Make the future Green

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We must invest in a sustainable society now, argues Green Party councillor Maya De Souza

Published: 7 October, 2010

RECENT local news has rightly been about cuts to services, scaling back our council and NHS, and loss of public sector jobs. 

The Greens strongly oppose these huge cuts which put at risk the signs of recovery that we are so hopefully looking out for. However, while we focus on fighting these cuts, we mustn’t forget to look into the longer term. 

We need to stand back and think what needs to be done at a time when our planet is in peril and the British economy at risk. The truth is we have been over-dependent on a financial sector that has created boom then bust and we have consumed and burnt fossil fuels while shutting our eyes to the future. You may think that addressing climate change at a time like this is a luxury that we cannot afford to think about.  You may want to sit back and blame the bankers for boom and bust. In fact, what we need to do is take swift steps without delay to invest in a sustainable society and a resilient economy, while also fighting to protect jobs and services. 

If a place like Camden is to maintain its relatively high standard of living we need to protect ourselves against rising fuel costs. So our behaviour is not causing serious harm to others and to ourselves, we need to cut carbon emissions. 

Fortunately Camden’s new council has signed up to a target to cut its emissions by 40 per cent by 2020, going beyond the government’s proposal. Camden has also commissioned an expert’s report saying this can be done and that by 2030 these investments will be profitable. So in the long term there is no cost to society; it is just a good investment. 

If we can wean ourselves off being dependent on fossil fuels, we improve our competitiveness. In the shorter term, we create jobs and put our young people and older people into work, from the physical work of insulating homes to engineering and design, and skill them up for the future.

Now I come to Camden Green Party’s key proposals. 

We move beyond our 10-point plan, which readers can look at on our website, to three specific ideas. 

• First, we ask for action by the council to make our homes energy efficient, cocooning them in a thermal blanket, moving on from cavity wall insulation and lofts on our post-war homes to our Victorian/Edwardian housing that forms the bulk of our homes. For this to happen fast, we are calling for Camden to pilot a Green Street scheme, where it has a facilitating role in terms of planning and design and obtaining efficiencies of scale, before seeking to roll out works street by street. It will not be possible to do this out of taxpayers’ money – residents will need to dig into their pockets too. But the government has come up with the idea of a loan scheme to enable people to borrow £6,500 to do so – not a new idea in fact a modification of Ed Miliband’s Pay as You Save Scheme. To kick this off we’ll be asking the new Labour leader and his street to volunteer to be the first green street of privately-owned homes. We will support a scheme to refurbish a street of social housing too in that case with the assistance of public funds.
   
• Second, Camden should immediately survey all its housing and other public buildings for opportunities for solar electricity. It should begin installing this on suitable roofs which are just about to be repaired like the one the Spencer-Churchill estate in Dartmouth Park. 

  The new generous feed-in tariff combined with the government’s recent decision to allow councils to sell electricity means that Camden can earn money from these investment, and pay off the total cost in just over 12 years. We propose schemes are set up so that each estate or other development obtains some of the benefits so a community can, for example, invest their money in playgrounds, youth facilities or whatever they choose.
   

• Third, we ask Camden to step up its programme of combined heat and power (CHP), which means generating heat and electricity in a local boiler which is better than generating electricity hundreds of miles away and letting all the heat escape into the sky. 

The London Development Agency came up with an excellent plan of CHP along the Euston corridor. There is a fantastic opportunity in that area because of the proximity of buildings with different needs for heat and electricity. We want to see Camden pursuing this zealously ensuring that all new developments are required to install CHP, that money is pooled for this from other smaller developments using the community infrastructure levy, and that it raises money itself through loans or green community bonds. 

It seems that UK Centre for Medical Research and Innovation in its Brill Place proposals is not proposing to do nearly enough and this is yet another ground for turning down that planning application! 

If we don’t have CHP along this corridor it looks clear that our 40 per cent target will never be met.

These are all manageable steps, and  important steps in terms of creating jobs and investing in our future. 

We must also press the Council to invest in our future and help others do the same. We are putting our proposals to Camden Council’s Deputy Leader in charge of sustainability and to Ed Miliband too this week. 

• Maya De Souza represents Highgate ward on Camden Council