Buses carry more people than any other form of transport in the UK. Buses are currently the fourth biggest emitter of carbon, based on emissions per user, behind domestic and long-haul flights and single-person car journeys.
Electric buses produce no emissions whereas diesel versions produce carbon dioxide and nitrogen oxide. An electric bus draws electricity from the grid and stores it in a battery that can be recharged.
They depend on the “cleanliness” of the electric grid into which they're plugged. Low-carbon sources of electricity made up 47% of the UK’s output in Jan 2021 with wind power the second biggest provider after gas power stations. National Grid plans to be zero-carbon by 2025.
Each electric bus can travel approximately 160 miles on one full charge and it takes four hours to charge the batteries. One electric bus will save 15.5 tonnes of Nitrogen Oxide and 32.2 tonnes of CO2 per year.
Although the initial cost of an electric bus is twice that of a diesel bus, its about 2.5 times cheaper to power vehicles with electricity rather than diesel. The lifetime cost of an electric bus is therefore cheaper.
The technology is proven as London currently has more than 200 electric buses, making it Europe's largest electric bus fleet. There are established plans to start manufacture of electric buses in the UK bringing highly skilled green jobs to the country. One of Britain’s biggest battery companies is also investing in the manufacture and management of batteries for electric buses.
As well as being so much cleaner, electric buses have quieter operation, better acceleration and less vibrations making them far more comfortable.
• Work with major bus operators Stagecoach West and Swindon’s Bus Company (as subsidiary of Go South Coast Ltd) to introduce electric buses into the Swindon fleet.
• Access £170m the government has pledged to restore lost services and improve the regularity of buses.
It’s a legal requirement that the UK economy will be at zero carbon by 2050. The Committee on Climate Change, said in 2018 that this is not possible “without near complete decarbonisation of the housing stock”.
Energy use in our buildings is currently responsible for about a quarter of Britain’s territorial carbon emissions. According to some accounts the British housing stock is the oldest in Europe. It is estimated that around 70-80% that will be in existence in 2050 are already standing. It’s generally agreed its more cost and energy-effective to try and energy efficiently retrofit our homes – even the oldest, leakiest ones – than it is to knock them down and build new ones.
By saving energy, the average household could reduce its emissions by 0.6 tonnes of CO2 per year. These measures could also save the average gas heated home £184 per year.
The aged, leaky nature of UK housing and the difficulty of keeping homes warm is partially responsible for various public health problems, both physical – respiratory, rheumatic – and mental – anxiety, depression. The UK has one of the highest Excess Winter Deaths in Europe with the difficulty of keeping British homes warm considered one of the main causes.
An effective means to rapidly assess energy problems in a building is to use thermal imaging surveys which allow cold spots to be rapidly identified so that the correct measures can be put in place to save energy. Coupled with other measures, this can be an effective way of making existing homes as efficient as possible.
With unemployment rising due to the pandemic, there’s now a chance to reconfigure the jobs landscape while putting the environment centre stage. There is a national shortage of skills in retrofit including skills in building physics, insulation, heat pumps, solar thermal, heating and water smart controls, ventilation and air-tightness among others.
• Work with local schools, higher education establishments and businesses to train up a local workforce with expertise in the skills needed for retrofit of our housing stock.
• Implement thermal imaging surveys, at minimal cost for low-income households, provide general advice to address the findings and help to access the local workforce skilled in retrofit.
58% of car journeys in 2018 were under 5 miles and in urban areas, more than 40% of journeys were under 2 miles in 2017-2018. For many people, these journeys are perfectly suited to cycling and walking.
Cycling has a carbon footprint of about 21g of CO2 per kilometre. That’s less than walking or getting the bus and less than a tenth the emissions of driving. Electric bikes have an even lower carbon footprint than conventional bikes because fewer calories are burned per kilometre, despite the emissions from battery manufacturing and electricity use.
If cycling’s popularity in Britain increased six-fold (equivalent to returning to 1940s levels) and all this pedalling replaced driving, this could make a net reduction of 7.7-million tons of CO2 annually, equivalent to 6% of the UK’s transport emissions.
The government is providing significantly increased funding for local authorities. £2 billion of new investment in addition to existing funding will be provided over the next five years, the great majority of which will be channelled through local authorities.
Some of the essential characteristics of a well-planned cycle scheme are that bike tracks are physically segregated on main roads, including at junctions, the routes must be direct and continuous, not giving up at the difficult places. They must serve the places people actually want to go and cycles must be treated as vehicles, not as pedestrians.
