aviation as well as seeking fundamental changes in behaviour.
C40 has an important role to play in ensuring that best practise is shared between cities and that adaptation measures are consistent with reducing emissions.
Author
Nicky Gavron has been the Deputy Mayor of London since 2000, responsible for Strategic Planning, Under 18s, Climate Change and the Environment. Nicky initiated the C40 and brokered the partnership with the Clinton Foundation. As Chair of the London Planning Advisory Committee in the 1990s, she commissioned the research and formulated policies, including congestion charging, which underpin much of the Greater London Authority’s work today. At a national level, she was a member of the Government’s Commissions for Integrated Transport and Sustainable Development and was an Advisor to the Urban Task Force. She was the first Chair of the Local Government Association’s Planning Committee.
Organisation
The Greater London Authority is a unique form of strategic citywide government for London. It is made up of a directly elected Mayor and a separately elected Assembly. There are around 600 staff to help the Mayor and Assembly in their duties. The GLA’s main areas of responsibility are: transport, policing, fire and emergency planning, economic development, planning, culture, environment and health.
Enquiries
Mayor of London, Greater London Authority
City Hall, The Queen’s Walk, More London
London SE1 2AA
Tel: +44 (0)20 7983 4100 | Fax: +44 (0)20 7983 4057
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Picture credit: Reynaers/Greenpeace
