City Council to evaluate electric car scheme

Motorists who find it hard to get parking in Wellington could have an easier job in the future if they switch to electric cars.

Next week, Wellington City Council will consider paving the way to encourage residents to switch to electric cars, which could entail installing chargers on the streets and designating the best parking spots for their exclusive use.

The recommendation to invest $50,000 on a pilot project to make electric cars more attractive is one of the ideas contained in a draft 2010 climate change action plan.

The plan will be considered by the strategy and policy committee next week, and cost $680,000 to implement.

Councillor Ray Ahipene-Mercer, the council's climate change portfolio leader, said the plan responded to community expectations for the city to take the lead on climate change.

It is being considered the week before 192 countries gather in Copenhagen for the UN summit, where they will seek to form an international agreement on how to deal with climate change.

The council's principal climate adviser, Chris Cameron, said the money would be used to work with other companies that were investing in researching the feasibility of electric cars already.

The city's compact size made it an ideal place to have an electric car, and the council needed to look at how to make using them more attractive. The action plan also recommends that, as a city, Wellington tries to cut its greenhouse gas emissions by 3 per cent by 2013 compared with 2001 levels, and then by 80 per cent in 2050.

Mr Cameron said the council's last climate change action plan was developed in 2007 and focused on what the council could do, while this plan looked more at how the whole city could reduce emissions.

The council needed to better prepare for the effects of climate change, and needed to assess how different areas of the city would be affected, he said.

Part of that assessment would be gathering more detailed information on how sea level rises would affect the eastern suburbs, Hutt Rd, the central city and Kilbirnie.

"We will have to prioritise which areas we want to make improvements at first, but we will have to make changes."

Mr Cameron said the council also needed to consider how sea-level rises would affect the water table inland.

If the table rose under Kilbirnie, the foundations of buildings could be damaged.

The council also needed to assess whether or not its stormwater systems could handle more flooding and extreme weather events, which would become more frequent because of climate change.

- © Fairfax NZ News