Voices of the Industry presented by Steer - #8 Sustainable cities: Manchester’s LAEP journey transcript

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[Music] hello and welcome to voices of the
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industry a podcast series bringing you leading industry voices who challenge thinking across Transportation
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infrastructure and [Music]
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cities hi everyone good afternoon thanks for tuning to de's latest podcast episode and today we're going to be
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discussing local area energy plans or layups which are rapidly great gaining
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traction as a way for local authorities to understand and take action on the opportunities for decarbonization in
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their local areas and layups are datadriven bottomup approaches which
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allow authorities to map their energy use across their local area and to then create a bespoke road map to Net Zero
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that covers all aspects of energy from buildings trans Sport and local industry
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and helps to really get under the skin of the local needs and challenges within their local area I'm Nicola Kane I'm a
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director in steer's Manchester office and prior to joining steer I was head of strategic planning at transport for
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greater Manchester and responsible for leading greater Manchester's long-term transport strategy development and so I
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know all too well that developing great plans and strategies is one thing putting them into action is another and
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so I'm delighted to be joined today by Mark Aton who's director of environment at greater Manchester combined Authority
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and has really been a Pioneer in the use of local area energy plans and Mark and I used to work quite closely together
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when I was at tfgm so yeah it's great to have you here today mark thank you for joining us and taking the time out of
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your busy schedule good to be here and good to see you again so I guess just to kind of introduce a bit about you and
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your role do you want to just say a few words about about your role and and maybe just highlight something your
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particular proud of that you've worked on since joining the combined Authority sure so my role as director environment
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uh the combined Authority is really to work on behalf of the mayor bringing together the 10 local authorities to
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look at how we deliver the greater Manchester 5-year environment plan which was launched in 2019 and I very much
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frame it as how the combined Authority works as one of the 10 local authorities to support those 10 local authorities to
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deliver their Ambitions for n zero most of them have delivered a lot already in the last few years they've all declared
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climate emergency and most of them biodiversity emergency as well so if you're asking what am I'm most proud of
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I think I've probably got to be a little bit humble and say it's not really about me it's about the people I work with both the people in the districts and the
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people in my teams who I think have really tried to understand how we can
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accelerate from where we are now to carbon neutral by 2038 which is the greater Manchester ambition and when I
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think we've put a lot of good building blocks in place and we are getting to that space where we're ready to accelerate I'll say more about that a
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little bit later so if there was one thing I I think it's about capacity actually when I first came into the role
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the amount of resource that we had to put into tackling climate change was at the ca level was relatively low and over
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the last five years bidding for successful projects and um and winning bids we've built that capacity up so
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that we have more people more technical detail and more capacity to be able to support those districts to do more
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brilliant and it'd be good to come back and talk a little bit about maybe some of that sort joined up strategic planning because I know that's that's an
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area that gra Manchester again has really been leading leading the way on so perhaps we can touch back on that later later in the conversation sure
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great thank you for joining us Mark also with us today is shali matur from amberside advisers which is part of the
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stair group and shali joined amberside at the end of last year and was previously in the project management
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office of the Department of energy security and Net Zero or desar as we like to call it she's freshh from
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hosting our panel of experts at the unlocking decarbonization event which de ran at UK Reef so thank you for hosting
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that shali it was a really good event do you want to tell us a little bit about you and also any key takeaways that you
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took from that that decarbonization panel that we ran thanks Nicola to be honest on the UK Reef event which
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happened couple of weeks ago one thing which it highlighted for me was the importance of collaboration I Mark
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mentioned about the teams and there is a whole I think emphasis is on how public and private sectors need to work
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together not only to bring in investment but to share best practices and plan for Net Zero the strategic planning part as
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you said so there was a whole theme running across different Pavilions in UK Reef it also provided some insights on
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how can we accelerate decarbonization at PACE and scale I think that deadline for
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our targets is not that far off now and for me greater Manchester is one of the really good examples in how to Foster
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strategic Partnerships which was also another theme of UK Reef another one for steer and amberside I felt was Market
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intelligence apart from networking there was a great emphasis on diversity and inclusion which personally I do believe
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has a great impact on systems resilience and if I'm honest today I'm really honored to be here with Mark my journey
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started off at gmca back in 2010 or 11 when we did the Neo project that was the first time I saw the power of
