Chief Secretary to the Treasury Danny Alexander visited Burges Salmon’s enterprise zone headquarters today (April 25th) to announce that central government would be pledging £7m to support Bristol as European Green Capital 2015.
After meeting with the Bristol 2015 Team and Corporate Delegates, Mr Alexander delivered the keynote speech whereby he described how the funding would ‘enable Bristol to fulfil its full potential’. Some of the projects which will be funded following today’s announcement include: a new annual award for the best new clean technology, a sustainable living programme in UK schools to educate upto 4.5 million children about climate change and a series of international high profile summits on Climate Change. Further information on the projects can be found here.
Andrew Garrad heads up DNV GL’s Bristol office, located on Silverthorne Lane in Temple Quarter, and is also the chair of Bristol 2015 Ltd., the company that has been established to deliver a wide range of green initiatives in 2015. He made a speech outlining the importance of the Green Capital bid along with Stephen Williams: MP for Bristol West; George Ferguson: Mayor of Bristol and Alan Barr: Senior Partner at Burges Salmon, who were announced as the first sponsor of Bristol 2015.
Mr Alexander was then taken on a guided electric bike tour of the enterprise zone, where he was told about the future plans for Temple Quarter as well as all of the planned green initiatives and those currently in place. They include a district heating system throughout the zone, superfast broadband, sustainable transport links, on-street bike pumps, electric vehicle charging points and the STEEP project, all of which form part of the overall ambition to make the BTQEZ a carbon-neutral zone.
You can find out more about Bristol 2015 by visiting their website.
Images courtesy of Chris Bahn
