Recently the City of Durham has been named by the Solar Centre as the UK’s greenest city. However, the Trust has serious doubts about the validity of the evidence base for this assertion, as explained in a recent press release, available below.
The Trust’s main concerns are:
- The Solar Centre is a company that makes and sells solar-powered lights rather than a scientific research organisation
- Scores obtained from County wide data is then applied to the City
- The air quality score is obtained from crowd-sourced data from 6 people
The Trust’s conclusion is that this Solar Centre report does not provide reliable data reflecting the progress that has been made in reducing pollution in the City, nor a realistic analysis of the challenges that we face.
The Solar Centre report is available here. Palatinate, the official student newspaper of Durham University, has also critiqued this report.