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collaboration between combined Authority local authorities there were three local authorities working on it on social
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housing project and dno the dno was involved and was a major stakeholder at the time so my first smart city project
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brilliant well it' be great to maybe hear a bit more about that project through the conversation as well shali I think that was slightly before my time
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so yeah be fascinated to hear a bit more about how that went so let's kind of go back to basics maybe for people who
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aren't familiar with the local area energy planning process Mark do you want to just kind of briefly explain what is
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a layout and how does it work sure so as you said at the top of the program layups are data driven spatial
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collaborative planning tools to help unlock investment and in our terms what they really do is look at where we are
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now in terms of transport built infrastructure and energy infrastructure and look at where we need to be to get
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to carbon neutral by 2038 and they help help us to plot a course between now and
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our goal it's a seven-step process first of all you identify and engage your
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stakeholders then you look at setting an area Vision so for us carbon neutral 2038 our objectives and targets you
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create an understanding of the local area Energy System by looking at data
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and engaging with your partners you investigate what the future local energy scenarios might look like produce a
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local energy strategy and then you you test it lead some of the implementation monitor review it and then you start all
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over again brilliant so where where are you now in that Pro process in in GM and
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are are they starting to actually deliver on the ground yet yeah so we produced our leaps leaps about two years
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ago now we have one for each district in Greater Manchester and we have greater Manchester plan which sums the 10
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districts and all of them have started delivering we have programs of activity looking at how we retrofit domestic
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properties retrofit public buildings look at how we install electric vehicle charging infrastructure look at
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generating energy locally where we can make that work and look at things like heat networks which are a little bit
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longer term but more strategic but highly important and the idea behind the local energy plans is to almost
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understand how you can create a system a multivator approach which foresees how energy might be both used and generated
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in the future and how you can bring those two things together efficiently and effectively and by that I mean the
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real purpose is to try and not leave ourselves without any white elephants any stranded assets so what we're trying
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to do is almost predict the future now the energy system is moving so quickly almost weekly there's something that
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changes in the energy system in the UK so it's very difficult to predict more than a few years out and that's where
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the the lepes come into their own because what they allow you to do is plan for the immediate almost the No
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Regret actions and you can start working on those so that you don't inadvertently invest in something that you might have
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been better leaving to a future date and all 10 districts in Greater man Chester are delivering on those plans and we're
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making good progress we're still a long way away from our Target I'm not going to not going to lie a long way to go but
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we've laid a really firm foundation and and now I hope we'll be able to accelerate from here that's brilliant
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and were were there any kind of big new insights which came out of all that kind of dat data analysis and engagement that
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you did yeah the scale of the challenge was probably the biggest Insight because
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we knew it was going to be difficult but what the lake process told us was that within the next 5 years we need to try
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and retrofit something like 140,000 homes we need to look at how we can generate nearly 2 gaw of renewable
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energy we need to find enough charging infrastructure to support the implementation of nearly 200,000
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electric vehicles on our roads and we need to think about how we develop heat networks that could support 8,000 homes
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and 116,000 heat pumps so there are big challenges and big delivery challenges
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over the next 5 years if we're going to try and keep on track to be carbon neutral by 2038 so the scale of the
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challenge came home to us because to put that into context even with the work that we're doing at the moment we we're
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probably retrofiting or supporting the retrofit of around 7,000 homes a year that's a long way away from what we need
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to which is in nearly 60,000 a year really however I'm only counting in that the ones that we are involved in from a
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local Authority perspective obviously householders all over the uh connation
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are investing in their own property and and it doesn't include those numbers so we need to add those into the 140,000
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Target great shali I suppose you've been working at National levels through your
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previous role what what's your perspective on how I suppose the role of national government in kind of supporting this acceleration towards net
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zero and decarbonization I think from well GM contributes to 3% from heat perspective
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so it's one of the biggest cities in that Rams and then Bristol is another one the whole idea of layups being data
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driven especially I think that's a good starting point put into a zoning methodology software and then it goes
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into refinement from towns and cities perspective and then drill down I think policies regulations the support coming
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from the central government is helpful for the combined authorities and local authorities on skills supply chain so a
