Green Monday
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The UK’s independent watchdog on sustainable development released a report today claiming information technology could play key role in making travel easier, safer and greener.
The Sustainable Development Commission say innovations in information communications technology (ICT) could have an important impact on improving fuel consumption and safety, cutting down on the need for time-consuming transport and making necessary journeys more enjoyable.
The commission’s report ‘Smarter Moves: How Information Communications Technology can promote Sustainable Mobility’ says with transport currently accounting for 29 per cent of the UK’s total domestic and international carbon dioxide emissions ‘a concerted government and business focus on ICT solutions could help provide answers to some of our most pressing transport problems.’
Meanwhile, other environmental groups are looking to promote greener lifestyles though energy from biomass and waste this week. The international ‘Energy from Biomass and Waste UK’ (EBW UK) conference and exhibition will be held Tuesday and Wednesday at the Royal Horticultural Halls and Conference Centre in London. The event is expected to bring together vendors, buyers, investors, municipal representatives, legislators and scientists interested in energy recovery from domestically grown resources and waste materials.
The environment will also be a main concern of the Department for Children, Schools and Families (DCSF) department this week as its Zero Carbon Task Force will release its final report on greener schools this Thursday. The DCSF appointed the task force to advise how new school buildings can be zero carbon by 2016.
Siobhan Wagner
Chief Reporter
Readers' comments (4)
Simon Martin | 25 Jan 2010 6:36 pm
Information technology may be beneficial to some point, but promoting green technologies! What a laugh. This technology is applied to the Nottingham tram system, and it works, the trams arrive bang on time.
Travel at off peak times and there may only be two or three passengers on a tram, it still consumes the same power and has to be manned.
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Peter Field | 26 Jan 2010 10:01 am
Public transport has to be a lot cheaper for the public to use more. At present many local buses are encouragingly full. This is because bus travel is highly subsidised by local government to the extent bus travel is free to many. Although trams are a similar form of local public transport, for some curious reason OAPs and the young cannot get subsidised free tram travel. So smelly buses are quite full and clean trams less so! (replying to the above letter)
Many off peak trains are nearly empty and they too should be filled by subsidised travel permits by good social and financial engineering. (yes, engineering isnt only about metal and concrete). If the taxpayers can subsidise the green industry, they could be made to subsidise cheaper rail and tram travel, all part of lowering CO2.
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Stephen Hall | 26 Jan 2010 10:44 am
Take care! Typical Government response to high cost of public transport is to increase the costs of non-public transport until former is more acceptable. Result is no change to former to attact more business - poor, old, smelly, poluting will be rewarded. The obvious answer is a fully integrated transport system, which is a million miles away from where we are today.
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Stephen Hall | 26 Jan 2010 2:26 pm
Take care! Typical government response to the high cost of public transport is to increase the costs of non-public transport until former is more acceptable. The result is no change to the former to attract more business - poor, old, smelly, polluting will be rewarded. The obvious answer is a fully integrated transport system, which is a million miles away from where we are today.
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