RTFoE has been participating in Friends of the Earth’s “Get Serious about CO2 campaign” aimed at ensuring that local authorities take action on climate change. The Council’s revised climate change strategy was published in June 2009 (see http://www.richmond.gov.uk/climate_change_strategy_v2.0.pdf)

The Council has undoubtedly moved forward on various fronts e.g. all public buildings have now had an energy assessment and hundreds of residents have been helped to install energy efficiency measures. A target to reduce CO2 emissions from 6.01 tonnes per capita in 2006 to 5.35 in 2010 has been set.

However the strategy is still lacking many baseline figures and various important targets, including those covering CO2 reductions from its own buildings, street lighting and fleet/business travel, energy generated from renewable sources and CO2 savings from LB Richmond-promoted home energy efficiency measures. The two Council officers who led work on the strategy left the Sustainability Unit shortly after it was published making these gaps hard to follow up but RTFoE are now making enquiries about how soon LB Richmond intends to set these targets, and hopefully more ambitious longer-term targets as well. FoE’s campaign asks local authorities to pledge to reduce CO2 emissions in their area by 40% by 2020 and various local groups around the country have persuaded their authorities to sign up to this, including Haringey, Harrow, Harrogate, Bristol and Manchester. We’d like to see LB Richmond looking beyond next year!

Meanwhile RTFoE members have been enjoying borrowing the Current Cost home energy monitors placed in local libraries by the Sustainability Unit. There are at least 4 in each library, sadly usually to be found lurking in a cupboard behind the desk rather than prominently on display! The monitor is easy to set up and there are instructions included in each box. It has a display which allows energy consumption to be monitored, showing how much electricity is being used and how much it costs. This enables the user to see how much energy each appliance or set of lights uses and make adjustments to their habits.