Solar Cities Congress Day 1

I’m away from Dublin until Thursday so apologies to everyone who has difficulty contacting me and especially to people who are waiting for me to get back to them on various things.  I’m writing this from Oxford, which I reached (by boat and train) today for the Solar Cities conference.

I’ll be doing a report on it when I return, but I’ll try to do a daily update to the website while I’m here. 

Most striking today was the speech by Nicky Gavron, Deputy Mayor of London, which has set up a Climate Change Agency for the city.  They are planning to establish an Energy Services Company and are particulary interested in decentralised electricity generation.  She also referred to a recent report "Powering London into the 21st Century"   which I haven’t had a chance to look at yet.

The other significant point she made was that congestion charging in the rather small area of the centre of London has reduced CO2 emissions by 19% and that while most people were dubious about it or against it before it was introduced it is now very popular.