Oliver Lord: Clean Air policy maker

Everyone has an #energystory #8.

Q: London doesn’t seem that polluted. Is it? 

Each Energy Story interview is inspired by the questions local people ask Islington Faces about cutting carbon/tackling the climate crisis. For this interview our question looks at the science and thinking behind clean air policy changes around London (and other cities globally). What’s evident is that the poorest people – and these groups may well be Black, Asian or other ethnicities – are living and working in the most polluted places. Sometimes the air quality is so bad it wrecks your health, sometimes it even kills.

Also at the end of this interview please see a Q&A about electric vehicles.

Everyone has an energy story. Like so many of us at the moment Oliver Lord is working from home, but as Head of Policy and Campaigns with Environmental Defense Fund Europe he’s focusing on initiatives that cut transport pollution so that we can improve air quality in London. Interview by Nicola Baird. Photos by Kimi Gill.

 

Just before the delayed Mayor elections 2021 you might have seen some spoof road signs pointing out that breathing polluted air kills (actually not really a spof as it does!). The campaign linked young activists Choked Up (who created the signs) and NHS doctors in a bid to highlight that the least wealthy Londoners were more than six times as likely to be living in an area with higher pollution than the least deprived.

The deprivation angle matters because in 2019 around 4,000 deaths in London were attributed to toxic air, and many people suffer daily from preventable lung and heart disease caused by traffic pollution. The teenage activists campaign followed the landmark ruling in December 2020 that the death of nine-year-old Ella Kissi-Debrah, who lived 25 metres from the South Circular Road, was from air pollution. For poor Ella this manifested as repeated asthma attacks.

Ella’s death had a big impact on one of the campaigners, Anjali Raman-Middleton, a 17 year-old co-founder of Choked Up who said: “The landmark ruling of the Ella Adoo-Kissi-Debrah inquest proved that the road I live less than five minutes from can kill. I am terrified that my daily commute to school along the South Circular has already had a negative impact on my lungs. I urge London mayoral candidates to commit to transform these roads to give me and my generation a greener future.”

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Choke Up’s pollution zone campaign was given momentum by Oliver Lord, who lives in Newington Green. He’s been working on transport and air quality policy for the past 10 years and  helped to lay the foundations for improvements in air quality whilst working at City Hall. Last year he took  this experience to Environmental Defense Fund (EDF), which is an influential not-for-profit founded in 1967 with 2.5 million members. It’s well-known in the US for its science-based campaigns that aim to make the environment safer and healthier for all of us.  In London the acronym EDF is better known as a French energy company, so Oliver Lord sometimes has to start conversations about his work with a potted history of the other EDF.

Oliver admits that when he took the role in June 2020: “I didn’t know a great deal about EDF. They are a mammoth charity policy and advocacy group in America. In America you’d know EDF – it’s as well-known as Greenpeace is in the UK. EDF work across health, lead poisoning, climate and oceans. They established the European office only a few years ago and focused on working with the Mayor of London on a project called Breathe London.  They were testing technology and then helping raise awareness and push for a stronger ambition on clean air policy. EDF is under the radar rather, there’s definitely work to be done helping people and for us to understand what we can do… an interesting angle built on science and we work with incredible scientists and academics who really want to push the envelope when writing reports.” At the time Islington Faces interviewed Oliver on Zoom, he was working from home and still hadn’t been to the EDF’s office in Monument. But when he’s asked to commute again it will be by bike.

Oliver, 37, moved to London in 2006 from the north-west and has lived in the Mildmay area for roughly 12 years.  “Coming from a relatively impoverished former industrial town – which was also the birthplace of the cooperative movement – I’ve definitely got roots in wanting to create a more equitable society. That’s at the core of my thinking and what drives me. A lot of my recent campaigning ahead of the London Mayoral election was around exposing the health inequities from air pollution. We know that quite often the people on the lowest income don’t own a car, and are also living in the areas of highest pollution so we need to address that imbalance,” he says.

Thinking
“My background is psychology and I’m interested in using this to bridge the gap between science and advocacy, because it’s not done terribly well. And that’s what we did with this campaign – sharing statistics on guerrilla road signs baked in science. It was led by Choked Up and supported by Mums for Lungs who are such powerful grassroots campaigns. It’s about us (EDF Europe) empowering other voices that are important.”

Rosamund Adoo-Kissi-Debrah (Ella’s mum, see above) is another fantastic campaigner. She’s a really great voice for helping talk about the issue of air pollution and obviously it’s very personal to her. A lot of NGOs are fully behind her and want to see how we can get stronger clean air legislation in the coming months. We’d like to get World Health Organisation guidelines embedded in legislation with the new Environment Bill that the UK government is bringing forward, which should finish in the autumn (2021).

“Mildmay, where I live, doesn’t have a low traffic neighbourhood (LTN), but it is supposedly earmarked as a liveable neighbourhood. I’m personally looking forward to this and really hope the brakes come off it. Given that only 1 in 3 households in Islington have a car it makes sense that policies to prioritise cycling, walking and public transport are progressed and it is important for the future of London and our borough. This must include the major roads.” You can see how Islington scored in EDF’s Healthy Street Scorecard here.

“Quite frankly pollution levels are inequitable in urban areas like Islington. I used to live over the border on a trunk road in Hackney and it was a nightmare – harmful Nitrogen Dioxide pollution on TfL’s major roads – Red Routes – is 57 per cent higher than an average road and PM_2.5 levels are 35 per cent higher. We need a better vision and more action on roads such as these, like Holloway Road. That’s why I am excited about the Ultra Low Emission Zone (also known as  ULEZ) expanding to cover all roads in Islington from 25 October. I started working on this in 2013 and it’s already had an incredible impact on pollution in central London. Read more about his here.

