Voices of the Industry presented by Steer - #7 Unlocking city decarbonisation: Local solutions for global challenges

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hello and welcome to voices of the industry a podcast series bringing you leading industry voices who challenge
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thinking across Transportation infrastructure and
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[Music]
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cities with the Net Zero deadline of 2050 drawing era and the 2/3 emission reduction Target for 2030 for developed
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Nations even closer all mins need to be focused on the fastest way to decarbonize our communities and economy
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in the UK attention has lately turned to the value of localized decarbonization solutions that recognize the complex and
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unique ways that our nation's different Villages towns and cities function local
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area energy plans or layups represent a move to climate Solutions under the influence and control of local
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authorities who are recognized is exercising control in 45 key climate policy areas commercializing Net Zero
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projects can be key to their success and private sector funding can help to unlock wider City
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decarbonization attracting investment will be a crucial strand of discussion at steer and amberside advisers joint
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event unlocking City decarbonization on May 22nd the latest in our series The
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rethink rooms with us today to discuss the topic ahead of our event is Peter goody Net Zero program lead at the
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greater Southeast Net Zero Hub Peter has extensive experience in local government with previous roles on Forest Heath
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District Council and St edmundsbury burough Council as well as working as a PhD researcher at the universities of
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suffk and East Anglia in Smart Energy Systems hi Peter how are you I'm great thanks every so much for inviting me
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along Tim no worries I thought as a little opener why don't you tell us a couple of sentences about your PhD
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research oh that's really interesting thanks for picking that one up yeah I'm looking at local governance particularly
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around climate emergencies and thinking around how local areas and the local authorities can engage better around Net
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Zero now the big challenge is that local authorities are diverse and across the
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UK and a lot of the research is focused on the metropolitan areas and I know this call is around cities we' got to
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take account of the rural areas as well and so my um area of focus is trying to help the local authorities that are
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probably less well resourced navigate The Net Zero landscape and work with others collaboratively so in a nutshell
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that's what I'm trying to achieve hopefully it'll be of some success and some use at the end of the process that
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was good glad to hear that someone's on the case also with me is amberside advisor shavali marter shali has been an
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amberside advisor since the end of last year and joined from the project management office of the Department of energy security and NetZero or desar
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chavali has extensive experience in the global energy Market spanning heat decarbonization carbon management M
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Energy Efficiency sustainability strategies and renewable Technologies she has a strong background in leading
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strategy development policy delivery and program management and we'll be hosting our panel of experts at unlocking C
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decarbonization welcome shali I wonder if you could tell us a really important
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lesson that you took from working at desz that you've brought to amberside with you hi Tim thank you thank you for
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the welcome collaboration the one thing where in our department of energy security and Net Zero we believe in is
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working collaboratively internally externally and that's one thing which I've brought together in amberside
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working with stea and it's beautiful to work collaboratively with not only amberside colleagues but also bring in
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the expertise from stea so I'm almost working multiv Vector internally from transport Consultants to specialisms to
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specialism on Commercial and financial side in energy so collaboration would be my takeway that was perfect thank you
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shavali why don't you take it away welcome Peter thank you for your time
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you've been at the greatest Southeast Net Zero hub for 5 years can you please explain the role of a NetZero Hub and
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how this relates to accelerating the commercialization of Net Zero projects in the public sector great thanks for
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asking that question chavali and as as the intro said I'm a program lead for Net Zero and there are five Net Zero
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hubs across England and we were set up in 2018 by central government as a way of joining up the dots between National
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clean growth Ambitions and local policy and delivery to achieve the energy transition so know the challenge was at
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the time there was a gap between current at the time government policy around decarbonization and growth and what was
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happening on the ground and we were there to in effect fill the Gap and try and help coordinate some of that so
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we're a free resource available to the local areas working particularly with the public sector on the ground to
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deliver Net Zero initiatives across all typologies power generation building
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decarbonization Mobility now the the advantage that this program has it's locally focused it's
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delivered locally as well as opposed to essentially delivered model so we've got a very diverse client base in the
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Southeast we work with 146 County district and unitary councils as well as
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the health sector University and education but we also work with private and Community energy sectors and we'll
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touch on that a little bit in the podcast I hope whether that's on local industrial decarbonization programs or
