Things I never expected to hear myself saying, part 1

"This isn't about ethics, or climate change or the environment, this is about primary fiduciary duty."

Gulp.

Me, a week or two back, in pensions committee, arguing that we should instruct our fund managers to support the BP and Shell Shareholder motions going to their AGMs, which call for them to further consider and justify the economic as well as environmental grounds for investing in tar sand oils.

Tar sands (or oil sands) are among the world’s dirtiest fuels: their extraction produces on average three times the greenhouse gases of conventional oil. The pollution, deforestation and wildlife disturbance associated with tar sands developments also threaten the traditional livelihoods, health and wellbeing of indigenous communities. In addition, serious questions have been raised about the financial risks of oil sands. It's far from clear that they represent a prudent investment.

Fair Pensions is campaigning alongside a number of other organisations, including Greenpeace, to encourage pension funds to support the shareholder motions which are going to the BP and Shell AGMs in April and May. You can find out more about their campaign, and contact your pension fund to ask them to support the motions, by going to their Counting the Cost website.

As a member of Lewisham's Pension Committee, we are regularly reminded by officers that a 1% drop in pension fund value equates to having to find £1m from the Council's budget to meet its pension liabilities and that we can be held personally responsible if we go against legal advice and the fund loses money (don't think it works the other way round). And I've gradually learnt over the past few years that talking about ethics gets you nowhere with fund managers and gets lawyers very alarmed and reminding you of your primary fiduciary duty - our main responsibility is to maximise profits for the pension fund and sod the consequences. So a campaign that encourages pension fund members to challenge fund managers on their own terms, rather than 'woolly ethics' was music to my ears.

In this case, with regards to the tar sands motions, officers advised us to delay making a decision until a report on the tar sands issue has been published by the Local Authority Pension Funds Forum (LAPFF), of which Lewisham is a member. If the LAPFF recommends supporting the motions, then Lewisham is likely to do so, although the decision has ultimately been delegated to the Exective Director for Resources, as the committee won't be meeting again before the AGMs. If all the local authority pension funds that are members of the LAPFF support the shareholder motions, this will send a clear and powerful message to the management of BP and Shell.

Do take a look at the Counting the Cost website for details of how you can support the campaign.

The Wave - Act fast and fair on CO2 cuts

There was a big turnout for 'The Wave', the climate change protest in central London today, including lots of people from Lewisham. The protests were called as part of the build up to the Copenhagen talks on climate change and designed to send a clear message to world leaders that we want a fair deal for all, and legally-binding targets for cuts in carbon emissions.

Pictured above are Charlotte Dingle and Jim Jepps, Green Party candidates for Ladywell and Crofton Park respectively.

I marched with my sister and nephew who travelled up from Suffolk for the day, with lots of others from Suffolk Wildlife Trust. It was my 6 year-old nephew's first protest, and he was most impressed with all the planes overhead in London as he sees more tractors than planes back home! Hmm, he was, however, wearing his 'Keep the planet cool' t-shirt a certain aunty bought him!
There was also a fair-sized contingent from Transition Brockley

There's a handy guide to the Copenhagen talks and what campaigners want from them on the Green Party's website.

Left: Charlotte, me and Ute in parliament square at the end of the march.

New Schools Programme: could do better

The Sustainable Development committee, which I chair, has been carrying out a review of the extent to which the ongoing BSF (Building Schools for the Future) programme is sustainable. As well as the more obvious things like solar panels on roofs, we've been looking at things like community access to buildings out of hours, school travel plans and the procurement process.

Members of the committee visited 3 recently-built schools in the borough (Prendergast Ladywell Fields, Catford High and Sedgehill) and last week I presented our interim recommendations to the Mayor & Cabinet. Some of the recurring issues with these new schools are problems with ventilation (classrooms with windows that don't open and air conditioning that doesn't work), limited/no community use of buildings out of hours and ongoing issues with facilities management.

The article above from the South London Press has a bit more detail. Note to self: send a more flattering/photoshopped portrait photo to SLP for future use!

Council Committee recommends free insulation across Lewisham

Regular readers of this blog may have noticed a slight preoccupation with insulation over the past year or so. On a personal level, I've been getting my draughty ground floor Victorian flat insulated, while on a political level, the Green Group on the Council has been pushing for a borough-wide free insulation scheme to be introduced.

Back in April, I mentioned that the Sustainable Development Committee, which I chair, was carrying out a review into home insulation in the borough. Over the last few months we've gathered evidence and heard from a number of witnesses, including housing associations, energy companies, other local authorities and the Energy Saving Trust. I spent many hours in September, together with officers, working on the final report, which is now available on the Council's website.

The key recommendations of the committee's report include:
A free insulation scheme for homes across Lewisham. The Committee's report describes a possible three-year programme that would insulate around 25,000 homes and calls on the Mayor to set a target date by which every eligible householder has been offered free cavity wall insulation. The scheme would run in partnership with an energy supplier, who would meet half of the costs, as part of their obligations under the national Carbon Emissions Reduction Target (CERT). The remainder would potentially come from prudential borrowing.

