Minutes:
In response to the declaration of the Climate Emergency last July, Wokingham Council wants to become carbon neutral by 2030. We are all aware many drastic changes need to be made in order to meet this target. The Council can influence schools’ carbon footprint and even though we, the Bulmershe School, have solar panels on a few school buildings much more needs to be done. What concrete measures is the Council going to implement to make the local schools carbon neutral?
Answer
The great news is that we already have a carbon neutral school in Wokingham Borough. St Marys Shinfield has just won a gold award from the One Carbon Trust which is part of the UN Climate Now programme. They have just received the award in the past few weeks.
I have already announced a programme to upgrade solar panels on the roofs of our schools. Linked to that, we are going to be looking at initiatives that will include energy audits for all our schools in order to make upgrades to insulation, light bulb efficiency, etc. We are approving the equipment and, therefore, we are improving energy efficiency. But that is only part of the solution. We need to encourage pupils like yourselves to work with the staff to adopt new approaches and actively seek ways to reduce schools’ carbon footprints. This includes the way that you and your friends and teachers travel to school in the morning and how you get home in the evenings.
The Council is working with schools to develop awareness campaigns which will include adopting climate friendly behaviours, increasing recycling and reducing waste of all kinds. The other thing we are doing is to hold our first WBC Climate Conference in March 2020. It will be held during the school holidays and is aimed entirely at secondary school pupils. You will be invited to attend on behalf of your schools. There will be speakers from Oxfam and Reading University along with other experts who will be able to talk directly to the challenges that our climate faces and the role you can play in solving this problem and working with us to reduce our carbon footprint in the long run.
Supplementary Question
Don’t you think that schools should be leading the ecological change to encourage students to engage and, therefore, make more changes and take it upon themselves to take action, seeing as they are the future generation?
Supplementary Answer
I do agree with you that schools need to be leading the way in terms of Climate Emergency, but I actually believe that all of our residents have a role to play in leading on Climate Emergency. That is why I instigated the Climate Emergency Consultation in order to receive ideas from across the Borough in terms of how we can bring down our carbon footprint. But, there is more that can be done. The Climate Conference will be a two-way process. It is your opportunity to feed in ideas to us, having listened to what the experts have to say. As I said already, you are going to inherit this community at some point in the future and it needs to be ready for the life you are going to lead.
I am honoured to be leading this programme on behalf of the Council at the moment. But we are doing it for future generations. You need to have a say in how that is going to happen.