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community energy funding support So finally we get involved in and it's not
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a small issue it's a massive one for the UK is around delivering domestic energy retrofit and part of our role is to help
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local authorities navigate the grant schemes that are available and also to see how that can unlock local investment
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build Supply chains and training networks to increase the supply side for Net Zero Solutions so my team Focus
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particularly on helping our clients achieve investment ready Net Zero projects and programs and we we work
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with clients at any stage in the project development whether that's providing a range of support activities to
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accelerate their projects from concept to delivery through the investment business case a lot of projects at the
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moment are supported by Grant Aid and so we're trying to help our local authorities not only navigate the state
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funding but also the non-state funding that could be available to help them blend Finance between what's available
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nationally through National programs and what's available from other sources and
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we have a client Le project investment pipeline of around 100 projects worth about 1.1 billion currently on our books
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across heat energy generation storage transport decarbonization as I indicated
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and around 50 million pounds of private Finance has been brought into those the projects that have been delivered today
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the challenge is that these are single projects and the move into programs and
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Sy systemic change is the critical thing and how do we then see how the money can flow into these projects so we're Keen
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to see how individual projects can be built into programs how local authorities and other partners can work
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together to unlock some of the investment opportunities and and the landscape's changed over the last five
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years I would suggest since we were set up back in 2018 it was a it was an 8% National Target obligated under the
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climate change act now it's Net Zero by 2050 and we've also seen a local Push by
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local authorities and councils up and down the UK towards earlier Target setting through their climate emergency
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declarations which was politically and locally driven as opposed to National
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and we've seen that now as a net zero Target for the UK but earlier dates set by the local authorities but for most
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councils the challenge is how do they best operate in a in an environment that is given that they're politically
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Democratic organizations with systems and processes how do they navigate what
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is relatively new to them the energy system and relatively new to them the investment markets and other forms of
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investment and so it is challenging for local authorities and I think we'll come on to that in the podcast thank you
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Peter I think you touched on private finance and also the the pipeline of projects you have the local Bush so just
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expanding on that in terms of unlocking this vder decarbonization in UK in terms
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of urban centers but also rural communities what role do you think does Private Finance so Community investment
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has to play in this area ultimately we're not going to deliver Net Zero without all the money that needs to be
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available brought to the table and currently the way that we approach this is through the tax base and utilizing
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State funding there's a lot of money flowing in in other places but it's not Marshal and the challenge comes that we
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need to be able to bring all the opportunities that different sources of funding and finance bring to the table
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for different types of projects in a way that is easy to apply and easy to flow so the money flows into the projects and
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the projects become successful so it's really important that we're able to understand what's available in the
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marketplace and also what could be funding that could be raised locally for example so there range of opportunities
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that could be brought together and thinking around how that would then work with State derived funding is a real
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opportunity for local areas the challenge is that we haven't had a track record in the last 20 years of doing
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this for for this sort of area of work so so um we look forward to seeing how some of the examples that we're going to
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talk about today can enable that thank you and as you said the landscape has changed in the last five years and
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particularly last couple of years I would say following covid as well and turning into your extensive experience
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in local government what do you think are some specific challenges which are faced by local authorities in financing
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these Net Zero projects so some of the challenges are specific to the public sector and some are common across the
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energy transition it doesn't matter what organization or institution you are some of them are common and we'll touch on that but the
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public sector has to think and act in a more Commercial Way in order for it to sustain the amount of money that keeps
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really important Services being delivered I mean the challenge for local authorities is that they're trying to deliver a multitude of services and
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moving through the energy transition is just one of them but it's not mandated you know a lot of the services are
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statutory and need to be delivered and particularly in a a fin financially constrained environment that becomes challenging to say well should we put my
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money here or put our money there the nature of the decision-making processes in local authorities are both complex
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navigate and cyclical if you think about political Cycles as well but that's for very good reasons since they're spending
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taxpayers money so there has to be a high level of prob and due diligence within the decisions they take around
