Public engagement is key to creating a Net-Zero Carbon Exeter in 2030
Published: 23 January 2020
More details on the public engagement due to be carried over Exeter’s bid to be Net-Zero Carbon city by 2030 have been revealed.
The Council has asked Exeter City Futures to develop a roadmap for the whole city to be carbon neutral in the next 10 years.
Exeter City Futures is drawing up a blueprint of how this might look and is planning to engage on the issues, challenges and potential barriers that this will raise.
Cllr Rachel Sutton, Deputy Leader and member with responsibility for Climate, said the council has an excellent record of reducing its own carbon footprint.
A pioneering Passivhaus building programming is taking place across the city, and the Council is taking currently taking part in a pilot to retrofit its homes to ultra-low energy standards.
Cllr Sutton said: “Exeter City Council is very aware of the need to address the climate emergency. We recently declared a climate emergency, but that comes after many years of reducing our own carbon footprint.
“For example, we have solar panels on many of our buildings - a lot of them you won’t be able to see like at the RAMM, on top of the Livestock Centre and on top of our car parks.
“More recently we have been gradually replacing our own fleet with electric vehicles, which are charged with our own solar energy.
“But we can’t do this on our own, we need to have citizens and businesses taking part and doing what they can. If we are to reach Net-Zero Carbon by 2030, everybody has to be involved and we are really keen that citizens get involved by making small changes in their lives. It really will help us to get to our target of a Net-Zero Carbon city.”
Dr Liz O’Driscoll, Managing Director of Exeter City Futures, said: “We have been asked to produce a roadmap for the whole city to become carbon neutral, and this is a massive task. It is really bold and it is going to require effort and engagement from everybody – local authorities, businesses and individual households.
“To create the plan, which is so much more than just Exeter City Council’s operations on their own, requires a lot of engagement and conversations that we are starting to hold.
“Through the work we have done over the last three years, Exeter City Futures has set out a framework for achieving a Net-Zero Carbon Exeter, captured in our 12 goals.
“We will shortly be releasing a blueprint for a Net-Zero Exeter, and we are going to use that with a series of engagement activities with the public, businesses, politicians and community leaders to start to ask what people find challenging about this, where are the major areas of concern, where are people excited, where are their hopes and worries, and what are the barriers to achieving this blueprint.”
Dr O’Driscoll said all of the information will be pulled together at a summit which will take place at Exeter City Football Club, on March 26.
“We will present back our findings and have a conversation on how to create a shared city view on what we need to do, how we need to get there and what we need to get out of the way in order to move forward,” she said.
“We will deliver that back to Exeter City Council as a Net-Zero Exeter Plan, which will set out the major innovation, investment and technical challenges that we will need to come together to fix.”