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Source: Birmingham City Council Press Release

Birmingham City Council's commitment to tackling climate change will be strengthened this week when the authority signs a charter outlining how information and communication technologies (ICT) can be a part of the global warming solution.

The council is due to sign the Green Digital Charter when a delegation led by Deputy Leader Cllr Paul Tilsley visits the EUROCITIES 2009 Event and Annual General Meeting in Stockholm on Friday (November 27).

The charter aims to bring European cities together in a number of innovative ways including:

- An effort to make ICT more energy efficient by encouraging the wider use of low emission computer equipment
- Using renewable energy sources to power ICT and to make use of energy emissions from equipment to, for example, heat buildings
- Ensuring cities share expertise and where possible, technology, to minimise the use of energy
- Using new low carbon digital infrastructure to transform services and information provision to improve service delivery and citizen engagement.
- A pledge to support the "dematerialisation" of processes so that new services such as teleworking and virtual meetings are used wherever possible to replace the need for travel.

All cities that sign up to the charter also agree to establish five large-scale ICT pilot projects before 2015 as well as decreasing ICT's direct carbon footprint per city by 30 per cent by 2020.

Cllr Tilsley, whose portfolio covers both ICT and sustainability issues, said: "It is imperative that we find new and innovative solutions to tackle the problem of climate change.

"The city recognises that use of ICT adds to its carbon footprint and therefore the need to control their energy usage, but more importantly is aware of the potential benefits of digital technologies in delivering more efficient use of energy and resources.

"The charter sets us some challenging goals that we will relish, but through Birmingham's own commitment to reduce CO2 by 60 per cent by 2026, we have already shown that we are more than willing to be at the forefront of the challenge."