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where they get money from and how they utilize it so it's really important for them to be able to meet responsibilities
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and spend taxpayers money wisely but also try to navigate the commerciality
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of the energy system and the way that potentially funds could come into that
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so those are some of the specific challenges and what to Overlay that
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there's an in-house capacity and capability challenge particularly at the moment as we're seeing some local
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authorities struggle to meet the balancing of books because of the the impact of covid and the global recession
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that we went through in the last couple of years and we're seeing a lot of churn at the moment of due to the financial
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state of some of the local authorities some of those staff are involved in delivering some of the programs so that
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makes for quite a technical quite a challenging environment for local authorities overlay that with the more
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General challenges around system trans uh system transition particularly around
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the energy Network nearly every project that we get involved with has to connect a cable to the energy Network to the
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power Network or put a pipe in the ground and that requires negotiation and agreement with the local network
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operators and the the way that the investment of the infrastructure occurs
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sometimes and not in many Cas not in all cases but sometimes does bind and slow down and hinder the process of projects
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moving forward and that is something local authorities not tender to be used to they they haven't had to navigate the energy system in such a a detailed Way
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for their projects in the past it's usually be a case that they connect for demand only and now they're having to
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think about demand and Supply so those challenges alongside supply chain challenges are ones that local
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authorities have to take on board and try to understand in order to bring their projects forward that sounds
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really interesting there's obviously a lot of change going on I wonder if you could give us a bit more detail Peter
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about the kinds of stakeholders that local authorities are bringing together in this process I mean TKS for asking
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that question because that's really important that this is not just about technology it's about people and we are looking at a fundamental change to
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society which is about people it's about how we use energy and how we live our
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lives so within the projects that we're seeing working with our public sector clients we deal with all parts of
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society and those are potentially stakeholders in any of the projects that our clients are taking forward probably
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starting point is the local authorities themselves and their internal stakeholders whether it's a finance
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officer whether it's a manager who's dealing with property or assets you know
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there are internal relationships that need to be managed and we work and help local authorities uh to navigate those
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relationships and build strong teams we also work to bring local authorities in areas together they may have worked
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before on different issues there are opportunities for the work in the future around procurement around the cost of
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capital around the delivery of projects so we try and bring local authorities together to aggregate up and create
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scale that may be more attractive for the investment market and for comfort as well working together in terms of
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solidarity and collaboration is a really important issue here because the Energy System doesn't recognize the
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administrative boundaries of the local authorities is a different administrative and geographical area so
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we do need to think across boundary here both in terms of Technology type but also how stakeholders work together and
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the energy system is is no different there that's certainly sounds complicated how as a herb do you manage
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that network of people okay we work in several ways both on a specific project
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basis so I work with a client who's got a stakeholder a range of stakeholders that they need to work with and so we
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might help with mapping out who those stakeholders are thinking out what sort of relationships they need to build how
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they'll work with those we also work externally from the project working with some of the the system actors the
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network operators for example in a more tactical and strategic way thinking around how can we influence in a
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positive way change by sharing knowledge that we've gathered by dealing and
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working with our clients but also as being part one of the government's departments we have the ability to
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interact and and share knowledge around delivery uh where that may not be so
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successful how can we help that delivery improve and working with the network operators who have their own investment
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plans they may not have so much visibility of what's happening on the ground and so we can help them gain
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visibility of what the anticipated level of change and activity is in a local area
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and that's going to become much more of a Way Forward Thinking around mapping and modeling the local area in order to
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come up with the best Solutions so that investment ahead of need becomes a thing as opposed to investment just in time
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which is a traditional or conventional way that these issues of network development are approached that's
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interesting so kind of building on that you just mentioned sort of knowledge sharing and mapping I assume that you're
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building a best practice the whole time could you tell us a little bit more about that because this is kind of at the moment an unknown quantity and
