Nottingham celebrates new Climate Champion title

Nottingham City Council has won the title of Climate Champion at the Guardian’s Public Service Awards, in recognition of its ambitious plans to be the first UK city to become carbon neutral.

Also declared as overall winners at the ceremony, the Guardian reported that Nottingham City Council was ‘arguably the most ambitious’ for climate change action, after committing in January to becoming the first carbon neutral city in the UK, by 2028.

The Climate Champion category was included in the awards for the first time. A range of initiatives were highlighted by judges as reasons for success, including introducing the first and only Workplace Parking Levy to help fund a network of electric trams and an increasingly green bus fleet and making its own vehicle fleet greener, including the UK’s first emission-free street sweepers, and overseeing the cleaning up of the city’s hackney cabs – aiming for all of them to be electric by 2025.

The council also supplies energy from waste to homes and businesses through the district heating system and has carried out one of the most extensive programmes of solar panel installations on homes and other sites, including the UK’s first publicly owned solar carports at two of our leisure centres.

Nottingham City Council already exceed its 2020 target to reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 26 per cent with a figure of 41 per cent, and be on track to meet its 2020 target of 20 per cent of energy generation from low carbon sources.
 
Sally Longford, deputy leader of the council, said: “I am absolutely delighted with these awards. They recognise the forward-thinking approach the city council has taken for many years to address congestion and pollution and to find sustainable energy solutions. It’s a real shot in the arm for us to carry on with our ambitious plans to be carbon neutral by 2028.”