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Penny |
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Regular Posts: 63  | Some of us attended a talk to TBI by Ailsa Villegas, ths Sustainable Development Officer with Highland Council recently. She sent me the following message in response to questions raised at the Q&A session after the talk. I will be replying to her shortly and can forward any comments that arise from members. Penny message starts: Hi Penny, I have just returned from the annual conference of the Sustainable Scotland Network where MSP Stewart Stevenson was presenting and taking questions. The issue of short-term funding streams and lack of capacity and support to sustain funding streams within voluntary groups was highlighted to the Minister and the chair of COSLA (convention of Scottish Local Authorities) during question time. Unfortunately no answers were given to the problem but I wanted to reassure transition Black Isle that the concerns you have raised to us, are shared by many and have been raised with the relevant people. Indeed a number of groups put this same question to the Minister yesterday alone. The issue of support is being championed by some influential groups who sit on the relevant forums. With regards to the streetlighting enquiry I have had the following response from our streetlighting manager: “The position with all of the street lighting trials is that they have been extended until the end of March 2012. After this there will be a report taken to Council listing the savings the various trials have made including public/police feedback. This report will direct ongoing lighting policy. Very mixed feedback from the public on the trials at the moment” In Highland Council we are currently reviewing two key documents, the Carbon Management Plan 2012-2020 and “Adapting to the Impacts of Climate Change in Highland”. We therefore have an opportunity to strengthen the links to the peak oil agenda in both documents and will progress this. We would also be happy to include a question on Peak Oil in our annual public performance survey which will next be distributed in May 2012. Information is available on our website under Sustainable Development, Green Council and Climate Change. Just look to the A-Z on our homepage at www.highland.gov.uk Any enquiries can be directed to green.council@highland.gov.uk I have a few other enquiries to follow up and will respond to the individuals concerned when these are complete. I would be grateful if you could share this with your group. Thanks Ailsa | ||
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| Penny |
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Regular Posts: 63 | Here is a copy of my reply - thanks those that responded direct to me. A copy of the SEPA report that I refered to (non technical summary) can be downloaded from http://www.sepa.org.uk/science_and_research/publications.aspx Hi Ailsa Thanks for giving us your various thoughts following your presentation to our group. I apologise for the delay in getting back to you which was mainly because I was helping on our latest Climate challenge fund bid on sustainable transport! It’s good to know that the issue of long term funding for community groups is being raised as a cause for real concern. We are very conscious of the fact that the success of our group is utterly dependent on the voluntary efforts of a few key volunteers and our group has been lucky to have found a good number of these. It does however make us very vulnerable to the loss of these key individuals and we’ve been searching for opportunities for long term funding for the past year or two. The most obvious opportunity would be to secure some sort of asset for the group that will bring income in the future such as wind turbines, or maybe even buildings, although we’ve failed to make much progress here. We’ve also been considering opportunities for social enterprises (for example waste management), again without any conclusive developments. We’d be interested in exploring any opportunities that Highland Council might identify which we could explore. On the question of street lighting, clearly TBI would support any work that reduces excess street lighting – both for carbon saving and light pollution reasons. We’ll be interested to see the results of the trials and hope that a future management regime can achieve savings as well as address public concerns. We very much welcome your proposal to include peak oil in the revision of the ‘Carbon Management Plan’ and ‘Adapting to the Impacts of Climate Change’. I think it’s also important to recognise that oil is only one part of a much wider energy resource issue with serious questions hanging over the sustainability of nuclear power, natural gas from ‘fracking’ and carbon capture and storage for coal. A strategy for using much less energy seems to be the only real viable response and government policy needs to strongly reflect this. Substituting carbon emitting forms of energy with clean renewables is also clearly an important strategy. However, resource depletion issues that affect many of these technologies are becoming apparent. Recent research done by SEPA (attached) and others shows that resources at risk include rare earth metals for wind turbines, indium and copper for solar cells and lithium and rare earth metals for electric vehicle batteries. The report also highlights resource threats to other industries critical to Scotland including agriculture (phosphorous) and fishing (fish stocks) which are also indirectly relevant to carbon emission reductions. I think it’s important that this issue gets mentioned in these documents as well. You suggest including a question on peak oil in your public performance survey and I do think this would be useful although I think it would be best as part of a wider question about energy resources. Our experience is that there is still a significant percentage of the population who have not heard about peak oil let alone the threats from other forms of energy such as extraction from tar sands, hydraulic gas fracking and long term disposal of nuclear waste. Public concern is mainly based around a sharp personal experience of increased energy prices and a general foreboding that this can only get far worse. Questions that reflect the likely knowledge levels of the population would be essential. We’d be pleased to discuss this further as you begin to plan the survey. Inclusion of peak oil, sustainable energy and resource depletion in the various documents you have mentioned is of great importance. However, even more important is how the critical issues highlighted in these documents feed into the wider development policy of the Highlands reflected in the Highland Wide Local Development Plan which you do not mention. Did you manage to have a look at this plan (currently in final draft I believe) and form a view about how well it reflects the sustainability issues we have been discussing? We are particularly concerned about housing policies that require residents to rely on private car ownership, the focus on roads rather than public transport and active travel, the centralisation of services and lack of policies advocating a re-localisation of society and the loss of opportunities to produce local food and other essential products. We believe that the current plan will lead to an increase in the vulnerability of Highland people to energy and resource supply issues in the future rather than to greater resilience. Best wishes Penny Edwards | ||
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