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that's that's really important that our role is not just around helping individual projects it's about sharing knowledge accelerating good quality
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practices and reducing the cost and the time spent and the effort spent trying to get the the projects away so you know
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our role is hopefully valuable in terms of sharing knowledge across domains whether it's around certain technology
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types between our clients and beyond our clients cuz we're one of five hubs across England so so we do share
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knowledge not just within a specific locality of where we are working which is the southeast but we will go beyond
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the southe East into other areas of the of England and the UK to to to share best practice we're utilizing various
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tools to do that and one of them is a platform called net zeroo which is a local Authority facing tool funded by
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central government in effect it's your Allin one place to go as a local Authority for information for guidance
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for access to template documents for forums to be able to share knowledge
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between peers and you know that's really important to learn off others and to
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also share your knowledge with others so we're very keen to see how we can help local authorities share best practice
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and also get behind the standard case study which tends to be a little bit more positive and you want to know where
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did it go wrong how you know how can I improve on what experience if was a bad one for example how can I avoid that in
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my project so that's really important that we share that knowledge we also get involved in research and development so although
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it's not our key role we do see there places where we can fill a gap in terms of putting some time and effort into
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thinking about things can we improve the way feasibility studies are done for example for car parking places like that
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where you might be thinking as a local Authority around putting solar canopies in batteries in EV charging for the
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future so we're developing tools and techniques to help local authorities
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access better knowledge model better design better think around the the tools
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that are outside in the marketplace that they could utilize and purchase themselves in an effective way so that
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the both data and tools become available to them in ways that they haven't had
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the opportunity to use in the past cool and then since you just mentioned case studies I wonder if you are able to give
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us any sort of more concrete examples yes I mean we worked with and helped
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local authorities West barkshire West Oxfordshire County councils in Essex
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suff nor Cambridge show look at solar look at heat networks things like that
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also we've helped for example Electrify the bus service in Cambridge here through a grant called zebra we helped
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the local Authority and the bus company to design in and procure the the buses
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in that area and put the infrastructure in to help charge those buses those are the sort of things we get involved in
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the challenge comes though that are a lot of local local projects that come forward at early stage so we see
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projects at the early stage we help the client and then possibly they don't come back to us we Hope they've been successful and from and we've been
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helpful for them to move forward we look forward to engaging with our clients when they delivered their projects and
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celebrating their success but I think it's a it tends to be Tim a quite a treadmill I think you know the next
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project comes along and people tend to forget about celebrating the good stuff and that's I think one of our roles is to build some case studies as well so we
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do have case studies on our website and through NetZero go to help local authorities see what they could achieve
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and also to find out who has been involved in those projects so they can talk to them directly that's great and
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hopefully we're helping you celebrate a little bit today by asking you about them circling back to the question about
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funding is this a completely new funding environment and how is it different or similar to previous infrastructure and
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planning funding I think if we just take a step back and we think around what we've got to achieve here I mean
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decarbonization and climate change is such a massive Wicked problem we need to
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think around how we as a society can fund this but we don't we don't think
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around this as we don't think about this as a pure cost and so one of the
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challenges is trying to convert a very monetized return on investment environment to one that values the The
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Wider benefits I mean evidence research evidence shows that for every pound spent six pounds of damage is avoided
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globally in terms of the the impact of climate change and global warming so we
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don't cost that into our models so when we start to think around where where the money is going to come from and how we
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build our business cases we probably be need to be a bit smarter a bit more open about you know what is the collateral
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impact and positive benefits of investing in say domestic retrofit which is a long burn Energy Efficiency see low
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return for an individual investor but the collateral benefits are significant
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with it's around improving the health outcomes educational outcomes improving air quality and the like if you're
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looking at transportation for example so thinking around some of those new sources of money we're working on a
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project that is funded by the department for Net Zero called the local Net Zero accelerator now this is a 19 19 million
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pound project or program of work with three combined author is one in the West Midlands one in Greater Manchester and
