Quezon City Mayor Herbert M Bautista was invited as speaker at the London conference, “Cities Unbound,” organized by The Economist and the International Finance Corporation. Held at The Crystal in London on June 30, 2017, brought together selected city leaders representing different continents, as well as leading experts at climate change and urban development.
The event was organized to share ideas, perspectives as well as solutions that have been working to reshape the urban ecosystem of emerging cities. The discussions were on environmental issues, as well as social and governance trends as encountered by local government leaders and development officials from different parts of the world. Mayor Bautista was selected because of his strong environment management advocacy that have resulted in a wide spectrum of policies and programs, such as the Green Building program and the shift to low-energy systems through the city’s massive streetlight transformation program to use light-emitting diodes as a greenhouse gas mitigation strategy as well as to save on electricity costs. The retrofitting of streetlights is expected to reduce GHG emissions by 50%, and has been saving the city government an average of Php 7,841,718 in electricity costs annually.
The shift to alternative energy is another initiative. The coverage of the city’s public schools begins with the schools with the biggest population, Commonwealth High School and San Francisco High School, two of which have a combined annual electricity consumption of Php 5.04 million yearly.
Our city government has also passed a number of policies in support of e-vehicles. It established a Green Transport Office under the Department of Public Order and Safety. (Ordinance No. SP-2447, s. 2015). Its role is to push the various transport modes to go electric or shift to using alternative fuels such as compressed natural gas and liquefied petroleum gas. In 2015, the city government passed a city ordinance providing incentives to vehicles that run on alternative fuels (Ordinance No. SP-2398, s. 2015). There is also the city government’s partnership with the private sector, as well as with the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA), to study the business model for e-tricycles in Quezon City.
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