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lot of emphasis recently From psds perspective and also skills development has been from from desas as well some
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schemes but locally I've seen there has been and especially working with greater Manchester from years ago a lot of
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emphasis on how can the skills and supply chain be built in in the regions itself how can the local the the 10
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local authorities or districts upskill their own contractors to be able to deliver and look after the heat pumps in
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future so I think National level and local level almost needs to work in tandem for The Wider outcomes that's
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great do do you want to talk a bit more about that social housing case study because that sounds sounds really interesting oh the N the N study yeah
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that's I think that was the first smart city project Mark in the country I would say the aggregation of 550 heat bumps
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greater Manchester was bold enough to put their three councils in in front and get the funding from Ministry of Japan
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and in the first I think it was first time ever even in from a heat pump manufacturer perspective we had seen
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aggregation at that level from social housing perspective catapults were indirectly or ETI at the time were
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involved and it was the challenges which we saw were quite unique at the time
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Community engagement first of all even to get a free heat pump in a property was a challenge to explain how it would
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work the whole concept of low temperature radiators and not being the radiators not being super hot at 70° was
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another challenge but I think working together one of the learnings was working together with the councils for a
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manufacturer and for delivery contractors was key one of the key learnings we saw from that project so I
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I think now that has become a gospel that everyone should involve communities second one was DNS so I remember that
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case of and Mark might be able to say that in details because I just attended one meeting on that one was sheltered
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housing the project was also going almost going to stop at that point because dnos mentioned about the
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constrainted network and we had to find out other ways of doing so maybe Mark you can expand a little bit on Netto
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project yeah so we were fortunate to get investment from the new energy Dem
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demonstration organization of Japan which as shimali says is part of the Japanese government to the Chino about 30 million and the program lasted about
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four years so think eventually it just kept going and the whole purpose was to test the idea that you could shift
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demand for energy away from the peak times so it was really about how do you
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unlock some of the constraints in the energy grid by which I mean the electricity Grid in particular has peak
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times in the morning and peak times in the evening and in between those peak times the demand for electricity is
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relatively low so what we need to do is as a society is either increase the
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capacity of the grid which is incredibly expensive or we need to shave the Peaks
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off those peak times and smooth them out a little bit so we allow the existing
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capacity to be more spread over at the dial period of the day and that's really
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what the NATO project was about it about how do you get 550 heat pumps working in Social homes across greater Manchester
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to store Heat at times when the demand on the grid was low and utilize that
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heat in the home when the demand on the grid was high so you're taking demand Off the Grid and it worked very well but
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as as Shani correctly said we probably learned more about Citizen and Community
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engagement and what it takes to take people on the journey to explain what a heat pump is and not just that but you
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have to try and dis understand what demand side response is and what we found was actually that the residents
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that just took the technology and let it be set up for them and let it run were
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highly satisfied the satisfaction rating was like 78% or more but of course with
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any new technology some people like to play with it a little bit and what we found was we used we'd set up the system
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so it would work at its optimal temperature or it's its optimal range and then the resident would play with it
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a little bit or we had cases where some wires became dislodged and that didn't that stopped talking to the internet and
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were all sorts of technical issues which which we we learned from and it's absolutely right you have to take your
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communities with you on the journey and explain step by step what the technology is how they benefit from it what other
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values they will get from it a warm comfortable home with with lower heating bills but also it's almost like a plugin
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play you can you can almost let it take care of itself with a a smart meter inside and it was I think valued as a a
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good learning experience as well as being a successful project for the residents that benefit from the technology look look at I just to link
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this to your first question on the local area plans and would be really interesting to hear from Mark on that
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side completely agree on the seven stage process Mark and I think catapults defined those processes quite nicely and
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neatly where I feel and this is probably a personal opinion on the layups there is a gap on delivery and also being
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slightly static yeah yes they give the imediate imediate actions for from No Regret options perspective but that part
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of community engagement the place-based solutions from the whole Behavior change perspective on how do we bring in that
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and especially the complex challenge of combined Authority where 10 districts or 10 local authorities have to be brought