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the newly formed York and North Yorkshire combined Authority looking at new forms of area based investment model
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trying to bring in different sources of investment not just State funding but also other forms of institutional
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investment potentially crowdfunded investment local investment locally raised money in order to undertake
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programs that are cross area as opposed to individual asset when I say an individual asset I'm thinking around
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rooftop solar or a heat pump you know those are sort of single asset classes but when you take those in the round and
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you think around the money that could come into addressing those there were potential opportunities to blend the
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finance and get a range of returns plus the co benefits and that's an area that we're really Keen to see how that plays
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out that project's just starting and it's a two-year program so we're hopefully going to see that see the
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value of testing some things out in those areas an example will be the bris City leap model where we see a
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partnership between Bristol city council amesco and batf a long-term private
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public partnership that allows money to flow from the private sector on a values
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basis into local area decarbonization so it's really important to test that sort
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of model but there are other models available we we need to think around how these other models could be applied and
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are they appropriate for a rural area compared to a city area you know it may be that they're not so we need to think
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and test but we need to move quickly as well Tim that's the key thing shial Peter just mentioned Community finance
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and also rural models versus City models did you want to pick up a few questions on that thank you Tim Peter just
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summarizing a little bit on and and probably replaying some themes you you talked about local authorities and and I
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can completely relate it on the multitude of services they have to offer the complexities not only in the Energy
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System but then then transport the adult gu social care issues even starting from
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potholes to highways so there there is a plethora of um systemic and issues to be
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honest they look at and the role of Hub you mentioned about knowledge sharing tools data the lot of support that you
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are providing to local authorities is invaluable in in in in in my mind both
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from I think D mentioned about the urban centers and also the rural communities
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and reflecting on these two do you think there is a role and you mentioned about the funding as well that we need to go
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for Innovative funding models from city deals to localized rural small areas do
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we see a role for social value Investments playing in funding this Net
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Zero so in the end we all want Happy communities can we create that investment role and bake in social value
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in those Investments that's a really really important point that we tend to think
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traditionally around investment and investment into projects and activities is measured by their financial return
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till no rate of return Net Present Value payback whatever the metric that we use and investment markets are probably
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driven by those quite conventional metrics although we are seeing change in the marketplace although relatively
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small it's important when you're dealing with the local authorities in the public sector that their purpose is about
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well-being and about supporting the locality across a a whole range of
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issues and and they deal with market failure so there's a real challenge there that you're dealing with two very
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different audiences that two different ways of thinking around an issue when we're trying to deliver a single type of
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project so we're seeing the investor Market one end we're seeing the local Authority the other and arguably you've
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got the Energy System energy actors in them in in in there as well all talking different languages all having different
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ways of measuring stuff but we need to come to some common grounders to be able to let the money flow through to these
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projects so there's for the local authori I is there are a lot of value streams that are not monetized to use
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that phrase and sometimes that's a difficult phrase to to swallow when you're dealing with well-being that we monetize stuff but in order to make the
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money flow we need to convince an investor that there's something a good proposition here so for the purposes
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we'll use that term and when you think about housing retor for example there's strong evidence that more energy
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efficient homes as I've alluded to before reduce household debt improve health incomes educational attainment
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can add value to the prod property now how do you build that into a business case and then convince an investor
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that's the right thing to do so those social values and those value streams
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are really important when we think about building a business case in the public sector there are some investors and for
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example pension schemes have to allocate a certain amount of money to environmental social goals we need to
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move more in that direction and think around how we can build those into both the Upstream the up the the Upstream
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investor approach and the downstream into the local Authority in the public sector business case development so that
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we have a common set of language and we're common set of measurement of the performance of those projects so when
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the money does go into a project it delivers Better Homes it delivers more comfortable living lowering the cost of
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household bills meaning people don't have to worry about heating they can eat properly that means educational