A pilot scheme to start insulating 'hard to treat' properties: The Committee wants to see harder-to-insulate solid-wall homes tackled too, as these older houses make up around 40 per cent of Lewisham's stock. The Committee suggested that building up expertise by insulating the 200 Council-owned solid-wall homes that become vacant each year could make Lewisham a national leader in solid-wall insulation work.

Creating new jobs locally: The Committee wants local people to benefit from the jobs and training that could result from the home insulation programme, and has recommended that the Mayor asks Council officers to look at potential training schemes.

Homes have the biggest potential source of energy savings in the borough
An unusually high percentage of Lewisham's CO2 emissions come from its homes - 44 per cent compared to 27 per cent nationally. This isn't because Lewisham's housing stock is less efficient than elsewhere, but more due to the lack of employment and industry in the borough, which means that housing makes up a much greater proportion of total emissions.

The Committee found that while a range of useful initiatives have been introduced to increase energy efficiency, a more systematic, street-by-street approach to insulation is now required in order to save residents money on their fuel bills and to meet the carbon reduction targets in the borough's Carbon Reduction and Climate Change Strategy.

Other recommendations in the report include:

• Creating a register of insulation installers to make it easier for householders to get work done
• The Mayor to consider a demonstration eco-home in the borough for local people to visit
• A new planning rule which says home extensions can be built only if the whole property's energy efficiency is improved
• Investigating how to incentivise private landlords to insulate their homes and help vulnerable tenants

I'll be presenting the Committee's recommendations to the Mayor and Cabinet next week. Since the report was finalised, there have been several more national reports published calling for free home insulation schemes ('Lofty Ambitions' from the Audit Commission and this from the independent Committee on Climate Change) and it seems that barely a week goes by without another body echoing their calls.

I no longer think it's a question of if we get a free home insulation scheme, but more when, and who leads on it. I'd very much like to see Lewisham in the vanguard on this, rather than 'lagging behind' (excuse the pun from yet another report calling for free home insulation, this time from the London Assembly).

A copy of the full report 'Local Warming: Increasing Home Insulation in Lewisham: a scrutiny review' can be viewed here.

NB: Really observant regular readers of this blog may notice some similarity between the key recommendations of this review and the Green Group budget amendment from earlier this year. Personally, I think it's great that our proposals now have cross-party support.

Pedal-powered screening of 'Age of Stupid' in Deptford this Thursday!

Slightly outside of my usual geographical remit, and unfortunately clashing with Transition Brockley's film at St Andrew's this Thursday, but this sounds like a good event:

Oxfam’s Pedal Powered Outdoor Cinema
plus panel discussion with local leaders, the film’s director and climate campaigners!
Thursday 6th August 2009, Doors open at 7:30pm
Laban Outdoor Theatre, Creekside, Deptford, SE8 3DZ
LIMITED SPACES AVAILABLE & ONE NIGHT ONLY!!

Showing award winning film with Peter Postlethwaite:
For your free ticket and more info please e-mail Sophie Freeman or call 020 7802 9971.

Transition Brockley - films, 3 tonne club, carrot-mobbing, swishing and more!

Transition Brockley, a group of local residents who have got together to look at how the local community needs to adapt and prepare for a low-carbon, fossil fuel-free future (due to peak oil and climate change) has now had 5 or so well-attended meetings, and its members are working on a number of projects. You can join their e-mail discussion list here and check out the Transition Lewisham website here. Below are a few of the projects they are working on, and would welcome more people to help with. Lots of great ideas; do get involved if you can:
FILMS
The first two in a series of film showings are planned for Thursday 6th August and Thursday 10th September at 7pm in St Andrew's Church Hall (corner of Brockley Road/Wickham Road). There will be a small charge of £2 to cover the hall cost. Both the films to be shown look at how dependent food production is on the availability of oil.

On 6th August they will be showing The Power of Community: How Cuba survived Peak Oil and on 10th September they will be showing Farm for the Future, in which wildlife film maker Rebecca Hosking investigates how to transform her family's farm in Devon into a low energy farm (recently shown on BBC 2 and it's available online in 3 parts if you can't make the showing).

Contact Alex or Fran if you'd like to help with the above. There are also tentative plans afoot to make a local film about action in Brockley.

THREE TONNE CLUB
A group of TTBers recently held a very convivial meeting where everybody calculated their carbon footprint over a glass of wine or two. They were using the 'Three Tonne Handbook' from the Women's Environmental Network, which offers tips on how you can reduce your footprint down to 3 tonnes a year (apparently the UK average is around 13.5 tonnes). The group have formed a 'Three Tonne Club' and will organise another “weigh-in” in due course. If you want to measure your carbon footprint then go to Carbon Independent. E-mail Tamara to join the club!

