Dundee City Council has announced a new £750,000 climate fund to help grow community projects in the city as part of Scotland's Climate Week.

The participatory budgeting exercise will see spending decisions on local initiatives to raise awareness of climate change and reduce carbon emissions made by public vote.

Speaking at the launch at Baldragon Academy, John Alexander leader of Dundee City Council said: "We are the first local authority in Scotland to launch a council-led green participatory budgeting initiative, making the Dundee Climate Fund a prime example of the type of innovation we are rightly proud of in the city.

"The fund encourages people to take control of the purse strings for projects that will not only make a significant difference in their communities, but also on the wider stage.

"I am sure that by doing this we will not only galvanise groups inspiring them to put projects forward that catch the imagination of the voting public but also help to tackle the climate emergency and get us to our target of net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2045 or sooner."

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Dundee declared a climate emergency in June 2019 to recognise the serious environmental, social and economic challenges faced by climate change, and launched the Dundee Climate Action Plan with the backing of local companies and organisations.

The new fund will run for four years and is designed to raise awareness of climate change while supporting communities to identify and vote on local projects aimed at delivering on the following themes:

• energy - reducing consumption, promoting energy efficiency, use of renewables;

• transport - encouraging active travel, decarbonising transport;

• waste - reducing waste, recycling, reusing resources;

• resilience - improving greenspaces, biodiversity, local food growing; and

• raising awareness (building capacity) - increasing awareness, engaging communities and young people in climate change.

Applications will be considered for both small projects (a minimum of £6000 to a maximum of £25,000) and large projects (up to a maximum of £100,0000) from not-for-profit, constituted groups. There are a number of conditions and criteria for eligibility which include:

• Only Dundee-based not-for-profit, constituted groups can apply and normally these will be structured as a constituted community group or club, Social Enterprise, Community Interest Company (CIC) or Registered Charity (SCIO);

• all applications are required to supply three quotes for costs exceeding £5000 alongside their applications; and

• successful applicants will be required submit monitoring reports every six months.