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attainment in the young improvements means health for the El those with COPD potentially stops bed blocking because
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householders going back in and out in the winter time from their homes because they're ill back into the NHS so there
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are things like the way that we value projects that's really important and there's also thinking around how the
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investor Market treats that in their approach to long-sighted Capital I think
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we could use the phrase Capital that actually works not just in the short term but works for the long-term benefit
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that's really interesting and I'm think thinking about a project that we've done at steer actually which was about Woodland management and how we developed
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metrics for measuring the well-being benefits of putting Woodlands into Community hands it was a really
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interesting one but what you were just saying sort of I guess requires a certain level of whole system thinking
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and I wonder does the Net Zero herb act as a way of kind of bringing those different non-monetized factors together
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Under One Roof I think you've hit a really good important point there Tim that we've tended to traditionally think
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about a project a sing asset class let's build a solar farm for example let's let's put a heat pump into a home let's
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put EV charging onto the street or where whatever when you take a place-based approach you need to think differently
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so conventionally we have a series of silos a series of lines coming down of
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of funding from for an asset class we now to think need to think laterally across an area and that's where areab
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based decarbonization pathway thinking whole system thinking we talk about local Air energy planning that modeling
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of a locality to them be able to build up a picture based on a future scenario
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or set of scenarios of change that will allow investment into Technologies and
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techniques and practices to decarbonize the locality in a fair and just way as well we do need to think around that
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rather than thinking around it just about a techn fix so that's where the local authorities probably have as much
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opportunity and responsibility to play to take their role and whether it's a convening role or it's actively engaged
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and taking forward local area energy planning or decarbonization Pathways in on a spatial basis and a temporal basis
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it's really important because once you have that and you've mapped your area you understand it you can then talk to
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investors you can then talk to the system operators you can talk to the network operators and say this is what
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we need in the future folks this is what we need in five years 10 years 15 years okay it may shift a little bit but in
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the absence of that we are investing in a semi- dump system we don't really know what's going to be coming onto the
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system and that's challenging for the network operators who have to agree their investment plans with ofj and that
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cost that they're investing in ultimately comes onto our energy bills so we need to think in a whole systems way that could bring in for example
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thinking about the water the water energy waste Nexus how do we bring those things together currently we don't do
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that so well in the UK and maybe that's the thing that we need to bring forward in some of thinking but the starting
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point is around modeling your area and building clear understanding of what's needed and building investment plans off
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that so you can then talk to investors in a more meaningful way that's great and I know that kind of modeling the
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area really feeds into what we'll be talking about soon Peter just moving into a little bit at the area of
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community energy Investments and Community energy Champions locally and probably not going into details but
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taking an example of a successful project from Community perspective sofam prior District heating project lot of
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value in bringing communities on board with us when we are delivering the
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projects and I think more valuable if communities are investing and getting the return from those Investments what
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are your views on community energy projects being led by Champions and working possibly with the stakeholder as
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you mentioned dnos or the future fso the future system planner operator I think
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it is the way forward for certain areas I mean we have to think around how we bring those projects forward
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and the challenge for Community groups is navigating what is a complex system so that need still needs to be fulfilled
31:05
and I think helping those embryonic groups or those groups are quite even quite mature to move to the next project
31:11
is really important the ability to get a vested interest positive vested interest into the local area is a really valid
31:18
important piece as well that how the individual residents understand the
31:24
reason for change because there's a lot of barriers to change why would you want to move from one system of heating your
31:30
home to another if you can't see the short-term benefits you know selling those benefits in the longterm and
31:36
understanding well this will make a difference somewhere down the line because I'm involved in this as a collective is a really really important
31:42
thing how to bring that forward there are a range of actors that are involved
31:47
local authorities and we get involved through the community energy fund which is a stimulus package to early
31:53
feasibility of projects for Community energy groups there's there's a long way to go and we were really Keen to support
31:59
Community energy because we cannot rely on a top- down National system only we need to have
32:06
multitude of directions within this long-term system change and and we need
32:11
people rested in that and we need to take those that can't invest with us as well um the challenge is that you'll end
32:18
up in a place where you don't have parts of society engaged in the sorts of changes that should be are likely to be
32:26
needed um so we do need to understand how uh those that can't invest can take
32:32
benefit from system change as well and make their lives better so you know the value of having people on the ground the