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together from their diverse approaches do you think does a layup would work for others so I think GM has done it in a
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very different way and successfully but for others nationally do you think that could work I see no reason why not I
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think you're right to point out complexities of working across 10 local areas but we work very closely with
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those areas in greater Manchester and you also benefit from the interaction between the districts talking to each
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other about their challenges and their successes so they learn from each other but they also share each other's burdens
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when things don't go as well or as planned so I I think what the late process does is give you a common
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understanding of the Energy System across 10 districts it puts it all on
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the same plane so you can understand how your District varies from a different District next maybe a neighboring
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District and also what it helps you to do is look at the inter relationships between those districts so if we want to
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take forward a large retrofit program let's say if we do it across 10 districts we can get economies of scale
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we can look at demand we can look at aggregation of procurement of those Technologies hopefully reduce the cost
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you can look at the different ways that you can engage your citizens and learning from what other people have
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done what's been more successful what's been less successful so I I would probably Advocate lpes being shared
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across a wider geography than just one local Authority area but I seen a reason why they wouldn't work in every local
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Authority I think they probably will work better in urban locations perhaps
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over rural because I think rural local authorities have different and in some ways Challen more challenging aspects to
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decarbonize in urban connation where you've got high concentrations of people and high concentrations of energy use
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whilst your scale the scale of your challenge is bigger you have everything that you need to be able to bring the
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solution in one place so really it's just about convincing people to go on that Journey with you so just maybe just
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thinking a little bit about that kind of join up planning and again this is you know something that greater Manchester's
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really led the way on do you want to talk a bit Mark about some of the strategic planning that's been going on
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around infrastructure more generally perhaps work on places for everyone plan which covers covers all aspects of
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planning and maybe some of the structures you've put in place to help improve collaboration between the
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different stakeholders that actually be responsible for delivering all of this new infrastructure and working towards
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net zero yeah sure so places for everyone is the name of the spatial plan
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that has just been approved that covers nine of the 10 districts stockboard decided to to go do their own thing and
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as you say it's planning tool that covers Not Just Energy but the wider planning system and it that gives us a
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good framework again for embedding some of the lay proposals into a wider
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planning policy framework what it also does is it give us a common base from
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which we can understand how some of the more challenging infrastructure pieces you know heat networks for example uh
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can be quite disruptive within the physical environment so it helps us to understand how those sorts of disruptions can be minimized or can be
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done at the same time as other forms of utility development to try and a reduce cost but also reduce disruption to
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Residents we have a strategic infrastructure board that's been set up for a few years now that includes our
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DNS UT United utilities the water Undertaker some of the regulatory bodies
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and obviously the local authorities in gmca and that's really there to try and look for synergies to understand how in
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planned investment over the next plan period Ed period what each of the utility undertakers is planning to do
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and whether they can be aligned and whether we can minimize the disruption that that might cause as I said just to
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reduce costs where we can but also to reduce disruption for Citizens I should have mentioned actually that the dno our
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electricity Northwest is our electricity dno have been heavily involved in the development of our local energy plans as
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has cadent which is our gas dno and have been very supportive right from the very
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beginning so the very first leap that was produced was in Berry one of our districts and it was a pilot and it only
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looked at heat and it was part of a program called Smart Systems and heat which is funded by Bay at the time and
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was led by the energy systems catapult and it was the Forerunner of the the late process it was the test and trial
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to see how these things worked and then when we' completed that piece of work with the DNA we said well this is great
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but we can't just look at one vector it can't just be heat we've got to look at multi vectors and multi- instructed
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types because the interrelationship between transport infrastructure energy infrastructure built infrastructure as
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we decarbonize those three infrastructure types become ever more interrelated and ever more complex in
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how they utilize energy and so you need to look at each of those three infrastructure types i' probably thrown natural environment in there as a fourth
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infrastructure type which effects has effect on cooling the plans allow you to align those and understand how a
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systemic approach can be adopted brilliant that's great thank you Mark we've sort touched a little bit on some
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of the delivery challenges I guess one of the big topics at UK Reef was around investment and and financing of that
