Green Capital / bristol green capital
Bristol sets out its stall in Paris
Bristol has set out its sustainable action projects at the 2015 UN Climate Change Conference in Paris, in a bid to attract opportunities for business and green investment.
As the UK’s first European Green Capital in 2015, Bristol was one of 88 cities and regions in 42 countries to present innovative projects aimed at placing local and regional governments at the heart of positive and long-term climate action.
While the nations leaders will be discussing the details of the climate agreement, the cities and regions will discuss how to mobilise resources and implement commitments that immediately raise global climate ambitions.
At the Cities and Regions Pavilion in Le Bourget, Bristol pitched two projects on energy efficiency and smarter future planning of cities.
George Ferguson said he was “proud to be among the world’s pioneering sustainable thinkers”.
Bristol’s two action projects will join over 120 on display in Paris as part of a 10-year initiative that aims to identify projects with the most potential to transform the lives of their citizens.
The first proposal, entitled ‘Energy efficiency for everyone’ (or Bristol Billion), is for a £700m (or $1b) investment making Bristol’s buildings more energy efficient to achieve significant carbon and energy savings. It will involve refurbishing 56,000 homes in Bristol – 30% of the city’s housing stock – to lift them out of fuel poverty and reduce health costs.
The second project in the making, the ‘Bristol Brain’, seeks to reimagine how citizens and planners can work together to shape a sustainable future for the city. The aim is to create a physical and digital city model, on top of which, real-time data and sophisticated analytics can be projected and visualised, creating environments that can be explored through virtual and augmented reality. This will allow different scenarios for future developments to be explored as if they are real, and for the impact on energy, transport, air quality and other factors, to be fully understood.
(Top image: Library photo)
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