Sustainability is at the heart of everything we do as a council. We have ambitious goals to become a carbon neutral organisation by 2030. But we also have a duty to promote sustainability across the city.
Recent successful green initiatives include:
- Working in partnership with Egni Cooperative, Welsh Government and Sustainable Community Energy, we have placed solar panels on the rooftops of 27 of our buildings, which are generating clean energy for both the buildings and the grid.
- As well as Wales’ largest solar panel rooftop installation, the Geraint Thomas National Velodrome of Wales has also benefitted from extensive LED lighting upgrades, which have dramatically reduced its carbon emissions.
- We launched Wales’ first fully electric refuse collection vehicle in March 2021, and plan to roll-out a further three later this year. This is part of our plan to fully electrify our vehicle fleet.
- We signed up to the Gwent healthy travel charter, which commits us to promoting sustainable travel options to our staff.
- Installing electric vehicle charging points across ten council-owned car parks, the majority of which are fast or rapid charging.
- Completing work on several new active travel routes across the city, which has helped treble our active travel network since 2014.
- As part of our aim to promote and encourage biodiversity a number of initiatives have been taking place across the city. As a bee friendly city we pledged to support the No Mow May campaign in 2021, delaying the start of the regular mowing season and leaving areas to grow to increase habitat and reverse the decline in pollinators.
There is still a lot of work to do though. Our plans include:
- Working with partners and stakeholders to develop a local area energy plan for the city
- Launching a Re:Fit scheme to improve energy efficiencies in buildings across Newport
- Developing a climate change strategy which will drive our sustainability work
- Developing a road map for increasing electric vehicle charging points across Newport.