The current state of bus and rail services is stopping Leeds reaching its climate change goal according to Katie Dye, the Chair of Leeds City Councils Climate Emergency Advising Committee.
She said: “We definitely need to get more people out of cars and onto mass transit, walking and cycling however the barrier for this is the current state of buses and rail in the city which are making it difficult for people to make those decisions so that certainly needs tackling. And looking at decarbonising peoples homes, if I remember of the top of my head I think about a quarter of all our emissions come from buildings and if you think about a city like Leeds, all the old houses we’ve got need insulating and better low carbon ways of heating them.”
In recent weeks, Leeds has been announced as one of the 122 cities across the world named as climate action leaders, on the ‘A’ list by the Carbon Disclosure Project.
Councillor Dye said: “What they do is they look through all the climate work the cities been doing and they rate you on things that make up our climate work so it’s everything that we’ve been doing on zero emission vehicles, electricity on LED’s, the district heating, tree planting, everything really gets rated.”
In 2019, Leeds councillors from all parties voted to declare a climate emergency and work towards zero emissions by 2030.
Since this, Leeds City Council have created climate schemes worth hundreds of millions of pounds. They have published a plan to halve the authority’s own carbon footprint by 2025.
Recent climate action in Leeds has helped get the city onto the list. There’s been plans to invest more than £100 million into council housing to make them more energy efficient by 2025. This includes new technologies such as air source heat pumps, district heating network, external wall insulation and solar panels.
£270 million has also been invested into Leeds transport. Improvements to road, rail, bus, cycling and walking services have been made. improving the air quality and reducing congestion.
The line graph above shows the change in Leeds’s maximum and minimum temperature during the month of July over 100 years. There is a clear pattern that the maximum temperature has increased by approximately four degrees.
Leeds City Council are aiming to reach zero emissions by 2030. Ms Dye said “We’re pulling out all the stops so we can make it happen”.