FOOD GROWING
Transition Brockley is also looking at identifying possible spaces in the neighbourhood to grow food/set up community gardens. They are in contact with Pinnacle about one or two possible sites in the area, have been along to courses at Frendsbury Garden and are keen to work with Brockley Cross Action group on the community orchard project. A couple of people are mulling over producing a book of recipes using local produce (Brockley Honey flapjacks, anyone?!). One member, Ruth, is already busy with the community garden she's been instrumental in getting started at St Saviour's Church. Contact Ruth for further information or to offer to help with this. I'm also following up on one or two possible Ladywell sites for food-growing.

BROCKLEY SWISHING/CLUB NIGHT?
A swishing event is when a group of friends get together and have a party and swap unwanted but still useable clothes with each other. Rosa, from TTB is hoping to organise a club night/swishing/freecycling event in Brockley in October. Contact Rosa if you want to get involved.

SUSTAINABLE COMMUNITIES ACT
TTB have submitted a number of proposals to Lewisham Council as part of the first year of the Sustainable Communities Act, which they hope will be taken forward as part of Lewisham's proposals to be passed on to the LGA (Local Government Association). (See previous post for submissions we made to this.)

CARROT MOBBING
Finally, but perhaps one of the most fun ideas, is the suggestion of a 'Brockley Carrot Mob'. The basic proposition behind carrot mobbing, is that you talk to local bars / pubs / restaurants and ask them what percentage of their profits they would invest in eco-efficiency measures to their business if you organise a group of people to spend an evening at their bar / restaurant. You then choose the business that offers the largest percentage and perhaps also consider the need for efficiency measures and organise an evening out. Then the next day the 'experts' are sent in to carry out whatever work money has been raised for. See Carrot Mob and 9 carrots for two similar takes on this. We sounded out Graham at Mr Lawrence's about this - he was quite keen, and we were keen to get more energy efficient light bulbs in there as a start!

Carrotmob Makes It Rain from carrotmob on Vimeo.

Save Vestas!

The only wind turbine factory in the UK, Vestas, on the Isle of Wight, is due to close at the end of this month with the loss of 600 jobs. At a time when we need to be massively increasing our renewables capacity in this country and investing in wind power, this is absurd.

The company is closing the factory despite rising profits and has taken a threatening and aggressive line towards workers protesting to save their jobs. It seems bizarre that the factory was creating blades for US wind turbines rather than the European market - a great example of globalisation gone awry. The government says the blades aren't the right specification for here. So modify things for goodness sake - don't lose the local expertise that's been built on now.

The government coughed up the dosh (ie our money) to prop up the car industry and the banks; now it's time for them to invest just a fraction of that in saving this factory, the jobs of the 600 workers, and with it our hopes of developing a viable low-carbon energy supply to replace our coal-fired power stations . To do otherwise yet claim to be green would be rank hypocrisy. Time for Ed Milliband and Joan Ruddock at the Department for Energy and Climate Change to stand up to the unelected Minister for Business, Innovation and Skills, one Peter Mandelson, and demand he shows a bit of bloody innovation in saving these jobs.

Gordon Brown has talked a lot recently about creating green jobs, but he seems somewhat short on action. He also seems to include decidedly brown sectors such as nuclear power and coal-fired power stations within his definition of green. The Green Party's policies in contrast would create a million new jobs in genuinely green industries.

There was a demonstration in outside the DECC offices in London tonight, which Darren spoke at - I didn't go, but sent a message of support to the campaign via savevestas@googlemail.com.

Green Party leader Caroline Lucas MEP, in whose constituency the factory is located, has also sent a message of support to workers and spoken out against the proposed closure.

Events coming up this week

Loads of stuff happening in and around Ladywell and Brockley over the next couple of weeks, including the guided walk in the cemeteries tomorrow, the public meeting on the Fuel Poverty Bill on Thursday, the opening night of Brockley Max Festival this Friday and various events at Ladywell's newest (and only?) art gallery: Tank Art Gallery. Read on for further details!

Tuesday 26th May:
Guided walk with Nick Bertrand in Brockley & Ladywell Cemeteries
Meet at the Ladywell Road gate at 6.50pm.

Nick Bertrand compiled an ecological survey and management plan of the two cemeteries in 1995. The Friends group is seeking to build on this for their own management plan and are pleased that Nick has agreed to lead this walk. He will talk about the flora, fauna and ecological management of the Cemeteries.

A donation from participants is requested, to go to the Creekside Trust, of a minimum of £3 for members, and £5 for non-members of FoBLC. The walk is expected to last for 2 hours.

As this is an “after hours” activity, the cemetery gate will be locked at 7pm, so latecomers can not be admitted. This replaces the scheduled May meeting for Friends of Brockley & Ladywell Cemeteries.

Thursday 28th May:
PUBLIC MEETING: How to End the National Scandal of Cold Homes
Date, time: Thursday 28th May 2009, 7pm to 9pm
Venue: St Andrew's United Reformed Church, corner of Brockley Road and Wickham Road, Lewisham, London SE4 2SA

Invited: Joan Ruddock MP - Labour Member of Parliament for Lewisham Deptford and Climate Change Minister
Chair: Ron Bailey - End Fuel Poverty Coalition
Speakers:
Mervyn Kohler - Age Concern and Help the Aged Special Advisor
Ruth Bond - National Federation of Women’s Institutes Chair of Public Affairs
Dave Timms - Friends of the Earth Senior Parliamentary Campaigner
Gemma Townsend - Conservative Prospective Parliamentary Candidate for Lewisham Deptford
Cllr Chris Maines - Liberal Democrat Group Leader at Lewisham Council
Cllr Darren Johnson AM - Green Parliamentary Candidate for Lewisham Deptford

Please come to this meeting to show Joan Ruddock you want her to back the Fuel Poverty Bill!
This is a public meeting - it is free and no booking is required.

