Hopes of Newcastle reaching net zero by 2030 are “very heavily reliant” on a massive shift in Government funding, with the enormous ambitions set to cost billions of pounds.
City leaders have set the goal of making Newcastle carbon neutral by the end of this decade – 20 years ahead of the national target. But councillors were warned on Tuesday that achieving that aim will require a huge injection of money from the Government, with Newcastle City Council and other local authorities having nowhere near enough cash to cover the huge scale of the decarbonisation project.
Figures presented on Tuesday show that plans to retrofit almost 35,000 public buildings in the city to reduce their carbon footprint will cost £866m – including council houses, schools, and university buildings. However, that does not include privately owned homes, with estimates of a large scale housing retrofit programme across Newcastle by 2030 having been put at between £1bn and £3bn
