City of London Environmental

My kind of MAGA… ‘Make Awnings Great Again’ Kindergarten in Affoltern Am Albis, Switzerland. By Kummer/Schiess

Honey bee research receives a disproportionate and bias amount of funding for research compared to wild bees. Instead of sponsoring a bee hive, sponsor a bee scientist. nature.com/articles/s4159…

The state of Cheapside yesterday #DestinationCity @cityoflondon @CheapsideBA

Did you know? Every part of the daffodil is poisonous to humans? However they also contain galantamine, a compound used in drugs that slow the progression of Alzheimers disease. #PollinatingLT

Since @BrightonHoveCC mandated bee bricks in new developments I’m seeing a surge in ESG professionals and architects posting about these really badly designed bee death traps. If only Brighton had done an evidence based assessment before passing policy! apicultural.co.uk/f/busting-thro…

@cityoflondon @MIPIMWorld Good to see that Middlesex Street Estate will be basked in sunshine. So much for the Residential Reset @citypolicychair.

🌆 New CGI shows how the City skyline will transform over the next ten years. With over 30 major projects under construction, we head to @MIPIMWorld 2026 next month from a position of strength. London is open, confident, and building at scale. Read more here: news.cityoflondon.gov.uk/city-of-london… #MIPIM2026 #CityofLondon #Investment

@cityoflondon It can hardly look as bad the current version.

Great news for the City! 🎉 We've approved plans to transform King Edward Court, home of LSEG’s global HQ. Highlights include a new event space showcasing LSE’s iconic ceremonies to Paternoster Square and a deep retrofit retaining 95% of the structure. A bold future for a historic City landmark. #LSE #CityofLondon

Did you know the City of London is a haven for wild bees? Our 2024 surveys recorded 8 different bumblebee species, 39 species of solitary bee, and 27 hoverfly species right here in the Square Mile! Not much longer to wait until we share our results from last year! Stay tuned…

Brilliant from Sir Stephen Holgate: "Domestic burning is now responsible for around 20% of UK emissions of particulate matter pollution – ‘PM2.5’ – the most harmful form of air pollution. linkedin.com/pulse/clean-ai…

@Meg_HillierMP @DemolitionsLdn @TfL has no concern for passengers (customers!) who now have to change buses to complete their journeys. Not the weather, they had a seat, they’re wheeling, they have luggage, they have a long wait for the next bus permeates the callousness of its decisions @SebDance

The TfL consultation on shortening the 38 bus route closes tomorrow - I cannot support these proposals. See my article on why we need to save it: meghillier.com/post/meg-s-hac…

There is now clear evidence that domestic wood burning cannot be cleaned up enough to protect public health in towns and cities. For years the debate focused on PM2.5 mass. Toxicology shows that what matters most for health is not only how much particulate matter is present but how chemically reactive it is. The Paul Scherrer Institute explains that the particles most linked to biological harm are those with high oxidative potential, a measure of their ability to trigger oxidative stress and inflammation in the body. psi.ch/en/news/media-… Secondary organic aerosol is especially important. These particles form in the air when combustion gases react with sunlight, ozone and nitrogen oxides. The most harmful particles appear after the smoke leaves the chimney and spread through neighbourhoods. A 2025 toxicology study showed that secondary organic aerosol from combusted biomass gases causes oxidative stress and inflammatory responses in lung cells. sciencedirect.com/science/articl… Atmospheric chamber research shows that as wood smoke ages its oxidative potential increases by around sixty percent. acp.copernicus.org/articles/25/15… The strongest ambient evidence comes from Rinaldi et al. (2024), who found that residential solid fuel burning was the dominant contributor to oxidative potential in a small Irish town and that around eighty seven percent of that contribution came from wood. mdpi.com/2073-4433/15/4… The oxidative potential measured there was comparable to or higher than levels seen in major cities, showing that domestic wood burning can create highly toxic air even where traffic is low. This matters for technical solutions. Electrostatic precipitators reduce primary soot but do not remove the gases that form secondary organic aerosol. Catalysts and wet scrubbers are unreliable in domestic stoves because of temperature swings, fuel chemistry and user behaviour. Even if primary soot were fully captured the most harmful pollution would still form downwind. Modern eco-certified stoves also emit similar PM2.5 per hour as around eighteen Euro 6 diesel cars and produce very high levels of ultrafine particles. Road transport is cleaning up as around one quarter of new UK cars are now fully electric. Domestic wood burning is not. Most UK studies also show that wood burning is used mainly for ambience. Most burners already have full central heating and use stoves as a secondary or decorative heat source. A significant pollution burden is being created for non-essential reasons in densely populated areas. Once oxidative potential, secondary organic aerosol, ultrafine particles and real-world use are taken together the conclusion is clear. There is no realistic or enforceable pathway to make routine domestic solid fuel burning safe in urban or suburban areas. The most harmful pollution forms from untreated gases in the local atmosphere. The only effective public health response is to phase out domestic solid fuel burning in built-up areas and help households move to clean heating that does not expose neighbours to pollution. This is not about lifestyle. It is about the right of every person to breathe clean air in their own home. #AirPollution #CleanAir #PM25 #WoodSmoke #Health #CleanAirNight

in case you ever wonder if Whitehall knows how screwed we are without the most urgent climate action, well, yes they do

