{"id":196355,"date":"2025-06-19T05:41:11","date_gmt":"2025-06-19T05:41:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/196355\/"},"modified":"2025-06-19T05:41:11","modified_gmt":"2025-06-19T05:41:11","slug":"council-leader-says-net-zero-ambitions-not-being-sidelined-in-birmingham","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/196355\/","title":{"rendered":"Council leader says net zero ambitions not being \u2018sidelined\u2019 in Birmingham"},"content":{"rendered":"

The council<\/a> declared a climate emergency back in 2019, saying at the time it would aspire to become net zero carbon by 2030, or as soon as possible thereafter.<\/p>\n

The authority has said that its net zero<\/a> ambitions are about reducing and removing greenhouse gases to mitigate against increasing climate risk.<\/p>\n

The term specifically means achieving a balance between the greenhouse gas emitted into the atmosphere and the greenhouse gases removed from it.<\/p>\n

The council\u2019s annual net zero report covering 2023 said last year that the authority was making \u201cgood progress\u201d in tackling its own emissions and had brought together its key teams working on climate change.<\/p>\n

But during a meeting this week, Green Party councillor Julien Pritchard asked why the annual report for 2024 had not been brought before full council yet \u2013 and questioned whether the council\u2019s climate work was still a key focus.<\/p>\n

\"BirminghamBirmingham City Council leader John Cotton during the 2025 budget meeting. Credit: Alexander Brock. Permission for use for all LDRS partners.<\/p>\n

During the last two years, the net zero reports were published ahead of meetings at the start of the year in either January or February.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have a rather crowded agenda of reports that have been coming through city council,\u201d council leader John Cotton told the meeting of the city council yesterday, June 17.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe intention was to bring the [net zero] report to this meeting \u2013 unfortunately, some other issues of business meant that had to be moved back.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut that will be brought to the next meeting of city council.\u201d<\/p>\n

Councillor Pritchard responded that it was \u201ca bit disappointing\u201d that they would have to wait until July for the report.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt doesn\u2019t fill people with a lot of confidence that the council is living up to its climate change commitments when it can\u2019t even report on its progress once a year,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cCan you reassure us that the council\u2019s climate work isn\u2019t being sidelined?\u201d<\/p>\n

Councillor Cotton said he was aware that \u201cwe live in political times where there\u2019s someone to question the whole concept of net zero\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat is not a position that this administration of this council will ever take,\u201d the Labour councillor continued. \u201cThe reasons why we\u2019ve not brought the annual report to council is purely around the pipeline of business that comes before this meeting.<\/p>\n

\"CouncilCouncil leader John Cotton during the meeting of the city council on Tuesday, July 9, 2024<\/p>\n

\u201cI can absolutely assure him that the work to ensure net zero takes place in this council 365 days a year.\u201d<\/p>\n

In last year\u2019s report, the council said it took numerous important steps on the road to net zero.<\/p>\n

This included securing funding to improve the energy efficiency of 2,076 council homes; delivering the \u00a31.7m natural rivers and green corridors project; and installing 828 electric vehicle charge points across the city.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are proud of our successes to date,\u201d the council said in early 2024.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe look forward to working with our city\u2019s stakeholders and citizens in delivering our climate change, nature and net zero programme, reducing our emissions and improving our resilience to climate change.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The council declared a climate emergency back in 2019, saying at the time it would aspire to become…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":196356,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7820],"tags":[855,748,393,728,4884,8823,379,12,285,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-196355","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-birmingham","8":"tag-birmingham","9":"tag-britain","10":"tag-england","11":"tag-environment","12":"tag-great-britain","13":"tag-ldrs","14":"tag-local-hubs","15":"tag-news","16":"tag-politics","17":"tag-uk","18":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114708433092433068","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/196355","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=196355"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/196355\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/196356"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=196355"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=196355"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=196355"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}