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energy transition how do we actually make this happen and around developing robust business cases and so on it be
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good to hear from both of you I guess in terms of the role of the public and the private sector in investing in some of
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the the things we'll need to actually make this transition happen so the other benefit of local area energy plans is
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that once you've identified your pathway and decided what pathway you're going to go with it allows you to put cost on
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what the transition might look like now in Greater Manchester if you sum all all of our 10 local energy PLS together we
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estimate through a strategic outline business case that to get from where we are now to carbon neutral by 2038 will
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cost something like 64 billion and that sounds like a lot of money and of course it is a lot of money but it's important
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to recognize that 70% of that 64 billion would have been spent anyway under business as usual so what you're looking
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at is something like1 199 billion increase in the cost which again is quite substantial and that can be broken
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down by about £ billion P operational cost and and the rest is sorry Capital
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cost is 52 billion and the operational cost is 11 billion but if you take away the business as usual then you're left
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with about 19 billion of that 19 billion we think about 12.5 billion is within
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the influence of local authorities and that means that we you look at the asset classes that the
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combined Authority and the local authorities have some influence over which would include things like
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generation storage social housing r RIT public building retrofit heat networks
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and electric vehicle charging those five asset classes we don't control or own in
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many instances but we have some ability to be able to influence them and what we're trying to do now and this is our
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next step is work out how we can fund those asset classes by blending Public
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Finance that's available we've been quite successful in getting national government grant with available uh local
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public Grant Public Funding with then private finance and we are in the
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process now over the next two years of working with desas as uh what they call
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a net zero accelerator ourselves and West Midlands combined authority of the two accelerators or Trailblazers that
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they've uh they're working with to understand how we can bring forward billions of pounds worth of projects to
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be able to take to Market and blend that with other forms of Finance to create viable and deliverable investments in
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decarbonized ing our city region so leaps also allow you to start planning for how you finance some of these
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Transitions and presumably they make that investment more credible to people who are looking to come into City region
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like greater Manchester you've done you've done your homework yes certainly and and I think also we recognize that
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the public sector may need to take some of the early risk to encourage the private sector to come through but we've
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had some really positive discussions from Pension funds and other investment organizations who are genuinely Keen to
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invest in low carbon Solutions but need to be provided with shity that they've
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got long-term pipeline of projects that are viable investable and will create a
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return nobody's going to do it for free sadly so we do need to create projects that uh will generate a return on
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investment the benefits of taking local energy plan approach is that different
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projects will will have different return values by taking them as a bundle or a
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package you're able to bring together projects which are highly desirable but
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with projects which are perhaps less desirable and create a blended approach so that what you don't end up with is
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companies investing in the low hanging fruit or the prize apples on that low hanging fruit and leaving the higher
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hanging fruits which nobody wants which become more difficult to invest in in the future so it's a blended approach to
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try and bring those projects forward and that's what we're working on over the next two years that's great and there was quite a lot of discussion around
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project pipelines wasn't investment pipelines wasn't there shali at the UK Reef event I don't know if you've got
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anything else you want to add to that topic I think from private Finance perspective I Echo one Mark said that
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yes there are lots of Pension funds infrastructure funds institutional investors in fact even utility companies
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in this area who would like to invest into similar projects and the asset glasses as Mark mentioned but these
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asset glasses like heat networks or solar wind generation or be public sector buildings and EV charging as unit
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they risk profile is quite different and it's that next step after layups so
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layups they present data for me at a very high level but the project origination is often hyperlocal so it's
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that blend of how do we categorize the risk of a heat Network project against a
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public sector building I think the risk is pretty much low in a public sector decarb is because the political will is
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there local will is there they're probably public funds and a heat Network there you have different risks involved
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in it maybe charging is a different risk profile so it's mapping the risks to the asset classes for the investors and
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matching it to their appetites it's almost creation of an investor prospectus which was again another theme
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in UK reef and there was a question from one of the one of the audience in in our own panel where they asked that would it