BREAKING!: Huge news: The Government has quietly published [link below] on its website, without any fanfare, the Joint Intelligence Committee / Defra report on 'GLOBAL BIODIVERSITY LOSS, ECOSYSTEM COLLAPSE AND NATIONAL SECURITY' that it suppressed last October. It has presumably done this at this point (in the middle of an international crisis) to try to bury the story. ...this is a huge story. Just consider the report's title, for starters... the report warns of multiple likely ecosystem >collapses< that will have dire implications for our national security, and that require serious strategic adaptation at minimum. The report also sets out how these collapses if they are allowed to occur will significantly increase migration-pressure: "as development gains begin to reverse", a phrase that should make any human shudder in anguish. There is much more... But it doesn't end there: what they have published very much appears to be >only part of a larger piece of work<: there is no detail at all in what they have published on the geo-regional analyses; the connections from those regional analyses to the national security threats consequently facing Britain are not detailed; the "Key Judgements" of the report are not properly explained. It is fairly obvious what has happened here: in response to FOIs, they are trying to slip this report out, presumably because they feared it would otherwise get out anyway; but they have done so in a form that holds back much of the most disturbing content - the content that WE as citizens need to know if we are to know how to protect ourselves, what we are potentially going to have to adapt TO. We must continue to press for the full report to be released... But in the meantime there is much here to digest and reflect on, to put it mildly. Kudos to those who commissioned the report; do READ this version of it (it's only short!), and let's take it from there... Kudos too to those who pursued an (at least partly) successful battle to get the report released, via Freedom of Information requests... >>Please share widely! assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/696e0eae…

UK nature is declining fast, yet the Fingleton Review proposes weakening vital protections. Wildlife can’t afford more loss. These plans aren’t law .. yet. There’s still time to act. Speak up now to protect nature 👉 action.wildlifetrusts.org/page/183790/ac…

@ClaireCoutinho theguardian.com/uk-news/2025/n…

🚨🚨Wow. A bombshell moment. Ed Miliband has just released the price that you're going to pay for offshore wind for the next twenty years. £95/MWh in 2025 prices. The highest offshore wind price in a decade. Ed will try to spin that this is cheap. It is not. Gas power without a Carbon Tax is under £55. Average electricity price last year (including the Carbon Tax) was roughly £80. And that £95 for wind is just what we pay for the wind power itself. On top, you also have to pay for all the extra grid, paying wind farms to switch off, and having a very expensive backup power station on standby for a cold, windless day like we had just last week. And to try and sweeten the deal for the wind developers, Ed has extended the contracts so we're now going to be locked into these prices for TWENTY YEARS. By DESNZ’s own numbers the contract extension is worth 12% of the strike price to the wind developers, so a true comparison with last year's £82/MWh would be £102/MWh. Wind is getting significantly more expensive, not cheaper. Ed is locking us into a 10% fixed-rate mortgage because he doesn’t want the volatility of being on a 4% variable. He is cementing our uncompetitive electricity prices for even longer at a time when the world is becoming more unstable and we need cheap, reliable energy to compete. Labour promised to cut your bills by £300. This was how Ed Miliband said he was going to do it. But it has never been clearer that he cares more about his own clean power vanity project than he does about your energy bill.

@paulpowlesland @wanstead_meteo Perhaps wood chips have other uses than burning? Anyway, just look at the air pollution caused by fireworks last week to understand the danger to health from wood burning. The PM10 reading is just as high as PM2.5.

@wanstead_meteo Because you can’t stare into a pile of chips & feel the same feeling of comfort & awe that your ancestors did in a cave 100,000 years ago.

Ironically, the poor air quality at Aldgate School initiated the @MayorofLondon’s clean air campaign!

@WalkerMarcus Good to see @StBartholomews recycling its waste!

@cityoflondon @tomsleigh More embarrassing is confusing 60 Chiswell Street with Milton Court. The latter is, of course, part of @guildhallschool which was completed several years ago.

@DanielPDykes @yimbyalliance Not sure if @cityoflondon’s HRA’s tenants would agree - “The unaffordability of major repairs within the HRA can be attributed to several factors. These include a lack of planned maintenance over the past 60 years ..”

@yimbyalliance Don’t love all their architectural approvals, but I’d still take the City running Greater London any day.

NEW: 🚨City of London to create a large new public square. The City have confirmed that they will close the southern section of King Edward Street to create a 3,500sqm public space. This will make Greyfriars square next to St Paul’s Cathedral the City’s biggest open space.