We all want a cleaner, greener world in which to live and thrive yet nudging people towards a sustainable future is easier said than done. But one local authority is facing that challenge head on.
Dundee City Council, a local authority for a condensed eight mile by three-mile city with a population of 150,000 people that was once known for its whaling, jute production and journalism, is at the forefront of driving environmental change with a bold mix of communication, out of the box thinking and cutting-edge technology.
This is much to do with the kind of place the Scottish east coast city has become and the age profile of its citizens. It is now home to two universities and hosts a dynamic young workforce. Fully one in seven Dundonians are students. Ideal territory, then, for forward-looking green initiatives to take root.
Fraser Crichton, a farmer’s son who joined Dundee City Council 23 years ago, rising to become its corporate fleet operations manager, believes constant engagement with new technologies like Electric Vehicle (EV) charging will be key to the city maintaining its leading position in urban sustainability.
“The innovation over the last 10 years is incredible,” he marvels.
Crichton now heads up Dundee City Council’s 10-year EV Strategy plan and vision, which he describes as both simple and complex.
At the simple end it entails such policies as a huge push to reduce the number of vehicles by promoting cycling and improvements in the local bus and train services.
Somewhat more complex are the significant sustainability initiatives the council is implementing. One example is its school renewal programme in which it is investing £100 million. The programme will see the amalgamation of two schools in a building with solar panels on top and heat pumps underneath. Yet even better, the renewable energy in the school will be used not solely for the school itself but will be made available to the whole community, for charging infrastructure, minibuses and surrounding houses.
There is also a £17 million levelling up project from the UK government in the offing, which will see a concrete multi-storey car park, a classic of the 1970s brutalist school, lose its ugly facade, and undergo structural improvements. It will be supplied with battery storage and chargers and have solar panels installed on its roof. At the same time, the number of its parking spaces will be halved 350 to maximise space.
Crichton explains: “We want the ability not just to have people park in their cars, but also park their cars where they have space to open their doors; disabled communities will be able to use it so that the chargers that we are putting in place have an area where you can get your wheelchair around.”
Dundee’s residents are being closely involved in the council’s sustainability efforts, which is vitally important because, as Critchton stresses, people can find change difficult.
Community engagement on the city council’s environment projects starts six months in advance with focus groups held to ensure the community is kept fully informed of the details of and reasons for the city council’s initiatives.
Key to the council’s green vision is its inclusivity. It is not just building this infrastructure or changing the transportation in the city for certain sectors but across the board, Crichton stresses.
The implementation of EV infrastructure illustrates the efforts the council is making to put social equity at the heart of its environmental plans. In 2016 Dundee was given central government funding to build three EV charging hubs across the city. The first one was intentionally built in a working-class area.
Crichton notes: “We understood that people might have a driving licence but could not afford to have a vehicle. So, we put on a lot of car clubs. We used a system where the hub was next to an employment centre. An example would be if there was a job 10 miles away. We knew that somebody had a licence but didn’t have a car so we could give them the carpool to go to that job interview.”
Dundee City Council is also using the power of ordinary human interaction to embed ESG principles into its operation and get the word out about them. The city’s taxi drivers who would once talk about the weather are now chattering away about their new EVs, Crichton observes approvingly.
“They’re promoting the EVs as opposed to the promotion coming out of the local authority and therefore the policies that we put in place for EVs had a much bigger knock-on effect with the community,” he says.
Another task the council has set itself is reversing the decline in people utilising its fine parks and green spaces. To that end it is putting on festivals and encouraging outdoor events in open spaces.
As part of its EV offering Dundee City Council has also partnered with Bluewater Group to enhance its charging hubs and put them to other smart uses. It’s another multi-purpose initiative that helps reduce single-use plastic consumption and improves access to clean drinking water as well as charging vehicles.
Crichton says: “We roughly eat a credit card of plastic a week when we are drinking the water out of our taps in this country.”
The scheme emerged when he spoke to Bluewater about the city’s charging infrastructure and the company suggested capturing water from it which it could filter; drivers charging their cars would be able to get clean water that had been nowhere near the draining system.
Crichton says: “if you go to our fourth hub in the city, you roll up there with your plastic bottle, reusable plastic bottle, put your drinking water under the screen next to where you’re charging your car, and there you go, presto, you’ve got clean drinking water that’s just fallen from the sky and has just been filtered through.”
The council’s sustainability goals are also being supported by digital transformation, with smart technologies improving energy efficiency and slashing emissions in the city.
Most of its renewable solar energy comes from battery storage, with the majority being second life batteries, Crichton observes. An electric car that’s run for 15 years with a battery that has degenerated to about 90% will be stacked up in a container. Then when the solar power hits the hubs, it goes stored in this system.
Following the morning school runs a fleet of taxis will all arrive at the hub at the same time to charge up. The system’s algorithms have established this pattern, that high peak electricity use is at 9am, and the solar energy stored the day before is released. But the innovative technology used in Dundee is reducing that charge by using the solar from the day before.
Dundee City Council plans to continue leading in sustainable urban living and influence environmental change nationally and internationally. It has an environmental fund of £750,000 and engages with the community encouraging people to raise their environmental plans and strategies, which can be as modest as £5-10,000.
Part of Dundee’s success in driving environmental change has been down to a dogged refusal to be constrained by local factors. Crichton recalls a thought-provoking chat about cycling he had with a denizen of Helsinki. At the time he didn’t think a cycling project would work in his native city and mentioned the chill, rain-lashed weather for which it is known by way of explanation.
His interlocutor was baffled by his response and showed Crichton a video of Helsinkians cycling through snowy Finnish streets banked with six feet drifts of snow either side of the path. If cycling was possible in Helsinki’s winter conditions why not in rainy Dundee, she wondered. Crichton saw her point.
“You know, it’s all a mindset,” remarks Crichton, adding: “Don’t close your mind. Just because you think at the beginning it doesn’t work, just spend a bit more time and then look around.”