On this particularly cold and snowy week in Rochester, I’m very happy to be researching another beautiful European city to take my mind off the freezing temperatures here. This week, I am focusing on the sustainability efforts in Amsterdam. A beautiful city known for its’ canals and stunning architecture, Amsterdam has been working very hard to become a better “green” city.
In 2015, Amsterdam agreed to implement new sustainability measures throughout the city. First, the number of households that have access to local sustainability-focused electricity will increase by at least 92,000 homes by 2020. Additionally, this will tempt construction companies into building more sustainable houses. Amsterdam will also make it easier for citizens and companies to install solar panels, they want to increase the number of solar paneled houses from 5,000 to 80,000 by 2020.
Amsterdam is not only focused on improving housing, they also want to implement an emission free traffic system. They have always been a frontrunner in electric transportation and want as much traffic as possible to be emission free by 2025. In addition, current low emission standards will be further restricted to include delivery vans made before 2001 in 2017, this standard will be further applied to both cars and taxis in 2018. The city is also in the process of changing over all of its’ public transport to emission-free.
I will be interested to see how Amsterdam progresses, as most of their current changes have yet to be fully implemented.
Written by Emma Briggs, Class of 2018
Image Source: Public Domain Pictures