ENVIRONMENT bosses at the council are planning to spend more than £50 million to tackle climate change in the next three years - but one chief says becoming carbon neutral by 2030 might not be achievable.
Wokingham Borough Council (WBC) has reveal full details of its climate action plan after councillors declared a climate emergency in July 2019.
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Budget proposals from 2020 to 2023 show more than £15 million will be spent each year on infrastructure which could help to make Wokingham borough carbon neutral by 2030.
This includes investing in new and existing public rights of ways and cycle networks, creating solar farms across the borough, building new relief roads to manage congestion and more.
Asked at a meeting whether these measures would be enough to achieve the council’s goals, councillor John Kaiser, finance chief at WBC, said: “I don’t think we’ll achieve carbon neutral by 2030, it’s a big ask. Although going forward, everything we do will be done with that in mind.
“To make a commitment to be carbon neutral would be foolhardy in the extreme.
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“We have to live within our budget and start somewhere and this is where we are kicking off.
“Are we spending enough? You could argue solar farms and all the other things that go with this is a big commitment.
“It’s something that’s never ever appeared in a council budget before.”
These budget proposals are expected to be signed off by councillors at a WBC meeting in late February.
But the authority’s climate action plan will be voted on at a full council meeting on Thursday, January 24.
WBC’s opposition group, the Liberal Democrats, have backed plans to create solar farms, set up an energy company and take more cars off the road.
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Lib Dem Cllr Sarah Kerr also called for more robust monitoring of air pollution across the borough saying poor quality air is something “we urgently need to tackle”.
She added: “This monitoring would not only help the council to identify the real problem areas to enable it to provide solutions, but it could further investigate being used to inform the borough’s residents, potentially through an app, of where poor air quality areas are, so they can make conscious choices to avoid those areas when pollution is particularly high.”
But Labour councillor Andy Croy has slammed the action plan after he claimed it lacked carbon budget monitoring.
He added: “The plan has no carbon budget which allows us to say how much carbon is being saved.
"The whole thing is an attempt to persuade people they [the Conservatives] care about the environment.
“What the Tories are doing is a vote harvesting exercise — they are doing this to distance themselves from the national party and say we are the nice local Conservatives."
Asked for his response to comments made by other councillors from across parties, environment boss Cllr Gregor Murrary told the News: "Our stated ambition is to achieve a carbon neutral borough by 2030. John [Kaiser] underestimates the challenge, it is a VERY big ask. Achieving this ambition though is at the heart of everything that we as a Council and we as a Conservative Group are doing.
"We have set aside almost £14million over the next three years to introduce alternative transport options, £18million towards generating our own clean, renewable energy and a further £18m to some innovative schemes to help residents, businesses and our towns and parishes to reduce their own carbon footprints.
"We can’t calculate the impact that solar farms, for example, will have on our carbon footprint until we know how many of them we can build and if we have the budget to build them. We have spent the last six months gathering ideas, understanding what other councils are doing and finding innovative and leading solutions to our Climate Footprint and the impact that we have on our planet. Now that we have the key initiatives of our action plan our next step is to calculate the impact they will have on reducing our carbon footprint. We will publish this information as soon as it is available."
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