Background
If made law, the Fuel Poverty Bill, currently going through Parliament, would enact measures to end the scandal of cold homes, cut costs to the health service and generate tens of thousands of jobs. The Bill has strong cross party support including from former Labour Ministers. But not yet from local Lewisham Deptford MP, Joan Ruddock.

▪ In Lewisham alone nearly 3,000 older people have to choose between eating and heating.
▪ In Lewisham there will probably be 800 ‘excess winter deaths’ in the next decade.
▪ Fuel poverty costs the health service £1.9 billion every year: averaged out that’s nearly £9 million wasted in Lewisham.
▪ The public meeting is organised by the End Fuel Poverty Coalition (members’ logos are opposite).
▪ For more information on the Fuel Poverty Bill go to www.endfuelpoverty.org.uk or call 020 7359 8000.

Brockley Max Festival
Brockley Max Festival kicks off this Friday (29th May) with the now traditional opening night gig outside Brockley Barge on Coulgate Street. You can see the full programme of events on their website. The closing event will be on Hilly Fields on Sunday 7th June. Not to be missed!

Tank Gallery at the Ladywell Tavern
I've been a bit remiss in not plugging the fact that Ladywell now has an art gallery round the back of Ladywell Tavern, although Brockley Central did a write up a week or two back. They have a number of events coming up in the next couple of weeks:

29 May: A Stitch In Time & The One I Love 1600 onwards free
Tank Gallery presents the solo exhibition A Stitch In Time by South London based artist Aoife van Linden Tol. Working primarily with explosives Aoife van Linden Tol detonates small bombs to make imprints on paper, wood and metals. This collection of work uses the force and evidence of the explosions to explore perspectives of time. Aoife van Linden Tol invites you to bring a photograph of the one you love or someone you love on the 29th May. She will explode a tiny heart or tiny kisses onto the photograph using gun powder. These will be displayed in the gallery in the evening. They will be kept for a few days for cataloguing and then returned to you. All you need to do is bring a photo with you to Tank Gallery and fill in a form. You can bring the photo on the day but it is advised to bring the photo in before 4pm on the 29th if possible.

Wed 3rd June: Film Box – Film Screenings 1900 free

'Bigfoot of Suburbia' (2006). Written and Directed by Fred Rowson. Starring Richard Proctor

'King of Deptford Creek' (2009). Written and Directed by Fred Rowson. Starring: Simon Pearsall, Director of Photography: Jaime Feliu Torres

Tank Gallery presents two films by local Filmmaker Fred Rowson. We will first introduce a taster of Bigfoot of Suburbia whose main character, Peter Kingsley, is a jobless loner, lost in the heat of a South London summer. However, when a brief local news story catches his attention, his life his given a purpose: even if it costs him his reputation and his home, he knows that he must track down the mysterious beast that is hiding in his local park, Hilly Fields...

We will then screen a full preview of King of Deptford Creek, due to make the round on the festival circuit this summer. This is the story of a South London-based Private Investigator, Eliot, whose journey to find the missing Philip obsesses him to the point that he drops out of society. He becomes so caught up in the search that he too disappears - thanks in equal parts to a failing marriage and a missing diary. The story is set around a Thames tributary, The Ravensbourne, and its tidal reach, known as Deptford Creek, an eerie environment that slowly swallows Eliot's identity.

The audience are then invited to join us in an informal discussion with a small panel including Fred Rowson and Richard Proctor. The audience will get the chance to see a full screening of Bigfoot of Suburbia either after the discussion or on a later date.

5,6,7 June: Against The Wall (No. I) Live painting all day free

Against The Wall is a live painting performance, which will feature regularly in the Tank Gallery programme. Artists will be invited to create work directly onto the walls of the gallery space over the period of a few days where the public will be allowed to enter the gallery space and watch the work being created. Once complete the work will remain on show for the exhibition period. The wall will then be documented and white washed ready for the next show.

For the first of this series we have invited a local South London graffiti crew to transform the gallery during the last weekend of the Brockley Max festival. The public are welcome to watch on the 5th 6th ad 7th of June. This group of four artists who prefer not to be named have been prolific in the South East of London for the past 10 years. Their works can be seen in various locations around the city. They have created works in the urban environment independently and in collaboration with the council as well as being involved in running youth orientated projects. Feel free to come and watch them in action where they will be happy to answer any questions you might have. We hope to run a youth project in Tank Gallery with this group later in the year. Any artist can apply to take part in future Against The Wall exhibitions. Simply contact us or pop into the gallery for an application form and show us what you want to do. tankgallery@gmail.com

Monday 1st June: Lewisham Green Drinks
7pm onwards, Mr Lawrence Wine Bar, Brockley Road, 7pm onwards. For anyone with an interest in green issues (not party political, lower case green).

