The Mayor of London’s climate change mitigation strategy (launched Monday) rightly recognises that to get to his target of a 60% reduction in carbon emissions in London by 2025, government policy and money will have to play a major part.

But he’s scaled back reductions made through his own programmes to the extent that government policy plus mayoral policy still leave a 5m tonne CO2 gap in what needs to be done.

In particular, the Mayor’s energy efficiency programmes rely on a major injection of government funding beyond 2012.

For example:

• He is relying on attracting £200m of public money to take forward his homes energy efficiency programme.
• He is also reliant on national policy to introduce new measures to help householders and businesses finance energy efficiency improvements.
• Having initially funded 10 pilot low carbon zones, the Mayor does not have plans to deliver or fund the project beyond 2012, yet has a target for a further 23 zones (one in every Borough) by 2015.
• He’s cutting punitive policies designed to push people out of their cars and instead relying on incentivising the take up of new low-carbon vehicles. This is despite indications this will be much slower than previously hoped.
• He has no target for traffic reduction and has not quantified the emissions reduction he expects to come from a shift to public transport, cycling and walking.
• He has cancelled the western extension of the congestion charge, stopped plans for road pricing across the city, and cut back on the expansion of the bus fleet.
• His new initiatives in transport include a target of 100,000 electric vehicles in the capital by 2020 and smoothing traffic flow by changing the patterns of traffic lights, to cut down on emissions from idling vehicles.

The current Mayor has not stepped up to the challenge of climate change. He is in fact taking less responsibility for emissions cuts than his predecessor.

The best way he could go forward is to provide a detailed plan for reducing emissions in the capital and lobbying the government as to why they should finance it.

Yet, many areas don’t include specific policies, such as investment in skills and job creation to create the workforce needed to take forward climate change work. Others have few details on how the policies will be implemented beyond 2012.

This strategy falls short of being a detailed plan for London.

The Mayor’s strategy is available here.

Reader comments

1. David NP Ludlam

   Boris's climate and transport strategy fails miserably http://bit.ly/aQHDKu (via @libcon)

2. Political Animal

   RT @libcon Boris's climate and transport strategy fails miserably http://bit.ly/aQHDKu

3. sunny hundal

   RT @libcon: Boris's climate and transport strategy fails miserably http://bit.ly/aQHDKu

4. Darren Johnson

   Mayor's plan lacks investment in skills and job creation needed to take forward climate change work http://bit.ly/brznLX #environment

5. Adam Bienkov

   RT @GreenGreenwich Green assembly member @DarrenJohnsonAM on why Mayor Johnson is failing London's environment http://bit.ly/brznLX

6. Liberal Conspiracy

   Boris's climate and transport strategy fails miserably http://bit.ly/aQHDKu

7. Boris Watch

   RT @libcon Boris's climate and transport strategy fails miserably http://bit.ly/aQHDKu < By @DarrenJohnsonAM

8. Southwark Greens

   RT @libcon: Boris's climate and transport strategy fails miserably http://bit.ly/aQHDKu

9. uberVU - social comments

   Social comments and analytics for this post…

   This post was mentioned on Twitter by libcon: Boris’s climate and transport strategy fails miserably http://bit.ly/aQHDKu...

10. Greenwich Greens

    Our Green assembly member @DarrenJohnsonAM on why Mayor Johnson is failing London's environment http://bit.ly/brznLX

11. Greenwich Greens

    Green assembly member @DarrenJohnsonAM on why Mayor Johnson is failing London's environment http://bit.ly/brznLX

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