Floods, fumes and foreign travel -Solihull's climate crisis fight is laid bare
| Published date | 20 August 2021 |
| Publication title | Birmingham Mail: Web Edition Articles (England) |
As the council sets out its blueprint for cutting the borough's carbon dioxide emissions to net zero, we delve into the challenges, arguments and opportunities that lie in store
Read more: Eco-friendly homes on the market in the Midlands now
On a Friday night in late June the skies over Dorridge grew dark and a storm started which brought several weeks' worth of rainfall in the space of just 60 minutes.
The downpour, described by dismayed residents as "biblical" and "like nothing they've ever seen", left some 170 homes counting the cost of flooding.
While it was true that the village hadn't seen devastation like it in recent memory, Solihull as a whole has repeatedly suffered over the past decade or so.
The events of June 25 add to a list of very similar deluges in 2007, 2012 and most recently 2018.
What were once dubbed "100-year-old" weather events -because residents could expect to see them around once a century -are now happening every few years.
Inevitably the disasters bring with them questions about the state of drains and overdevelopment in waterside locations, but they also come as the borough, the country and the planet grapples with the climate emergency.
Earlier this month a landmark study from the United Nations, described as "a code red for humanity", carried dire warnings about the consequences if rising global temperatures were not addressed.
While just this week, Solihull Council released the draft version of its action-plan to achieve "net zero" carbon emissions for the borough by 2041.
The 129-page report provides a breakdown of the key sources of emissions at present and the policies and plans being drawn up to hit the 20-year target.
It's a weighty document for arguably the weightiest issue policymakers will have to confront in the coming years.
Cllr Ian Courts, leader of the Conservative-run authority, said the scale of the crisis couldn't be underestimated.
"We see pictures on the television of these dreadful fires in Greece but several weeks ago we had some dreadful flooding in Dorridge," he said.
"People were affected who had no idea they were going to be affected. That's a local example of the problem that we have got.
"It's clear we need action but that means action on a lot of different fronts."
These "fronts" are outlined in the report, with keys areas including buildings, transport, industry and energy.
The collection of pie charts, bar graphs and league tables are in truth somewhat overwhelming, but it's clear from the pages dense with diagrams that extensive changes are needed if Solihull is to achieve its goals.
Take transport for instance, which is the single biggest source of emissions in the borough -accounting for 39 per cent of the 1.3 million tonnes of CO2 equivalent being generated.
This is not wholly surprising for an area which is a key travel hub, with major motorways passing through and one of the country's busiest airports.
And that's before we even get to HS2, who depending on who you speak to is utterly ridiculous in the age of the Zoom call or just what's needed to get people off the roads.
Many of the policies being promoted will no doubt be familiar; people are being implored to make the switch to electric vehicles or -better still -public transport, walking and cycling.
Locally this will mean a strategy designed to make travel on foot or on two wheels much easier, another policy to improve public transport links - Solihull Station is set for a major upgrade -and easier access to EV charging points
The question of course is whether all the pieces will align given that other schemes have been tried in the past with...
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