Population Total emissions Per capita total emissions Transport emissions Per capita transport emissions % transport emissions of total emissions | London* 7.3 million 44.3 MtCO2 6,068 kg/person 9.6 MtCO2 1,315 kg/person 22% | Auckland** 1.2 million 11.93 MtCO2 9,941 kg/person 5.14 MtCO2 4,283 kg/person 43% |
* Halcrow Group et al, 2009 VIBAT Stage 1 Report, p.58 (see:www.vibat.org)
** ARC Modelling
So. Aucklanders are responsible - on average - for THREE TIMES more transport CO2 emissions compared to Londoners, due to our higher travel demands and greater transport energy use. Interestingly, London's relatively low transport carbon footprint, the UK Government and Greater London Authority are jointly getting on with a set of policy initiatives to reduce this carbon demand (due to transport) by 60% by 2030.
The UK is taking CO2 emissions - and transport energy efficiency - very seriously.
I wonder when our Government will get round to translating its 10 - 20% CO2 reductions by 2020 target it has commited NZ to at Copenhagen, into policies and strategies that will reduce transport energy in Auckland....
And I wonder what we need to do as a region to ensure that our new Regional Land Transport Strategy also tackles this imperative....
But, hey ho, even if we do have a great little regionally agreed RLTS, Transport Minister Joyce doesn't seem to feel any need to give it any attention anyway. He's just advanced the biggest road building program NZ has seen. Totally in conflict with the current RLTS. Maybe he thinks it's a sign of economic strength and power to push Auckland's transport related CO2 emissions way up, so that then we can skite internationally that we emit FIVE TIMES more CO2 per capita getting around than our London mates. Now there's a claim to fame....
3 comments:
You not sure that's because most Londoners live either in a small flat or rent a room of someone, that the only people with individual houses are extraordinarily wealthy. Then when people live on top of each other, vast numbers live within walking distance of a rail and underground network that was built almost entirely by private enterprise before WW2 (and which was built to encourage urban sprawl and development near the stations, which it did!).
People in London put up with tight living space and moving around like sardines at peak times because of the career opportunities, and the liveliness of one of the world's great centres of commerce, art, culture and history.
Nobody moves to New Zealand to live like that. Indeed, the apartment market in Auckland is the most depressed, indicating that NZers don't want to sacrifice space just so planners can pack everyone together. A far fairer comparison would be with other new world cities - cities where people have a backyard for the kids to play in, where they have a small garden, have a spare room and don't all have walls adjoining their neighbours.
A lot of London suburbs are leafy and spacious. However there are many local employment opportunities as well. A significant factor in the low transport carbon footprint is the tube rail system, supported by bus. So people who do travel big distances to work use a low carbon method. While the market for low cost apartments in Auckland CBD is depressed, the market for quality apartments downtown is not. Auckland's challenge is to ensure that its polycentric approach (Manukau, Waitakere, Takapuna etc) is well enough designed and planned so as to ensure employment opportunities of quality establish in those other centres, AND that the streetscape in those centres is attractive enough to support walking, biking etc to work and school. Good public transport is a big help, but Auckland's other towns need to be developed so they have much more attractive public places in their own right than they have today. These are public & private development opportunities that need to be incentivised. Otherwise those urban areas will waste away....
London is just one example of the energy intensity of a developed urban environment. Auckland is undercooked by comparison. There is low hanging energy-fruit here. Needs to be recognised.
Having spent 20 odd years in Auckland, close to 20 in London, and having just returned home to New Zealand, I'd like to offer a few comments on the two "cities" if I may.
Londoners live in a mixture of accomodation types, much like the residents of Auckland are beginning to. The idea that travel in London, is sardine based, is probably as accurate as the idea Auckland is a city of sails. Sadly Auckland is a city of cars, whereas in London, I was able to walk, bus, train and cycle, and live without missing a car, and it's associated expense, at all.
London is also , at a basic level, sustainable. It is very green, filled with parks, canals and rivers, and populated to a density which provides huge variety in entertainment. Auckland , by comparison, is incredibly wasteful, of it's land, it's geography, and it's people. Having been around a few centuries, London made conscious decisions, not to sprawl endlessly, and so provide people with a quarter acre until the Island was full end to end ( there is nothing uniquely kiwi about that ). Instead, the United Kingdom, banned housing on the coast, and features green ways, cycle ways, and off road walking, for it's length and breadth.
New Zealand by comparison, is well on the way to piecemeal ribbon developments, everywhere, national parks aside. If you want to try walking the coast, or without using roads, as it entirely possible in the UK, good luck, as the saying goes.
It's also useful to understand, that bad buildings, are not unique to any country. A developer, will, generally, get away with whatever they can, to make the most profit. There is no law, that says apartments have to be cramped, block natural light, and add nothing to the enjoyment of the city. That is a choice, and we don't have a great track record here of enforcing design standards, for the good of everyone.
Shared walls, floors, and other pieces of joinery, are rarely the whole story. Soundproofing, and insulation generally , is key. I'm not exaggerating when I say, where I live now, in the East Coast bay's, has more traffic, and more noise from neighbours, with huge gardens, than my flat in Central London. Green space is also a choice, personally, 4 story low-rise developments, strike a good balance for me, especially when they ring garden squares, which because they are sheltered by the surrounding flats, offer peace and quiet from traffic noise, and shelter from wind....
Auckland should be an incredible city. It certainly has the geography right. Step one is realising that large plots of individually owned land, are , basically, greedy. When strung together over vast distances, they also make providing viable transit, very complicated, and indeed, once you're spread over the distances Auckland now covers, they make any kind of transit difficult, even cars, there's no avoiding the laws of physics here.
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