Tamil Petition and Full Council this week

Last Wednesday was full council. I handed in a petition to the Mayor and the local MPs signed by 428 residents calling for a ceasefire in Sri Lanka. (Picture shows Darren and me with local Tamil residents outside the town hall before the meeting). I'm not suggesting the Mayor of Lewisham has the power to achieve world peace (though it would be nice if he did), and realise it was a gesture more than anything, but I was keen to do something to support local Tamil residents and shopkeepers, given who concerned they all are about what is going on in Sri Lanka. Many of them have either lost relatives in the conflict or have lost contact with family members since January, when the violence escalated. The petition read:

"We, the undersigned residents of Lewisham are alarmed at the escalating violence in Sri Lanka and the deaths of many civilians over the past few months. We note the grave concerns that many Tamil residents of the borough have for friends and relatives caught up in the conflict zone.

"We call upon the Mayor of Lewisham and Lewisham's MPs to write to the government and urge it to work to secure an immediate ceasefire in Sri Lanka and for the free and unrestricted flow of food, medicine and international aid agencies into the conflict zone. "

There was a similarly worded motion proposed by Whitefoot councillor Pete Pattisson, which received cross-party support.

Wednesday was a busy night for motions, as there were 6 on the agenda, although one was withdrawn.

I proposed a motion calling on Lewisham's 3 MPs to support the Fuel Poverty private members' bill currently in parliament (Jim Dowd to his credit supported this, but Joan Ruddock as junior climate change minister talked it out, while Bridget Prentice was absent). The Mayor spoke against, arguing it would commit the government to spending lots of money on insulating houses (yes, that's the point, we want the government to spend money on that, rather than Trident and helping people buy new cars) and Labour all voted against, but it was supported by the Greens, Socialists and Lib Dems and just passed, despite an indecisive Tory failing to vote either way. Lib Dem Cllr Philip Peake had proposed a similar motion, but withdrew it and supported ours (thank you!).

Other motions included one proposed by Socialist councillor Chris Flood condemning the way Network Rail has been destroying the green corridor through New Cross and Brockley in recent months, and calling on the Mayor to contact them as a matter of urgency to ensure the area is replanted with saplings. Mike proposed a few minor amendments to correct a bit of terminology and to add a bit about enhancing biodiversity, but we were happy to support this, and it was passed unanimously.

We also supported a Labour motion calling for a new station at Surrey Canal Road as part of the East London line phase 2 works, and a Lib Dem motion on the NHS, expressing concern at any proposals to end 'co-terminosity' (this was a new term for me, but means when areas covered by a primary care trust are the same as the local authority boundaries. Seems to make sense to me, particularly in order for proper scrutiny of service provision to take place).

Well that's my review of Wednesday's Council meeting, in a nutshell, albeit somewhat tardier and less concise than the Twitters from Lewisham Central councillor Andrew Milton).

New European Greens Campaign Video

The two UK Green MEPs (Jean Lambert MEP for London and Caroline Lucas MEP for the South-East) are part of the European Greens and Free Alliance group within the European Parliament. The European Greens/EFA have released a new video narrated by Caroline:

Transition Ladywell Meeting WEDS evening

Sorry for posting this up rather late in the day, but here goes, on behalf of the small but enthusiastic group of people starting the Transitions Ladywell initiative:

"Transition Ladywell is having its first meeting this evening (Wednesday 22nd) at 7.30PM. If you live in Ladywell, or have a direct interest in the area, please come along.

We will be watching A Farm For the Future, followed by a chat about how we can get the ball rolling.

The meeting will be round Hazel's house, in Eastern Road – please contact Dave Moore for address details. Mob: 0759 0588 491, email: mdavidjon@gmail. com "

For those who haven't heard of the Transition movement, it's a grassroots movement looking at how local communities need to adapt to get ready for a low-carbon, post peak-oil future. There are similar groups getting going in New Cross, Brockley and Honor Oak too and a 'Transition Lewisham' website due to launch soon.

UPDATE: Sorry, I clearly didn't know what day of the week it was when I did this this morning - meeting is indeed tomorrow, not tonight! Hopefully gives more people time to find out about it . . . .

Local Public Meeting on Fuel Poverty Bill: 28th May

A public meeting is being organised locally by the Fuel Poverty Coalition to discuss the Fuel Poverty Bill.

