On 11 August Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, published his draft London Environment Strategy for public consultation (open until 17th November) The Mayor is taking a range of actions to ‘improve the environment now, setting London on the path to create a greener, cleaner future’
Construction, buildings and the built environment feature large in this strategy to bring together approaches to every aspect of London’s environment, including
• Air quality: Construction contributes to air quality as a major sources of local PM pollution with high volumes of dust and emissions from transport, the strategy looks to reducing construction traffic by five per cent by 2020, and reducing the number of freight trips during the morning peak by ten per cent by 2026. And that monitoring on construction sites to inform operators when additional measures are required must be improved.
“Non-road mobile machinery used in the construction and infrastructure building sectors currently accounts for approximately seven per cent of NOx and eight per cent of PM10 emissions in London.”
• Green infrastructure
London will be a National Park City where more than half of its area is green; where the natural environment is protected and the network of green infrastructure is managed to benefit all Londoners.
• Climate change mitigation and energy
To minimise carbon dioxide emissions from construction and future operation of the building and to achieve the Mayor’s zero carbon development target, the energy hierarchy wording will be updated to:
- be lean: use less energy and manage demand during construction and operation
- be clean: exploit local energy resources (such as secondary heat) and supply energy efficiently and cleanly
- be green: generate, store and use renewable energy on site
Ninety per cent of construction industry professionals responded to a survey stating that they would benefit from better embodied carbon guidance and support.
• Waste
Aim : London will be a zero waste city. By 2026 no biodegradable or recyclable waste will be sent to landfill. – “waste” refers to any substance or object which the holder discards, intends to discard or is required to discard
• Adapting to climate change
Download the London Environment Strategy from here
Consultation is open until Nov 17th for individuals –Talk London surveys and discussions and organisations to respond to survey with evidence and ideas
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