Depute leader of Glasgow City Council David McDonald said on Twitter: “Today, we take the step of declaring a climate emergency in Glasgow. Edinburgh became the first city in Scotland to declare a climate emergency in February, with the Highland Council following in May. The declaration comes just days after the council announced their bid to become the first net-zero emissions city in the UK. They announced a roll-out of electric transport and heating systems on Tuesday, with the backing of energy giant ScottishPower. The scheme – which faces competition from Edinburgh – will see new charging stations for electric cars, soon to rival petrol vehicles on price, announced within weeks.
Herald 16th May 2019 read more »
Letter Elizabeth Marshall: EF Schumacher’s book, Small is Beautiful – A Study of economics as if People Mattered, remains relevant today. Modern technologies allow economic distributed localised energy production and consumption, versus vastly expensive and less secure centralised alternatives. Affordable new zero-energy houses have been designed and built in Scotland; existing buildings can be made energy-efficient and financed with economically-driven incentives and tax reliefs to the energy supply and distribution companies. District heating, from estuaries, lochs and flooded coal mines utilising heat pumps, can transform the cost of heat and hot water whilst greatly reducing carbon emissions. So why is all this technological progress piecemeal? Examples exist in Glasgow of heat being taken from the Clyde Estuary and the flooded coal mine at Shettleston providing economic heat and hot water to the local community. Elsewhere in Scotland distilleries and incinerators use their waste heat for district heating for houses and hospitals. Rolling out a comprehensive programme of distributed energy across Scotland to lower-carbon emissions needs pragmatic new financial and energy policies. Perhaps Scotland’s proposed new Investment Bank and Stock Exchange and much-vaunted financial industry, can be given the taxation and legal incentives by our policy makers to allow them to work in partnership with our engineering industries to eliminate fuel poverty whilst greatly reducing carbon emissions. Is this too much to hope for?
Herald 17th May 2019 read more »