Almost half of all primary school children, and almost a quarter of secondary school children, are driven to school, a figure which has more than trebled in the last 40 years. School active travel could play a greater role in preventing obesity and supporting healthier weight. The school run creates pollution, congestion and danger – around schools and on the wider road network.
Physical activity, like cycling and walking, can help to prevent and manage over 20 chronic conditions and diseases, including some cancers, heart disease, type 2 diabetes and depression. Physical inactivity is responsible for one in six UK deaths (equal to smoking) and is estimated to cost the UK £7.4 billion annually (including £0.9 billion to the NHS alone).
• Engage Sustrans to get expert advice on holistic cycle paths which are safe, continuous, direct, integrated and take people where they want to go in and around Swindon.
• Develop the cycle network to support the integration of electric bike charging and secure bike parking at key locations.
• Work with local community congestion spots – schools, hospitals, businesses to make safe cycle and walking paths.
UK households waste 4.5m tonnes of food a year that could have been eaten, worth £14bn.
Food waste can produce large quantities of methane, which is released into the environment as a harmful greenhouse gas. Instead, collecting food waste for recycling means it can be turned into energy to power homes and high-quality fertiliser/soil improver for use on agricultural land.
The government has committed to roll out separate household food waste collection across the country by 2023, as part of the government’s landmark Environment Bill.
Swindon Borough Council started a food waste trial in September 2019 which included 11,000 homes. On 1 Jul 2020 Swindon Borough Council Cabinet agreed to extend the scheme to all 97,000 households in the borough on a permanent basis.
It was announced Jan 2020 that businesses and not-for-profits in England will benefit from £1.15 million of funding to help them come up with creative new ways to tackle food waste by changing people’s behaviour or transforming it into other materials. From educating the public on how to store fresh food, to ideas such as turning food waste into new, edible products, grants will be available for creative solutions to address this pressing environmental challenge.
• Supplement Swindon Borough Council’s borough-wide food waste collection scheme with a campaign to encourage householders to produce less food waste and extend the food waste collection scheme to local businesses.
More than two-fifths of UK species including animals, birds and butterflies have seen significant declines in recent decades.
Data on nearly 700 species of land, freshwater and sea animals, fish, birds, butterflies and moths reveals that 41 percent have seen populations decline since 1970, while 26 percent have increased and 33 percent have seen little change. Some 133 species have already vanished from Britain's shores since 1500, according to the 2019 State of Nature report. Butterfly numbers have fallen by 17% on average and moths by 25%. The UK Biodiversity Indicators 2019 showed short and long-term decline in bird and insect populations; and long-term public sector spending on biodiversity has decreased.
The 2019 Intergovernmental Global Assessment of Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services estimated a million species are at risk of extinction, many within decades. It concluded that “we are eroding the very foundations of our economies, livelihoods, food security, health and quality of life.” Writing about climate change and biodiversity loss, the body’s Chair Sir Robert Watson, stated: “we either solve both or we solve neither.”
There are some great initiatives underway in Swindon, such as the Forest meadows project, which aims to create, restore, enhance and better manage grassland sites covering approximately 170 hectares focused on 12 sites. In Wichelstowe, we have amphibian and wildlife highways under new roads and substantial areas set aside as protected habitats. New ponds and habitats are planned in Mouldon Hill, Chiseldon and Bishopstone and there are plans to increase tree cover to 30% in the Borough.
However, we need Wildlife corridors to bridge the gap between habitats which otherwise would be small and isolated and join them together. Linking core wildlife habitats helps to restore and preserve biodiversity, allowing movement between important habitats to maintain genetic diversity in wildlife populations. Without this, local extinctions can occur. There is no formal programme to tackle this at present.
There are a lot of new houses being built in Swindon, for example, Wichelstowe (4,500) and the New Eastern Villages (8,000) among other development. We need to ensure, when the council is granting planning permission to new-build housing estates, it considers the wildlife in the area – in particular to endangered species, such as badgers.
• Work with Wiltshire Wildlife Trust and other experts to create joined up wildlife corridors across and beyond the borough.
We are passionate about helping the people of Swindon thrive, not just economically with the provision of green jobs but by environmentally sustainable, affordable homes and businesses and an environment which is rich in biodiversity and lifts the spirit.
We are committed to be being active in the local community and hearing the voice of constituents and bringing their ideas and concerns to the Council. We will tackle the issues on the ground whether this is litter, dog theft, drug dealing or parking problems to make a real difference to the day-to-day life where you live.
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