Date: Thursday 28th May 2009
Time: 7pm to 9pm
Venue: St Andrew's United Reformed Church, corner of Brockley Road and Wickham Road, Lewisham, London SE4 2SA
Chair: Ron Bailey - Fuel Poverty Coalition Director

Speakers:
Joan Ruddock MP - Member of Parliament for Lewisham Deptford and Climate Change Minister INVITED
Gemma Townsend - Conservative Prospective Parliamentary Candidate for Lewisham Deptford
Cllr Chris Maines - Group Leader of Lewisham Council Liberal Democrats
Cllr Darren Johnson AM - Green Parliamentary Candidate for Lewisham Deptford
Mervyn Kohler - Special Advisor for Age Concern and Help the Aged
Ruth Bond - Chair of Public Affairs for the National Federation of Women’s Institutes TBC
Dave Timms - Senior Parliamentary Campaigner of Friends of the Earth TBC

You may recall from my earlier post that local and junior minister for energy and climate change, Joan Ruddock, talked the bill out during its second reading on 20th March. This meeting is an attempt to persuade the government to back the bill when it returns to the house on 12th June.

Keep up to date with the latest from the End Fuel Poverty Coalition on Facebook and Twitter.

Energy Action Zone coming to Ladywell

Ladywell is one of the wards due to be covered by Lewisham’s Energy Action Zone (EAZ) in 2009/10. Lewisham’s EAZ has been running since 2007, and has already covered a number of areas in the borough including neighbouring Brockley. The EAZ focuses the Council’s energy efficiency advice service within a ward through:

• Contacting every household in the ward by letter and on the doorstep to offer general advice and help people access grants for insulation or heating improvements
• Promotional work on energy efficiency at local events, doctors surgeries and other similar activities

The team intend to start contacting Ladywell residents in April and to have been to all households in the ward by July.

Of course it would be better if they could offer not just advice but free insulation for all, as we proposed in our budget amendment this year, but it's a start, and hopefully the free insulation will follow!

Also, don't forget, if you want to apply for a free home energy survey and a year's subscription to the Green Homes Concierge Service, there are still a limited number of places available (20 as of today). Further details here.

Joan Ruddock sabotages Fuel Poverty Bill

On Friday the Fuel Poverty bill that I previously blogged about had it's second reading in the House of Commons. As feared, Lewisham Deptford MP and junior minister for climate change and energy, Joan Ruddock talked out the bill, following, it would appear, the instructions of her boss, one Ed Milliband.

Over the past few days I have been at Green Party Spring Conference in Blackpool. Today conference unanimously passed an emergency motion that I proposed, condemning the government's decision to kill this bill.

To quickly recap, the Fuel Poverty Bill was backed by campaigning groups including Age Concern, Help the Aged and Child Poverty Action Group and would have introduced a major energy efficiency programme to bring existing homes up to the energy efficiency standards of modern houses, cutting fuel poverty and ‘social tariffs’ to protect vulnerable people like pensioners from high energy bills.

I haven't yet received a response to my e-mail to Joan Ruddock at the beginning of the month, urging her to support the bill, but I fully anticipate one in about 3 weeks time, once the dust has settled, thanking me for my correspondence and saying 'it was a very difficult decision' etc etc.

How difficult can it be Joan, given you have previously stated that tackling fuel poverty is a top priority for you, and given that within your own constituency, an estimated 3,407 elderly people live in one room during the winter months to save money on heating their home, 2,555 stay in bed to keep warm, and 1022 have to make the choice between heating their home or eating properly? (Source: Association of Energy Conservation.) Across the UK, that translates to 5 million households living in fuel poverty, and 25,000 older people dying each year in the winter months as a result of this.

So we now have an MP who is now in favour of nuclear power (quite a volte face for the former president of CND), supports Heathrow Expansion, student tuition fees, ID cards, 40 day detention, has towed the party line on pretty much every vote in the House of Commons over the past few years and now, as junior minister for climate change, has torpedoed efforts to lift millions out of fuel poverty and reduce carbon emissions at the same time. Nice one Joan. Now clearly I'm biased, but I think Darren would do a much better job at representing the people of Lewisham Deptford.

Fuel Poverty Bill: Ask Joan Ruddock to support the bill

I've been contacted by campaigners for the Fuel Poverty Bill, a private members bill that is currently going through parliament and which would tighten up the government's legal duty to tackle fuel poverty.* They are concerned that the Department for Energy and Climate Change may try to block the bill's passage through parliament. The junior minister responsible for making a recommendation to cabinet on this is Lewisham Deptford MP Joan Ruddock.

The campaigners want as many Lewisham Deptford constituents as possible to contact Joan Ruddock over the next few days and ask her to support and call for government backing of the bill. She is expected to make a formal recommendation to cabinet this week, so it is important that people contact her at the beginning of this week. Please call her consituency office on 020 8691 5992 or e-mail her.

The Fuel Poverty Bill aims to ‘fuel poverty proof' homes by bringing 6 million homes up to the energy efficiency standards of modern homes. It was taken up (with cross-party support) by David Heath MP and is backed by a broad coalition of organisations, including Age Concern England, the Association for the Conservation of Energy, the Centre for Sustainable Energy, Child Poverty Action Group, Consumer Focus, Disability Alliance, Friends of the Earth, Help the Aged, National Right to Fuel Campaign, SERA, Sustainable Energy Partnership and UNISON. The National Federation of Women’s Institutes are about to come on board too!

