The mayors of Paris, London, Barcelona, Quito, Vancouver, Mexico City, Copenhagen, Seattle, Cape Town, Los Angeles, Auckland and Milan pledged on Monday to make their cities zero-emission zones.
The World Smart Cities - October 2017, by Laetitia Van Eeckhout
The major cities are not going to let up in their efforts to protect the environment and the climate. Twelve days after announcing her desire to see no more petrol-powered cars in the streets of the capital by 2030, the mayor of Paris and eleven of her counterparts in the C40 (a network of 91 major cities around the world currently chaired by Anne Hidalgo) made a commitment on Monday 23 October to transform their cities into "greener", "healthier" and, above all, "fossil fuel-free" territories.
Meeting in Paris for the annual Together4Climate summit, the mayors of Paris, London, Barcelona, Quito, Vancouver, Mexico City, Copenhagen, Seattle, Cape Town, Los Angeles, Auckland and Milan want to turn a "significant part" of their cities into "zero emission zones" by 2030. This means that all internal combustion vehicles - both petrol and diesel - will be banned from the roads.
"One third of greenhouse gas emissions in cities come from transport," say the C40 leaders, pointing to a study of the United States, the UK, France and Germany:
"Congestion on our roads costs the economy on average almost 1 % of GDP."
Soft mobility and public transport
To support this transition, the mayors are committed to promoting soft mobility (walking and cycling in particular) and to giving more space to public transport to make it accessible to all. This will be achieved by reducing the number of kilometres travelled by vehicles and by reducing their number, starting with the most polluting ones.
Some of the signatory cities did not wait for this declaration to start acting. Paris in 2015, followed by Mexico City, Athens and Madrid in 2016, have already committed to phasing out diesel vehicles by 2025, and have introduced driving restrictions on the oldest and most polluting vehicles. Barcelona followed suit this year, announcing that it would no longer award taxi licences to diesel owners in 2019.
London and Milan have gone even further and introduced congestion charging to relieve their city centres. London has even decided to tax, as of 23 October, all vehicles on the road that do not comply with the current emissions standard. Currently, the oldest vehicles allowed are Euro 4 (first put on the road in 2006), both petrol and diesel. Any owner of an even older vehicle will have to pay an emissions surcharge, or "T-Charge", of £10 per day.
Leverage effect for an entire sector
In doing so, the mayors who signed the declaration want to lead the way by acquiring zero-emission vehicles for their own fleets "as soon as possible". They even promise to buy only carbon-free buses from 2025.
To reduce the number of miles driven by cars in their cities, they commit to working with suppliers, fleet operators and businesses. "The commitments made in this declaration reflect the level of action we in C40 believe is necessary to meet the Paris climate agreement," says Shannon Lawrence, C40's director of initiatives. She added:
"This statement is also a message to the private sector.
The C40 mayors of some of the world's largest cities want to create a leverage effect to create a competitive offer of materials and services they want to use, and encourage the development of carbon-free industries. As early as October 2015, twenty-six of them signed a "clean bus declaration" to show their intention to procure low-carbon buses for their fleets.
"This has helped convince manufacturers of the size of the potential market and led them to invest in the manufacture of new generation buses. In London, for example, the price of hybrid buses has since fallen by 10 %," says Shannon Lawrence. Mayors will publicly report on their cities' progress every two years.
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