I mentioned Brent Council's Green Charter briefly on Monday. The various issues in it strike me as deserving a longer treatment, so I propose to do a series of posts.
The Charter points to impressive progress in cutting carbon emissions. The ones it considers are mostly building related. Although we have yet to move to the Civic Centre, some of the gains are already happening. The Civic Centre project has driven a lot of the IT related cuts in carbon emissions as well as some building and travel related reductions. We have also seen a noted reduction in energy use at Sports Centres, and in the recent Kilburn Library refurbishment.
We move in to the Civic Centre in April, and finish the Council's total move in June. The full carbon benefits won't be felt for a while, as some of them can only be maximised as the Centre is used.
For the future, we will have to do more on employees' travel arrangements, but the next big target for cutting greenhouse emissions in Brent Council itself is street lighting, where the advance of technology makes carbon reduction ever more viable.
Of course, all this is in addition to lots of other things the Council does in reducing emissions, such as the effect of increased recycling in curbing greenhouse gases, but it is important that as a major employer in Brent we show the way if we are to have any credibility in getting others to follow.
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