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be useful for local authorities to have an investor Prospectors ready for the investors that which asset class
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provides what sort of a return at what risk level so it's easier for them to just choose and we had Andrew Faron from
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Aviva investors as well with a similar thought process so really really Keen I think to take that next step and I and
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and I I think right G Manchester is already looking at testing the assumptions of the Strategic OBC and
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take it to the next level before the DPS is ready on the neito accelerator so is that Bridging the Gap from layups to
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delivery for the investors and I guess one of the other challenges around deliveries how you bring all these
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different programs of activity together so you're not digging up the same street you know a year apart to put in a heat
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Network or to put in a cycle lane or to install EV charges or or whatever it
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might be have you had any thoughts about that in Greater Manchester in terms of how you bring these different programs
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of investment that all have to happen probably over the next 5 to 10 years but delivering those in a in a kind of
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integrated way is going to be quite challenging I don't know how how you're thinking about those challenges yeah we we're working quite
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closely with other utility providers to try and map out what their investment
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decisions are for the next few years it's quite difficult to match some of those things up but it is possible in
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certain areas because obviously we we want to try and reduce the costs and and minimize disruption I think it almost
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comes down to a project by project basis and so let's take heat networks for example we have five heat networks that
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are approaching detail design it's only once those get to the point where you know that they're economically viable
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that you can start talking to other utility providers about what their cost might be what the capital Works might
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might be involved in bringing those heat networks together and whether they have similar types of of capital works that
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can be aligned so you do have to do it almost on a project by project basis at a more strategic level and and stepping
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outside of the sphere of energy we've for example we've developed an integrated Water Management plan with
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the United utilities and environment agency that looks at how do we potentially co-invest in areas to both
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improve water quality but also to reduce the risk of flooding it's a similar sort of principle that we'll need to adopt for our Energy Systems as well on a on a
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caseby casee basis I think I I do think that there is more to be done in
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aligning different types of funding for different types of asset class by which I mean if if we're going to generate
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more renewable energy in Greater Manchester the biggest Opportunity by far is through solar PV largely rooftop
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mounted and whilst we're doing quite a lot of work in the public sector estate there's no reason why the private sector
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of State couldn't also undertake that same sort of activity so the question in my mind is well how can we potentially
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do that together and aggregate the scale and potentially reduce the cost so I think there's those sorts of opportunities which we're going to try
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and explore as well as part of the Nets air accelerator over the next few years
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and and do you think there's any role that national government can play this may be a question for both of you actually in terms of helping to
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streamline some of that because you obviously get you know you'll be getting funding from department and transport from Des from deal up is is there
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anything anything more they could do to kind of help make that a bit easier to coordinate well I I agree with shal's
30:06
sentiments earlier I I think that to deliver a low carbon transition will
30:11
require national government and local government to work handing glove I think we're starting to get there so desn
30:18
funding the net accelerator over the next two years and will work closely with us on the delivery of that accelerator and what the accelerator
30:24
will do is is look at bundling together projects to take toor market and in that process we're all hoping to learn from
30:32
the exercise what works and what doesn't work and we'll be able to share that experience with other local authorities
30:38
around the country so one of the benefits we have in Greater Manchester and West Midlands are in the same boat
30:45
is we also are negotiating a Devolution deal with central government looking at how we can devolve public finances from
30:51
national government to local and give local government more flexibility and more security over those finances and in
30:59
essence that's the key we need to unlock the challenge of how do you blend Finance because it's not just low carbon
31:05
funding which is being devolved it's also some Transport Funding some Brownville land funding some employment
31:11
work and skills funding so you start thinking about how you can bring forward not just low carbon projects but low
31:17
carbon projects which interact potentially with the transport system and how do you create Supply chains and
31:22
bring people into those Supply chains so that it's local people undertaking that work that suitably skilled up to benefit
31:29
from the green transition and help us towards growing the sector which will be
31:34
required to undertake the changes that I mentioned earlier that the number of
31:39
houses that need to be retrofit the number of heat pumps that need to be installed if we can get people who can
31:45
go into those good quality jobs to be trained up and deliver those jobs locally then it isn't just about
31:51
delivering low carbon it's about developing a good quality of life and hopefully a good living for the people
31:58
of Greater Manchester which has to be a win for everybody and that helps to bring people with us if they can see the benefit of transition to low carbon is
32:05
having on their lives and not just having the benefit on the environment then they'll be much more accepting of some of the changes that might need to
32:11
be made you asked about the national level Nicholas I think I completely Echo
32:17
what Mark said about the role of working together national and local level but there's another really really important
32:22
stakeholder the network operators but there is I think and spe specifically having lots of discussion internally
32:28
with steer transport Consultants who have been in the market for more than 20 years I think there's a lot of learning
32:34
from local transport plans where and rtbs so there are boundaries that rtbs work on Regional transport bodies that
32:40