The very quick background to the Bill is that in 2000 the Labour Government passed the Warm Homes Act, which required the Government to publish a Fuel Poverty Strategy setting out the ways and timescale in which they were going to end fuel poverty. The resulting Fuel Poverty Strategy set dates for the eradication of fuel poverty in the vulnerable sector (2010) and in the rest of the sector (2016). MPs and Ministers believed that this was an absolute duty – until the High Court ruled otherwise on 17 October. In a judgment that campaigners believe to be perverse (and that is being appealed), the judge, Mr Justice McCombe, ruled that the duty to end fuel poverty was not a duty at all – merely a duty to make efforts.

Put simply, the Fuel Poverty Bill reinstates the duty in the Warm Homes Act. It aims to ‘fuel poverty proof’ the homes of the fuel poor by bringing them up to the energy efficiency standards of modern homes. Joan Ruddock recently confirmed that this can be done for the relatively modest sum of £7,500 per (average) fuel poor household. In addition, the Bill will give a much-needed boost to the UK “green construction” industry and create tens of thousands of new jobs. The Bill also requires energy suppliers to provide a social tariff to vulnerable households in the short term.

Back in 2000, Joan Ruddock enthusiastically supported the original 2000 Warm Homes Act with its aim of ending fuel poverty in the United Kingdom. In addition, just a month ago (on 14 January 2009), in giving evidence to the EFRA Select Committee, she expressly confirmed that the Government “do not intend to miss the 2016 target”.

*The official definition of fuel poverty is if you spend 10% or more of your income on heating your home.

Nuclear Power - Still Not the Answer

There's been quite a lot in the press in the past few days about 'leading greens' doing a volte-face and coming out in favour of nuclear power. I thought it was worth clarifying that the vast majority of those in the green movement, and the clear stance of the Green Party is that nuclear power is not the solution to our energy crisis or tackling climate change.

A little bit lazy on my part, but rather than reinventing the wheel, I thought the article below from a Lancaster Green councillor John Whitelegg was a pretty good summation of the arguments against nuclear power.

We don't need nuclear power to stop climate change
Prof John Whitelegg, Green Party spokesperson on sustainable development and one of 12 Green councillors on Lancaster city council, discusses why renewables, rather than nuclear power, should be the focus for economic recovery.

It is true that a small number of Greens, feeling the urgency of the climate crisis, have suggested a nuclear re-think as a lesser of two evils. But it's also true that the Green Party overwhelmingly thinks they're wrong.

The case for nuclear power to deal with climate change simply doesn't stack up.

Let's forget for a moment that nuclear energy is risky, and that after fifty years the industry still hasn't worked out what to do with the dangerous waste it generates. Even then, nuclear power should still be phased out in the interest of good economics.

A recent study showed that the UK nuclear industry has wasted £32 billion. It's the most expensive form of energy when we take into account its long-term waste costs, even if we ignore the potential costs of a nuclear disaster.

But there are other reasons why Greens oppose nuclear power. We want to create a truly sustainable economy. That means viable jobs for huge numbers of people in sustainable industries. Studies have consistently shown that nuclear energy sustains far fewer jobs per megawatt than non-nuclear renewables.

It also means creating resilient, diverse economies. Currently many local economies are far too dependent on the industrial monoculture of a nuclear power plant.

Renewable energy would not only sustain jobs in significant numbers at major locations, for example where wind turbines are being manufactured. It would also create huge numbers of jobs spread around the entire country, benefitting every local economy, for instance the jobs installing and maintaining microgenerators and servicing very large numbers of small-scale windfarms and biogas plants and so on.

Studies have consistently shown that nuclear energy sustains far fewer jobs per megawatt than non-nuclear renewables.

Of course, in the immediate term we have a recession to deal with. We need to create very large numbers of jobs right now. We can't achieve this by building nuclear power stations in fifteen years' time.

We can, however, unclog the planning system so that all the offshore and onshore wind projects that are currently held up can go ahead urgently. We could immediately announce new feed-in tariffs that would give investors the confidence to pour money into renewable energy. We could put the UK economy on something like a war footing starting tomorrow, to get all the wind, wave and solar systems in place that we need to achieve a low-carbon or even zero-carbon economy.

If we achieved Denmark's rate of growth on wind energy we could create something like 200,000 jobs in that sector alone by 2020 - faster than you could build nuclear power stations.

And also, as a matter of priority, we could start straightaway with domestic and business energy conservation. Not only would this rapidly create many tens of thousands of jobs within a short space of time - it would also save as much energy as all the UK's nuclear power stations currently generate.

So we simply don't need nuclear power to stop climate change. But we do need comprehensive Green policies, and we need them to be implemented now.

Green Party spokesman and Lancaster councillor Prof John Whitelegg is former Professor of Sustainable Transport at Liverpool John Moores University and former Professor of Sustainable Development at York University's Stockholm Institute of the Environment.

Confessions of a Green Councillor

This week (20th-26th October) is Energy Saving Week and this year's theme is 'Green/Life Balance'. According to a survey carried out by the Energy Saving Trust, half of us say we would be greener if we had more time, and a third of us say our job is the main reason we don't have time to be green.

