OTWO Magazine December 2019 | Page 64

does not put out pollutants such as NOx (nitrogen oxide). Whilst with diesel, a lot if pollutants are pro- duced, especially CO2. So those I think are two key factors. Another thing that we did which, believe it or not was very controversial at the time, was tak- ing a very British Downton Abbey style Jaguar G1 [The Chief Ministers previous car], which cost £85 to fill the tank, and replaced it with what was then new technology. It was a bit of a punt, but we be- lieved it was the future. The new TESLA car which is charged every night by plugging into the electric- ity grid, costs 40p to charge. That demonstrated our commitment to new technology and wanting to be much more sustainable in our approach. It took a lit- tle bit of time, but despite the controversy people accepted that this was a better option for the future. It’s now been 7 years since we got the TESLA and it still works perfectly, we’ve never had any problem with it. Imagine how much money we’ve saved just on petrol. What would you say are Gib’s biggest chal- lenges to meet carbon targets of carbon neu- trality by 2030 and an 80% reduction in carbon emissions by 2050? Is there any way in which the Government could share real time progress on how these green targets and initiatives are being met? Let me start at the end, the Government has to determine how we will measure progress before we decide to share it or not, but if we don’t share, we would look like we are running scared of our abili- ty to perform against that target and I am confident that we can. Today, at the ceremonial opening of parliament, I stated that the time has come for peo- ple to accept that there needs to be a new ‘social contract’ between the population and the govern- ment. Our obligation to the environment makes us realise that the key thing standing between us and sustainability is lifestyle. That is the key issue. It’s not the dreadful government or the dreadful multi- nationals, it’s us. The multinationals sell petrol, but we buy it. The multinationals build us cars, but we buy those cars and at the end of the day we are that one’s that drive them. Paul Balban, who has really taken the issue of sustainable transport to heart dur- ing his time as Minister for Transport is taking a lot of these initiatives over to the Ministry for Health. 62 He was pointing out to me during a recent discussion in cabinet that in Gibraltar we sometimes get in the car to drive 500m, less than a kilometre. I was guilty of that and I now walk to work every morning I can. There are maybe three days a month where I can’t walk to work because I need to be at a particular place at a particular time, or I just have to ensure something is completed so I need those additional 10 minutes, but I walk to work every single day I can. Now, I think of it this way, I live quite far in the South District, I’ve got three children, they need to get to school and I’ve got a fairly responsible job. If I can take 16 minutes to walk to work, so can everyone else. Those are the key issues, the biggest challenge we are facing, is us. Question from ESG - Given that Climate Change is such a major issue facing humanity today will you do all within your power to ensure that this term will see the right actions taken across all policies to reflect this urgency? That the economy, social impacts and our environ- ment are intertwined in every major policy sector? That is exactly what the manifesto commitments and the statement from parliament today says, that the Climate Change Act will be an almost constitu- tional document for the purposes of what the gov- ernment will do. Everything will be subject to compli- ance with the Climate Change Act and the Clean Air Act which we are going to pass. I think it’s important to raise the issue of what that means, because I see young children marching down Main Street on a very laudable endeavour and miss school to demonstrate. If we were to be radical and drastic in the way that we deal with these issues and don’t migrate to new technologies, which is not yet possible in a place like Gibraltar, the drastic ways in which we could deal with their issues means that those children wouldn’t have their Nintendo Switches, PS4’s or Xboxes avail- able to them. That’s the reality. One of the ways that we could deal with the problem would be to ration the availability of electricity produced from fos- sil fuels. Obviously going to work is important, we can make electricity available from 8am to 8pm or 11pm, we can give electricity to essential services and gaming companies between 8pm to 7am and not make it available elsewhere because we don’t need OTWO 05 / DECEMBER 2019 it. When people demonstrate and they say, ‘will you do everything in your power?’, they need to under- stand what it is that they are pushing us to do and consider the impact of what they are really insiting we do. There have been a lot of new builds in Gib over the last few years (private developments, schools and affordable housing). Why were none of these new builds installed with their own renewable energy sources, and will the government consider enforcing new builds to incorporate new technologies to ensure effi- ciency? Many are, some of the sporting facilities and the University etc, are very sustainable buildings. They all have to comply with current European standards and British standards of sustainability. I just think that people need to be more forward looking, actual- ly making a building sustainable and having sources of energy built in to the building at the time of devel- opment is good business. I think it has been clear for a decade that being sustainable is a more lucrative and profitable thing to do. It’s not something that is going to take away from your bottom line as a devel- oper, it’s going to add to your bottom line. So, I think people are starting to come around to the fact that the environment, protecting the environment and sustainability is actually good business. This will happen the minute they realise that the develop- ment next door is more attractive because it has so- lar panels or other sources of renewable energy built in. And today a solar panel doesn’t need to look like a solar panel, a window can be a solar panel with a node on it. I think all of these things are coming and are catching, and in a place like Gibraltar with so much sunlight, I think it is actually the right thing to do. You are saving yourself the cost of electricity, electricity is not something that is given away, it is subsidised but it is already expensive, so if you can have the ‘free’ why have the ‘pay for’. Will policies that you put in place for new devel- opments incorporate a minimum environmental standard that they have to comply with? We have, that is already the law, but that law is about different levels of sustainability. Second, all of the expenses that you incur in order to put in sus- tainable measures are entirely tax free already. So, OTWO 05 / DECEMBER 2019 people need to realise those things and understand the value. But I sometimes think that however much a reward may attract people, there is nothing that makes them sit up and take notice as much as a sanction. If you look at what the Norwegians have done, they have no tax on electric vehicles, was that enough to get people to migrate to electric vehicles? No, it wasn’t, even in a society like Norway. What they had to do was go the other way, they had to impose a huge tax on combustion engines in order to make people go for electric vehicles, even though these had no tax and therefore should have been more attractive than those with combustion engines. So, it really, unfortunately, is about curbing and en- couraging behaviour with a rod and a carrot, not just a carrot. How about all of the new affordable home de- velopments? They are all designed to be sustainable. That is part of what the government has said we want to do. It’s part of what has been included in the tender and it is a key factor in being able to show people that the government is leading by example. (Question from The Nautilus Project) How do you envisage people living in places with no car parking facilities (Government rental estates, main street etc) being able to charge their cars if they make the change to electric. Do you ever see a setting up of clean/green public car charg- ing points? Yes. There will be many charging points in public parking spaces in Gibraltar and there will be parking spaces in private car parks that will also have charg- ing facilities. But I think the key factor here will be including charging stations in public parking spaces. It sounds onerous if you think about it simply from the point of view of having to add the infrastructure, but there is actually another side to this. If you take a long-term view however and consider how rich the Rockefellers have become, and how rich all of the families behind the Saudi oil boom are, then think about how you are going to require infrastructure to charge electric vehicles and how those charging points need to be in public places. This would de- pend on the government adding that infrastructure, the government then has the opportunity to essen- tially own every new petrol station in Gibraltar. So, 63