could possibly help the rdsp is the new Regional energy strategic planners to at least understand what sort of challenges
32:47
they have seen in the end it's both infrastructure we're playing with long-term infrastructure and if you are attracting private sector investment
32:53
it's about investing into the pipes under the ground for example and the reason digal transport bodies have a lot
32:59
of experience from the last 20 years in establishing it so I think to be able to then FastTrack this process it's almost
33:05
how do we work together as a system and probably also bring those Consultants on both sides together to create the
33:12
momentum for happy communities as Mark said if people feel that yes it's bringing value to them it's fashionable
33:17
to drive any EV car Tesla but probably not as fashionable to have a heat BM or
33:23
connected to a heat Network so we probably need to combine the non fashionable and fash items together
33:28
doing it more valuable yeah I was listening to Mark talking about those kind of how you manage those Peaks and energy demand and do you try and
33:35
increase the capacity just to cater for those Peaks and know that's exactly exactly the challenge that we faced
33:41
maybe slightly less so postco but with with transport and you don't want to have roads that are wide enough just to
33:46
deal with those those Peak periods which are relatively short so yeah I think we're we're facing a lots of the same
33:52
challenges across different sectors and I think there's lots more that we could do to kind of share tools and techniques
33:57
and ways of thinking about these these challenges and how we tackle them a bit more collaboratively which is certainly
34:03
happening in Greater Manchester I want to come back a little bit and just touch on data because the layups are very
34:10
datadriven I'm guessing there's more data that you would ideally want to have to really improve your understanding of
34:16
how those systems are working and where the opportunities lay can you see any opportunities or any kind of gaps in
34:22
data Mark that you would you would love to be able to fill or are then any kind of new data sources which are starting
34:28
to give you different insights into the challenge where where where are you with data so when we developed the Lees gosh
34:36
it's probably the development phase was three and nearly four years ago now we had to do quite a lot of research to
34:42
bring together the best available data that we could get hold of so we
34:48
undertook a stock transition modeling of 1.2 million homes using you EPC data for
34:55
for public buildings we use display any certificate data we had a program called go neutral which looked at our public
35:01
buildings and land and analyzed them for the potential for on-site Renewables storage EV infrastructure charging we'd
35:08
been working with Bay as it was desz now on the heat Network development
35:14
feasibility studies under a program called City deep decarbonization we'd looked at work that you were probably
35:20
involved in nicad looking at tfg's work and studies on historic analysis of Av
35:25
infrastructure we looked at energy network data from the DNS and gnos and
35:30
we used National data sets so we all of this data needed to be pulled together and it was one of the more challenging
35:36
parts of developing their Labs my difficulty I think is that even though
35:42
we've used the best available data that data is constantly improving and so my question is well how do you keep the
35:48
labs up to date with the best available data I think that's a real challenge not just for greater Manchester but but for
35:54
anybody else going down this route so what we're working on at the moment moment is trying to understand how we
36:00
can visualize that data in a different way how can we keep the data regularly
36:05
updated rather than just doing another leap every 5 years which is the other way to do it it's perhaps the
36:10
traditional way to do it you put a plan in place and then you do it again in 5 years time you see what's changed what we really want is a live interactive
36:17
system that you can plug new data in as soon as it becomes available and then utilize that data not just to to
36:24
visualize what your system change might look like but also to be able to ask the whatif questions so if we put a heat
36:31
Network up here what does that mean in terms of our ability to be able to generate heat and utilize heat and maybe
36:37
expand the heat Network into a domestic setting over to the North or to the South so we're doing a little bit of
36:44
work with KPMG looking at how we can visualize the data using a digital twin
36:49
it's quite a light touch approach to begin with because we want to see how digital twins really will work and what
36:56
benefit they can offer to us but if it's successful then I think that's something
37:01
that we might well invest more in because I think it will save us money in the long term and I think what it will do is give us better information on
37:08
which to develop policy and make decisions that's great so sort of thinking about much more agile plan
37:14
making I I guess and particularly when you've got a car a finite carbon budget that you're working within being able to
37:20
kind of Monitor and evaluate that on a on an ongoing basis I guess is is really critical any any thoughts from you on
37:27
data opportunities and challenges chal without mentioning particular schemes
37:32
that I've worked on but yes data has been a challenge in especially if we look at domestic and non-domestic side
37:38
from energy perspective maybe transport slightly I think different and we can make assumptions there are places where
37:44
I think so we've got this geospatial commission the National Underground asset register which looks around subsurface area and I think there are
37:50
still opportunities of combining all those data sets to be able to find Value in the system also what we capture
37:57
through the geostationary satellites and I think there's lot of advancements have happened from data collection from space
38:03
agencies and satellite Communications and those that that sort of an industry sector but again we we need to do it
38:10
jointly and I think there is a whole need of collaborative working across those sectors to again share best
38:17
practice and also understand the value of combining the data another aspect and I think especially looking at some of
38:22
the project work which we've done recently in steer NCA realized that monitoring an evaluable ation almost
38:28
needs to be thought at the time of developing a process like L right this
38:33
is the Baseline this is where we want to be but during that process how am I
38:39
going to monitor am I reaching my wider outcomes the fuel poverty if suppos it's going to go down but then increase
38:45
because of another Factor how am I measuring it through the actions of progressing from the setting of the goal
38:51
to reaching of the goal air quality which is almost I think everyone's challenge skills development supply
38:57
chain development jobs growth I think there there are those wider outcomes which we all want but how do we Monitor
39:04
and evaluate it I think it it's part of data for me so it's not only at the point of collecting the data but how are
39:10
we going to be evaluating it almost comes together yeah and I think that's massively important isn't it for making
39:16
the case for future investment as well and I guess for persuading the decision makers the politicians that this is the
39:22
right thing to do and there are lots of wider benefits from these kind of improvements and I I kind of wanted to
39:28
touch briefly on maybe the political angle if if you're happy to go there just in terms of how how do we sell the
39:34
benefit not just of producing these plans but actually delivering them to our political leaders whether that's
39:40
locally or at a national level be great to hear hear your thoughts on that I think you know irrespective of the color
39:48
of the government of the day as a country we have signed up to legally
39:53
binding targets for carbon and as part of a global citizen we have a
39:59