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Places Oliver Lord loves in Islington

1. Mildmay ward is a little pocket of Islington that borders Hackney and at times seems a little bit forgotten and neglected but it has a great community.  I live close to Newington Green which has real nice buzz about it. It’s very people centric: that’s what I enjoy about the area.
2. City Road Basin and Regent’s Canal is a gem. People love being near water – like the South Bank. I love that stretch of the canal when you’re quite penned in and then suddenly it all opens up at the City Road Basin and allows for so much activity – to sit around and chat and enjoy the planter boxes. I really enjoy seeing people enjoying themselves. It’s so calm and peaceful even when the sharks were there. The only thing we need to be mindful of is how we can help canal boaters to use much cleaner energy as that is an issue for local air pollution in that area.
3. The Parkland Walk is a big favourite. It’s London’s longest nature reserve. I’m a bit of a transport geek and I love how it changes, you even walk through an old train station. It’s peaceful, not known enough and a good day out. If you can make it to Alexandra Palace it’s such a great view and you feel you’ve accomplished something.
4. I only discovered the New River Walk in the past few years, and what a tranquil space it is to walk along. The reason I highlight these spaces is because more and more people are working from home which can affect people’s mental health and be claustrophobic. These green spaces and blue spaces help people to improve their wellbeing.
5. My local is the Railway Tavern, N16 on 2 St Jude’s Street. I’m flying the flag for this little pocket of Islington. They’ve really gone to town with some of the railway paraphernalia, it’s a true railway tavern. It has a really nice atmosphere and open to everyone in local area. Nice unknown local. It’s open. Not got outside space, but what Islington council has allowed them to do is put a parklet about the size of a car parking space with benches where people can sit. They do use gas heaters outside which I don’t like as one gas heater, on for five hours, puts out as much pollution as an average home.  Electric heaters are massively better but you could bring your own blanket. Find out what’s the problem with gas heaters here
6. Cycle Way 2 connects all the way from Walthamstow Wetlands and goes right through Islington from De Beauvoir down to Myddleton Square, N1 and on past Mount Pleasant. For anyone starting cycling in Islington it’s a fantastic, low traffic route and also the quickest way for me to get into the centre and Soho. I go on a cycling holiday every year, just recently we had a great adventure around north east England.

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Q&A on electric vehicles with Oliver Lord

Q: How can I drive in a cleaner way?
Oliver: If people need to drive then I try and encourage people to jump into car sharing schemes rather than have their own private car, as this gives so much more space on streets, and lot of people don’t use cars as frequently as they think. If you’re going to get a new car, then get an EV (electric vehicle). I’d go full electric rather than a plug-in hybrid because its much less efficient having a vehicle with both an engine and a battery . With a full EV you know you are not emitting any pollution on the street locally. Electric bikes and scooters will also really open up opportunities for people to drive less.

Q: Are buses clean enough?
Oliver: Diesel is detrimental to our health so I think people should be applying pressure to get electric bus routes. During the Mayoral campaign we showed how diesel bus pollution is at its highest in the places where deprived communities live. At the time only 3 per cent of London’s bus routes were electric and the projection is 7 per cent by the end of 2022.

• Feb 2020: three London bus routes go fully electric including Islington’s 43 (Archway-London Bridge) and also the 134 [North Finchley-Warren Street] (both in 2019) and 94 [Acton Green – Piccadilly Circus] in 2020. At this stage there were a total of 280 electric buses in London.

Think of Holloway bus garage and the air pollution affecting locals around there. Change costs money but it also brings jobs as a lot of electric buses are built in the UK. Alexander Dennis is a bus manufacturer in Scotland, there’s Optare in Yorkshire and Wright Bus based in Ballymena, Northern Ireland. Transport decarbonisation is a real industrial opportunity for the UK.

• Find out the benefits of EV buses here

Q: I haven’t got a car and I use online shopping, is that a problem?
Oliver: Not in moderation but I’ve got real concern in the rise of diesel vans in cities. The number of miles driven by vans on urban minor roads increased by around 50% between 2010-2019. And covid has meant we’ve embraced online shopping and home deliveries more than ever before. People should really think carefully about how much demand they’re applying to online shopping and how this applies to local vehicle trips. I think cargo bikes are the renaissance that we’re about to see in the next few years. See more of Oliver’s thoughts about this on the blog https://www.transporttimes.co.uk/news.php/We-must-think-outside-the-delivery-box-before-it-s-too-late-576/

Summing up
Activists may grab the headlines but it’s people like Oliver Lord, quietly working on policy and helping connect all the people determined to clean up London’s toxic air, who help get things done. Thank you to Oliver and all the people on this monumental clean up task.

• Press release in March 2021, to coincide with World Asthma Day and details of the campaign are here. Also see https://twitter.com/chokedup_uk https://twitter.com/MumsForLungs
• edf.org
• globalcleanair.org
• Follow Oliver Lord on Twitter @Ojhl
• Oliver is changing jobs in July and is due to move to Clean Cities Campaign which is campaigning for clean, healthy, liveable cities and based in Drayton Park, N5. Also follow on Twitter https://twitter.com/cities_clean

FEEDBACK
Ursula: Another brilliant interview. And captures so many topical themes.

Paula: Really interesting interview!

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Do you have any questions about how to decarbonise your life or tackle climate change, eg, about travel, food, energy use? If so, please send us a message  on email to: islingtonfaces@gmail.com

Over to you
Also if you’d like to nominate someone to be interviewed who grew up, lives or works in Islington, or suggest yourself, please let me know, via islingtonfaces@gmail.com If you enjoyed this post you might like to look at the A-Z  index, or search by interviewee’s roles or Meet Islingtonians to find friends, neighbours and inspiration. Thanks for stopping by. Nicola