LA-LA lands getting there first?
UK100 recently published its Local Net Zero Progress Reports. The Green Edge listened in on the launch event.
There are more than 2.7 million jobs across England for workers who already have the skills we need to reach Net Zero. These are workers likeĀ builders, plumbers, engineers, electricians, designers, coordinators and carpenters, all vital for building the infrastructure of a green economy. With the right kind of public investment, these good green jobs will be in high demandĀ as we move to a low carbon economy.
And the ambition and active involvement of local leaders across the country is central to getting there, ensuring the job opportunities and economic benefits come to their communities.
Source: https://www.uk100.org/
For Green Edge readers who arenāt already aware, the UK100 is, in its own words, āa network of highly ambitious local government leaders, which seeks to devise and implement plans for the transition to clean energy that are ambitious, cost effective and take the public and business with themā. Established in 2016 by former BBC journalist and Labour parliamentary candidate Polly Billington, UK100 currently lists over 100 local authorities (LAs) - mostly English but with some notable members from the devolved regions like Cardiff, Edinburgh and Glasgow City Councils - that have pledged to shift their communities to net zero ahead of the governmentās legal target.
One of UK100ās major recent publications is its series of Local Net Zero Delivery Progress Reports (July 2022), the key finding of which is that local government ambition is not being mirrored or adequately enabled at the national level, and urgent attention is needed to support local leaders to deliver net zero. Not a totally new message perhaps, but an important one nonetheless: as we described in our recent post on Liverpool City Region (LCR), with a Government that does not seem prepared to offer much in the way of long-term, non-competitive funding, LAs are asking themselves how they can get to the front of the queue and are finding themselves deploying valuable resources to bid-writing rather than actually getting the net zero job done.
The Green Edge listened in recently on the online launch event for the aforementioned Local Net Zero Delivery Progress Reports. With a speaker panel that included representatives from the Environment Audit Committee, the councils of West Yorkshire, Wiltshire, Cornwall, Bath and North East Somerset - oh, and Andy Burnham himself - the launch delivered a few key messages to sit alongside the reports. We list the launch messages below; as for the rest, you can find the detailed reports here1. Thereās also a (handy) Executive Summary, from which we extract the following list of whatās missing right now (click to enlarge):
Source: UK100
Messages from the Launch
LAs need long term, guaranteed support
Government needs to move from its fixation on contested funding and beauty competitions to allocate funds to core activities, and bring funding in line with a change in roles and responsibilities to deliver net zero at local levels.
Collaboration and co-operation is key
No single organisation can deliver without co-operating and working in partnership with others, creating new agencies and bodies that cut across historic geographic boundaries and link national strategy with local policy delivery.
There needs to be a new scheme of delegation
Given the breadth and complexity of the solutions needed to deliver net zero, there needs to be a major shift between local and national government in who does what. During the launch, Tracy Brabin, Mayor of West Yorkshire described how that would work for the skills system.
Constraints need to be surfaced
As solutions are devised and worked through, new constraints will be discovered and will need to be tackled in a way that keeps responsibility and capability to respond as close to the issue as possible.
Learning needs to be pooled
With so many local solutions being pursued, active collecting and sharing of knowledge needs to be done in a formal, co-ordinated way, through a cross-department/cross-level type body with clear authority to respond to learnings.
Green Edge comment: perhaps we need an Education Endowment Fund for green skills and green solutions funded by the sponsoring departments of the Green Jobs Delivery Group?
Complex problems need systems-based solutions
Achieving net zero is complex, requiring a systems-based approach by local leaders and officers to remove inconsistencies and wasted effort.
This is not a new message: weāve posted on it several times. But how many governmental groups - both nationally and locally - are skilling up to make this happen? Weād love to know.
There must be no compromise with Nature
Conserving and re-conceiving the full value of Nature in achieving net zero is critical and not something that can continue to live in the margins. Nature needs to be actively built into planning systems and development processes, and aligned with net zero targets.
No more missed opportunities
All new investments must be ānet zero-proofedā and not subject to sub-optimal decisions. For example, all new-build houses must be made to net zero standards from the get-go, rather than being subject to retrofitting later.
As a rather disappointing aside: since the Climate Change Committee was established under the Climate Change Act in 2008, around 1.3 million new homes have either been built or have gained planning permission without Net Zero being part of their design or even a requirement of the standards under which they were built.
Trade-based solutions
New approaches could be taken to access private funding for public projects as a form of offsetting. For example, to help a public asset perform a significant net zero role, it could be partially allocated to a private enterprise as a way of reducing its carbon emissions.
Local authorities as change agents
As local stakeholders are brought together, local authorities have a major role to play in building and managing alliances and partnerships.
Clean air = net zero
While a focus on reducing carbon emissions is crucial, so is the need to take out NO2, methane and particulates. But hereās an important point: by tackling the former, we achieve the latter (and vice-versa).
This links strongly with net zero transport policies of the type being drawn up for places like Bath and London.
Net zero = growth, productivity and equitable prosperity
If the economy is focusing on a growth path, make that a green path. There is no trade off between growth and green. Bringing the two together provides a measure of coherency to central government strategies around levelling-up, productivity growth, and net zero.
Bigger can be better - sometimes
Recently, some of our biggest insights have come from collating the local skills reports from the Skills Advisory Panels. Our immediate observation is this: while larger, combined local authorities with increased autonomy may not be the answer to every local government issue, they do deliver more coherent skills agenda. We see this most notably across metropolitan districts, city regions and combined authorities. Not only does a simpler structure help, it also enables more resources to be deployed to tackle issues around skills and link policy with realisable net zero actions.
In The Green Edgeās view, this calls for the application of socio-technical design principles and for some relearning of how we put together organisations to deliver policy.
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If you wish to delve deeper into the reports discussed in this post, we recommend you read them alongside the UK100 report on local authority contributions to net zero. This report notes that for the 333 English LA bodies - county councils, district councils, unitary authorities, metropolitan districts, and London boroughs - only 193 were found to have relevant emissions data. This doesnāt necessarily mean the others werenāt progressing their net zero agenda, of course, but it does mean that without accessible data, itās difficult to measure progress.