Council's Energy Awareness Week begins

Christchurch continues commitment to conserving energy

 

 

Christchurch is rolling out a series of energy lectures at the Christchurch Art Gallery this week as it acts on its pledge to cut carbon emissions in the city.

 

The Energy Awareness Week lectures, starting today, is one of the 28 initiatives from the Christchurch City Council’s Sustainable Energy Strategy for Christchurch 2008 –18. The lectures focus on energy usage in transportation, in business, at home and in building design, as well as at renewable energy options.

 

The Sustainable Energy Strategy for the community emanated out of consultations with the Europe-based Energie-Cités in early 2006 and was then developed and peer reviewed by a team of experienced project managers from Malmö City in Sweden. Christchurch is a unique member of Energie-Cités, the only city outside of Europe to be asked to join.

Energie-Cités, created in 1990, is the association of European local authorities promoting local sustainable energy policies that represents more than 1000 towns and cities in 26 countries.

Mayor Bob Parker addressed the first Covenant of Mayors Ceremony that was organised by Energie-Cités at the European Parliament on February 10, as did Mayor Michael Bloomberg of New York City. In his videotaped address, Mr Parker said Christchurch was building up to its clean and green image with 25 percent of all the city’s energy coming from renewable sources, and with 90 percent of the Council’s own energy use coming from renewable sources.

 

“We have reduced our energy consumption by 33 percent and our carbon dioxide emissions by 50 percent,” said Mr Parker of the Council’s continued move towards reducing its carbon footprint.

 

The Covenant, representing more than 350 cities across Europe, is committed to improve energy efficiency by 20 percent, increase the share of renewable energy by 20 percent and reduce CO2 emissions by 20 percent by 2020.

 

While addressing the European Parliament, Mr Parker dwelt on how Christchurch was using the sale of its carbon credits to fund the move to a more sustainable Christchurch. As a non-European member of Energie-Cités, Christchurch cannot access the funding the organisation offers its Europe-based members but can tap into its technical help and support.

 

Notes

 

The Council’s landfill gas pipeline from its 40-year old landfill site to QEII swimming and recreation complex earned carbon credits that the Council has sold to British Gas. The complex is the largest in Christchurch attracting 2 million visitors a year. The project consisted of a 4 km underground pipeline, a gas treatment plant, the conversion of existing 3.4 MW boilers from LPG to landfill gas, and the installation of a 250 kW co-generation plant at the swimming pool. The project is saving the City Council $1M per annum in LPG and electricity costs. In addition, the Council got 200,000 tradable carbon credits as a result of this project. The credits reflect the positive effects of collecting methane and converting it into carbon dioxide, eliminating the combustion of 825 tonnes a year of LPG - fossil fuel, generating 2 GWh of electricity from landfill gas.