London to Cut Carbon Emissions by 60% Within 20 Years

INTERVIEW - London Plans to be World's Greenest City
Reuters, via Planet Ark, February 28, 2007

LONDON - The British capital set out on Tuesday to become the greenest city in the world with a radical climate action plan to cut carbon emissions by 60 percent within 20 years in the battle against global warming.

The plan aims to slash carbon output by reducing demand and wastage ...

London's 7.5 million people will be urged to turn off televisions and lights and switch to low energy lightbulbs, while householders will be offered big subsidies to insulate their homes, which account for 40 percent of carbon emissions. ...

part of the action plan aims to switch over one quarter of the city's power supply from the old and ... inefficient national grid to locally-generated electricity using far more efficient combined heat and power plants (CHP). Some 70 percent of the original energy output of a traditional power station is wasted in lost heat or during transmission, but a CHP unit captures and uses the heat produced. ...

The plan aims to cut London's carbon emissions by 20 million tonnes a year by 2025, but the real goal is a reduction of 33 million tonnes or 60 percent below 1990 levels, Watts said.