Pressing ahead with action on Climate Emergency
We have secured over £3.7 million in central government funding to retrofit 165 Lewisham Home properties, community centres and adult learning centres to support energy efficiency. The work is part of our Climate Emergency Action Plan and will go towards efforts to become carbon neutral by 2030.
Since declaring a climate emergency in 2019, we have developed a Climate Emergency Action plan which details the steps we will take to tackle this issue.
Despite the challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic, we are pressing ahead with the action plan. Since March 2020, we have:
- upgraded our fleet of waste and recycling vehicles to comply with the highest standard of emissions
- successfully launched a new Community Energy Fund offering up to £15,000 one-off grants to local community initiatives to support energy efficiency and carbon reduction projects, such as solar panels on community buildings
- joined Solar Together, a community-based bulk-purchasing initiative to help Londoners access lower costs for solar panels
- supported 2,895 low income and vulnerable households with practical advice on staying warm and cutting the cost of energy
- secured £435,000 external funding in 2020/21 for fuel poverty advice services across South London.
Cllr Sophie McGeevor, Cabinet member for Environment and Transport said:
“I am delighted by the many successes that the Council has had in the past year in delivering the Climate Emergency Action Plan, despite significant disruption by the pandemic.
“This work becomes more pressing by the day while the Government continues to ignore the scale of the climate crisis, as shown by the lack of ambition in last week’s Budget. The investment in retrofitting buildings and homes to support energy efficiency in Lewisham is a key milestone towards our target of becoming a carbon neutral borough by 2030.”