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Gateshead Council has highlighted the use of digital technology as a key element of its environmental roadmap, set to be discussed by councillors this week.
Its Climate Emergency Action Plan will be discussed by the council’s cabinet today, and if adopted will commit it to a series of measures to sharply reduce its carbon emissions.
The council has promoted the plan in advance, highlighting three key elements that include expanding the use of digital technology to reduce the need for staff to travel and minimise the use of paper.
While the document provides no detail on how this will be done, it lists it among the measures for implementation in the short term.
Vancouver releases plan to reduce embodied energy emissions
Vancouver releases plan to reduce embodied energy emissions
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On November 17, 2020, the Vancouver Council approved the Climate Emergency Action Plan to reduce the city’s carbon pollution by 50 per cent by 2030. The plan is in alignment with the findings of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, calling for measures to limit global warming to 1.5°C.
“Our plan builds on our previous climate plans and focuses on cutting carbon pollution from our biggest local sources – burning fossil fuels in our vehicles (39 percent) and in our buildings (54 percent),” says the City of Vancouver’s website.
City staff state they have not determined the new rates at this point of time, but the base permit cost for the new zones would likely be lower than $45.45 annually the current rate in the cheapest existing permit zones.
For new gas and diesel vehicles after the regulations come into effect, a carbon surcharge would be added to the base permit cost, which is intended to encourage residents to purchase new electric-battery vehicle models.
“The intent of the surcharge is to encourage people who are buying new vehicles to choose efficient ones, if there are clean options available to them in the market. It is not intended to punish people with older cars,” reads a city backgrounder.
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Fred Lum/The Globe and Mail
The Toronto Blue Jays put a lot of greenhouse gases into the air. Like all professional sports teams, they travel constantly for half the year and often by plane. This is the sort of thing we usually think about when we talk about our impact on the climate.
But forget all those flights. There’s a much bigger environmental concern on the horizon: the proposed teardown of the Rogers Centre, the team’s stadium. “From a climate perspective, it’s criminal,” Canadian architect Kelly Doran says. “That building has 55,000 tonnes of carbon baked into it,.”