responsibility I think to lead the way I also think though and you you'll hear many people say this that there is a
40:05
benefit in going first Sometimes I mean yes you you do trip over things because you you won't be doing things for the
40:11
first time but you also are right at the Forefront of innovation and you are able
40:17
to look for ways to do things differently which other people might benefit from and that does have an
40:24
economic benefit by which I mean you can look for opportunities to reduce the
40:30
cost or increase the efficiency of a given technology if you take it to a scale that it hasn't done before heat
40:35
pumps are a very good example we should be seeing in my view a reduced cost of heat pumps and an increased efficiency
40:41
of heat pumps as their uptake increases that's certainly what we're saying to the manufacturers that's what they need
40:47
to produce for us and that has a benefit in terms of understanding how you can
40:52
reduce the overall cost and increase the delivery through greater aggregation but
40:59
also how do you link together different Technologies so that it makes sense to deliver a local level so let me give you
41:06
an example it's one of my bug bars so forgive me if you want to retrofit your home if you want to make your home zero
41:12
carbon I don't nothing about your home Nicola but I'm let's assume it would probably require you to put insulation
41:19
in your home it would probably require you to put a heat pump or change out your heating system for one which is
41:25
lower carbon it will probably require you to have some form of Smart Energy System or management system in your home
41:31
and it'll probably require you to have some form of energy generation on your roof if your if your roof can take it
41:36
and each of those Technologies exist so we're not talking about anything that is unicorn blend all of these Technologies
41:42
exist but for you as a a homeowner to put those Technologies in place you'll have to go and negotiate with a whole
41:49
raft of different suppliers you'll have to make sure the technologies that you're selecting will talk together when
41:54
they do talk together that they will work with your energy supplier whoever that is and I think we need to get an awful lot smarter at that now to be
42:01
first some of the energy companies are already starting to offer this sort of service but that's where we need to get to we need to get to the point where
42:07
having a smart home and having a comfortable home and having an energy efficient home as Shivali said earlier
42:13
becomes something of a state ass symol it's something that people Aspire towards just as many people Aspire
42:18
towards having a conservatory and that adds value to their property we need to see this sort of transition to low
42:24
carbon homes as being something that people aspire to but also adds value to their property so that when they sell it on they feel like they're getting their
42:31
money back the money they've invested back and I think that becomes that becomes important but also it helps us
42:37
to sell this to our politicians because what you're then saying to to the politicians is well we're heading
42:43
towards greater autonomy of energy creating prosumers so we're heading towards a just transition you're
42:49
reducing the potential energy bills bills of the most vulnerable citizens we have your understanding how you can grow
42:56
the supply chain so that you can create those good quality jobs that I mentioned earlier so it becomes not just about
43:02
doing good for the environment it comes about creating a new system that
43:07
supports our economy and creates greater social well-being what isn't to like about that yeah I think that that's
43:13
really powerful isn't it and and it creates people who are more aware of how they're using energy and and perhaps
43:20
more conscious of that I mean the one thing I have done is put solar panels on and it's made me think completely differently about you know when I use
43:26
when I use my appliances obsessing over whether my batter's fill filling up and so on so I
43:33
have a completely different under level of understanding now of how much electricity I'm consuming at what time of day than I than I would have done
43:40
previously so I think all of these things just just kind of increase our Consciousness about about our own
43:45
personal impact I think Mark and you have given beautiful example and it sums it all but
43:52
I'll give in I'll give a very very recent example of what happened and that that has sort of stuck with me so at UK
43:58
Reef event I was at the canol stand and I was standing next to Nicole andan
44:03
anden and she was being congratulated and I I congratulated her for same but because she has recently been elected as
44:09
the police and crime commissioner for darbishire but my instant question to her was and maybe it's my naivity that
44:16
what was her role in UK Reef where we were all talking about clean energy decarbonization as a service how can we
44:22
bring scale and pace and when she answered to me I think it's all about the narrative she said she would like
44:28
investors to think about how they can invest into esgs and reduce crime by
44:33
offering more jobs and my instant question was yes that's that's really good and I think businesses do want to
44:40
give jobs and invest into it but what is in it for them and it was quite clear that if the investors invest into it and
44:47
the crime decreases of the area the property value increases so it's a direct return it was so beautiful of the
44:54
reduction of crime proportional to an investor turn which I hadn't thought about and it's all about The Narrative
45:00
of how all of us can get value from just doing the right things and doing our bid
45:05
to a wider social outcomes brilliant so yeah I think that brings home nicely the importance of thinking about these
45:11
things in a a much more integrated and holistic way everything that we're doing is interconnected and that it's so
45:16
important that we start to develop develop our plans in in that more more systems LED way so I think we're
45:23
probably coming to the end of our our conversation it's been great to talk to you both I'm going to slightly put you
45:29
on the spot with one last question which would be what what would
45:35
what would be your top priority for accelerating progress towards decarbonization let's say over the next
45:41
12 months like things that we could should be getting on with immediately Mark I'm sure you think about this all
45:46
the time but what would be top top of your list of priorities the next 12 months I think is
45:52
all about creating investment cases so some of the figures I I gave you earlier
45:57
are strategic figures and they're great but we need to take those down into
46:03
outline business cases that we can better understand the financial
46:08
viability of a package of these schemes so that we can understand what we can pitch to the market and whether that is
46:14
going to be attractive to the market and that will be key for us in the next 12 months and we are having conversations
46:21
with investors and the first question is well what does the pipeline look like and I think whilst we have a developing
46:27
pipeline understanding the Quantum of that and what the return of that pipeline might be is something that we
46:34
need to develop over the next 12 months a veteran standing up in the next 12 months also so that's my priority
46:40
brilliant thank you Mark chavali what would your top priority day for the next 12 months collaboration to Bringing
46:47
effective public private sector Partnerships for the outcome of happy communities I think that for me that
46:52
sums it all and it will get the right outcomes which will hopefully lead to the right outwards and correct inputs
46:58
brilliant that's great well thank you so much both of you for your time this afternoon we covered an awful lot of
47:04
grounds there given me lots of food food for S and great to hear the latest work
47:09
in Greater Manchester how that's progressing Mark yeah keep it up was fantastic thank you all very much
47:27
no
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