32:38
local activist positive activist uh for for this sort of thing is really critical
32:44
and unleashing potentially latent local funds for example through crowdfunding U
32:51
we've seen that with solar farm build out in Wilshire for example we've seen that with up in warington where
32:56
community municial municipal bonds have been a successful way of uh raising
33:01
money for certain types of renewable and Energy Efficiency programs these are ways to unlock potentially latent uh
33:09
local Capital that is then invested into the local area potentially creating jobs creating opportunities for people to
33:16
benefit from the Returns on investment from the projects as well as seeing something that has a longer term goal a
33:22
longer term ambition which hopefully will be attractive to a local area you mentioned about Bristol City leap
33:29
earlier and I we also saw the example of centry following in in a different model and as you said different models fit at
33:35
different areas what would what are your thoughts on unlocking City level
33:41
decarbonization possibly with models like bris versus rural decarbonization where different models
33:48
and possibly social value investment brings a higher value but how do we bring pace and you we we've talked about
33:54
Pace quite a lot in delivering these together from h perspective and then move on to local authorities to bridge
34:01
the gap of capability capacity if we can possibly BBS the public private
34:06
Partnerships so there's a real place for for cities to to work in in a unified
34:12
way we're seeing that with a combined authorities in the West Midlands greater Manchester terms of both the leadership role and the the ability to Corral and
34:19
bring forward coherent programs of work great London Authority as well so that gives scale I mean the one advantage of
34:26
scale is you can get C Capital cheaper and so in urban areas where we've got
34:31
high density of heat and energy use you can probably find it easier to access
34:38
capital in because of the the sheer scale of the projects and the the nature of the changes that are going on so
34:44
there's real value for those public private Partnerships and for collaborations certainly in cities to be
34:49
able to do that I would say there's equally value to local areas in the in the rural semi semi- rural outside the
34:57
major conation where you have potentially single maril Authority type
35:02
models outside of those There's real value to working together for resilience
35:08
as much as anything else we work with as I say 140 or so local authorities all
35:14
very different and the challenge comes for some of the rural local authorities they may have one Champion one person
35:22
working on a program of decarbonization of climate change and they may also be doing another job as well you know
35:28
part-time energy of fuel fuel poverty so to be able to work with your peers and
35:33
then to build up collaborations and scale is really important and may not be the sort of public private partnership
35:40
model that works so well in that area it may be a local delivery model that could utilize local structures maybe working
35:47
together as local authorities but working with other local Partners but you know there are models out there that
35:53
we want to see tested more and to see replicated and I think through the local
35:58
Net Zero accelerator certainly we'll learn things not just for the urban areas but for the rural areas for
36:04
example the building of Supply chains and increasing the skill set of the local jobs Market you know how can we
36:11
improve accessibility for people coming into the sector and increase the increase the opportunity which is
36:17
another value stream that we should be building into our projects so these things will probably need to be tailored
36:23
to the local area but we do need models replicable models that will work in certain typical similar environments
36:30
whether it's semi-urban urban and rural and we look forward to seeing how the um local Net Zero accelerator brings
36:37
forward a couple of those models so we've covered a lot of ground there and I'm very grateful to Peter and chiali I
36:44
wonder just to round off Peter maybe you could tell us something really good
36:50
that's happening right now in the net zero space and something that you would really want to happen in the
36:55
future wow that's a that's a good one we always think about the challenges so let's think about some of the posit real
37:01
positives I've I've been really pleased to see for example brain tree crowns s secured money to decarbonize one of
37:07
their Leisure sensors build solar canopies you know very practical local project at a larger scale I'm pleased to
37:15
be supporting um the knowledge sharing through the Net Zero go platform we we
37:20
manage the contract in the Southeast we want as many local authorities to use that as possible because the more we use
37:27
our Collective knowledge and share our Collective knowledge the better we will get the faster we will get the more
37:34
efficient we will get and we'll get better products we'll get better outcomes and you know I'm really pleased
37:41
that that project is now embedded within a lot of the activity that we do supporting our clients around knowledge
37:47
sharing so the net zeroc Cod platform I'm really proud to sort encourage local authorities to use and one for the
37:53
future one for the future I think collaborations and building portfolios
37:59
of activity across a local area we talk about local are energy planning I I think more around bit techy bit spatial
38:06
spatial decarbonization Pathways because it's not just about energy it's about other things as well so getting to know
38:12
your area and being able to model it and then develop an Investment Portfolio and an investment perspective I think is
38:18
really exciting we're doing some projects around that for industrial Estates thinking around you could
38:23
develop an investment perspectus um where the landlord and the tenants and others other land owners can
38:30
collaborate as a a local energy community so I'm really excited about that sort of project being able to
38:35
follow through and get investment into it and to re replicate it out to other industrial Estates and business Parks
38:42
across the southeast so that sort of thing I love to see things happen and I think those sorts of things will be
38:48
great as exemplars and opportunities for translating ideas
38:54
elsewhere that was fantastic thank you chiali you're a woman on the inside of
38:59
the energy industry what's a current positive and one that you would want for the future this conversation and thank
39:06
you so much Peter and thanks for organizing Tim this conversation has actually really filled me for more hope
39:12
for future generally there is that feeling I feel and you can see it in the
39:17
market from Finance side the investors are quite Keen to come into UKC and
39:22
local local authorities or local sector and the hubs are there is a whole mindset Chang change on how do we work
39:28
together how do we work collectively bring the paas deliver the projects together bring a healthy pipeline of not
39:35
only high investable but high social value or low social value projects as well there's a whole sense of bringing
39:42
that happy communities which which which I love because that's where we are for and for future my comment will be
39:50
whether be it organizational resilience or resilience at home house level uh in
39:55
our Prof personal lives or resilience at a better beautiful world will need
40:01
diversity so we will need those diverse perspectives diverse Solutions and that
40:08
appetite is increasing day by day it is and that is beautiful to see we're
40:13
involving everyone we're taking people on in the journey together and that will bring resilience so hopefully that is
40:21
the the feeling which the others would get as well that was great thank you so yeah thank you both a really fascinating
40:28
conversation and thank you to everybody that's listening
40:47
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