I'm certainly guilty of falling into that category now and then, but I took a small green step forward today when I finally got my water butt connected to my drain pipe. I bought it about 8 years ago but it has been sitting idle at the bottom of the garden ever since as I lacked the DIY skills to remove the cast iron drain pipe and replace it with a plastic one that I could fit a butt to. Anyway, I poached my neighbour's plumber who came and did the job for me this morning. A good example of why free water butt schemes need to include installation!

Left, the finished item. I have another smaller one I'm thinking of putting in the front garden too (hopefully it won't take me 8 years to get round to it). I'm almost looking forward to the next time it rains . . .

To show you just how quick energy saving can be, the Energy Saving Trust have produced an Energy Saving Clock, with suggestions on things you can do, ranging from those that take just 1 minute to an hour to save energy (and money). They also have an interactive energy saving house you can explore and Britain Unplugged a new community site, which they hope will develop into a large scale resource for UK energy savers.

For those wondering what happened to my New Year's resolution post to green up my house and cut my carbon emissions, I hope to be able to post more on this soon. It's taken longer than I expected to get quotes for the work I need doing (the May elections got in the way somewhat too), but I'm close to making some decisions now.

I'm going to replace my draughty and rotting windows with wooden-framed double glazed ones, and hopefully also get insulation under my floor boards and on my walls (they are solid brick walls so this has to be done either inside the rooms or externally - I'm probably going for internal, as only a few of my walls need it, being a terraced house). I've had to submit a planning application for my windows even though it isn't in a conservation area, as it is a house split into 3 flats. Normally this kind of decision would be made by officers under delegated powers, but as I am a councillor it has to go to a full planning committee to make sure it is all above board, so it may take a while yet and be 2009 before I can actually get them fitted.

Transition Town Lewisham cont'd

We had a record turnout for Lewisham Green Drinks last night, with approximately 25 people packed into the back room of Mr Lawrence Wine Bar to hear about and discuss the Transition Towns movement. There was a lot of enthusiasm for getting something off the ground, though exactly what isn't yet clear. I suspect it may start with a Lewisham-wide e-mail list, then as people make contact with other interested people in their area, smaller projects will get off the ground. At the moment, people from Brockley, Sydenham and Lee Green all seem keen to start something.

Will post again when I hear more. In the meantime, those who are interested may like to join Project Dirt, and specifically South London Low Carbon Communities, which is trying to bring together the many and varied initiatives that already exist.

And of course, if you live in Ladywell ward, don't forget to come along to our ward assembly tomorrow at Prendergast School (lower site), not least as we have the chance to become a pilot project for a local low carbon initiative (more details at the meeting).

Previous posts on this.

Walking the Talk

I have a bad habit of buying books I want to read, rather than using my local library, which is a)expensive and b)not very green. I regularly went to the local library as a child and was even occasionally found in a library when at university, but since moving to Lewisham 8 years ago, although I joined the library, I don't think I've ever taken anything out.

So I have resolved to turn over a new leaf. I started by phoning Lewisham Library Services and getting a PIN so I can search their online catalogue. I did that and couldn't find the book I wanted, so spoke to a librarian who is going to order it in for me, for the bargain price of 50p.

So, I've belatedly woken up to the idea that libraries are very green places, and that I should use them more often. Maybe everyone who reads this is already a regular library user, and I'm just a bit slow to cotton on?

Of course, another thing I am looking forward to borrowing from the library, when they eventually arrive, are the electricity smart meters that we got through the budget this year.

Lights on or off at Laurence House?

Lewisham Council is doing a consultation on whether or not to turn off the floodlighting of Laurence House in Catford. This was prompted by a formal question from Brockley councillor Darren Johnson last year, who says it is a waste of energy and money. Darren argues that he doesn't oppose the floodlighting of beautiful landmark buildings, but that Laurence House Library is hardly the Arc de Triumphe. I tend to agree and think that if street lighting is doing its job, extra floodlighting isn't necessary. What do you think? You can complete the survey online here.

From the Council's press office:
Lewisham Council is asking residents for their views on the external lighting which is currently used to illuminate the 6-storey Council office block and library in Catford town centre.

Informal feedback has suggested that some people value the night-time lighting as it can create a sense of security, generate a positive local atmosphere and is a feature of the local area. However, there are costs involved. The lighting costs approximately £2,700 a year and produces an estimated 29 tonnes of CO2 a year, which contributes to global warming.

Cllr Heidi Alexander, Lewisham Council's Cabinet Member for Regeneration, said: "There's a choice to be made about lighting Laurence House at night and we want to hear people's views. I know that some people value the effect the lighting has on the local area after dark. But there is a cost involved, financially and environmentally, and as a Council we want to make sure we are doing everything we can to use energy efficiently and reduce unnecessary costs."

That said, while every little helps, it's kind of small fry in the bigger scheme of things, and we really need to get insulating every house in the borough which would save thousands of tonnes of CO2 a year as well as reducing the impact on residents of rising fuel bills.