Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!
Start for free
00:00:00
00:00:01
#8 Sustainable cities: Manchester’s LAEP journey
112 Plays1 year ago
In the latest episode of Steer's Voices of the Industry podcast series Steer Director Nicola Kane is joined by Mark Atherton, Director of Environment at Greater Manchester Combined Authority, and Shivali Mathur of Amberside Advisors.
The episode delves into Local Area Energy Plans (LEAPs) and the role they play in helping local authorities take action on decarbonisation. The insightful discussion highlights the significant challenges and innovative solutions at play as Greater Manchester works towards its ambitious goal of becoming carbon neutral by 2038.
An essential guide to efforts to decarbonise at a local level, the episode shows that if local governments, private investors and the community come together ambitious climate goals can be met.
Key takeaways
- Local Area Energy Plans (LEAPs): Discover how LEAPs function as data-driven spatial planning tools that help local authorities map their energy use and create bespoke roadmaps to net zero.
- Investment strategies: The conversation covers the necessity of blending public and private finance to fund decarbonisation projects and the importance of creating robust business cases to attract investment.
- Collaborative approaches: The podcast emphasises the need for collaboration between local and national governments, private investors, and communities to effectively implement sustainable energy solutions.
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction to Podcast and Themes
00:00:08
Speaker
Hello and welcome to Voices of the Industry, a podcast series bringing you leading industry voices who challenge thinking across transportation, infrastructure and cities.
00:00:27
Speaker
Hi everyone, good afternoon. Thanks for tuning in to Steer's latest podcast episode.
Understanding Local Area Energy Plans (LAYPs)
00:00:32
Speaker
And today we're going to be discussing local area energy plans, or layups, which are rapidly great gaining traction as a way for local authorities to understand and take action on the opportunities for decarbonisation in their local areas. And layups are data-driven bottom-up approaches which allow authorities to map their energy use across their local area and to then create a bespoke roadmap to net zero that covers all aspects of energy from buildings, transport and local industry and helps to really get under the skin of the local needs and challenges within their local area.
Strategic Planning Challenges with Nicola Kane
00:01:08
Speaker
I'm Nicola Kane, I'm a director in STEER's Manchester office and prior to joining STEER I was head of strategic planning at Transport's Greater Manchester
00:01:16
Speaker
and responsible for leading Greater Manchester's long-term transport strategy development. And so I know all too well that developing great plans and strategies is one thing, putting them into action is another.
Introduction to Mark Hatterton and Greater Manchester's Environment Plan
00:01:28
Speaker
And so I'm delighted to be joined today by Mark Hatterton, who's Director of Environment at Greater Manchester Combined Authority, and has really been a pioneer in the use of local area energy plans. And Mark and I used to work quite closely together 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 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 your role, do you want to just say a few words about about your role and and maybe just highlight something you're particularly proud of that you've worked on since joining the Combined Authority?
00:02:03
Speaker
Sure, so my role as Director of Environment at the Combined Authority is really to work on behalf of the Mayor bringing together the 10 local authorities to look at how we deliver the Greater Manchester Five Year Environment Plan which was launched in 2019. And I very much frame it as how the combined authority works as one of the 10 local authorities to support those 10 local authorities to deliver their ambitions for net zero. Most of them have delivered quite a lot already in the last few years. They've all declared climate emergency and most of them biodiversity emergency as well. So if you're asking
00:02:37
Speaker
what am I most proud of? 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 people in my teams, who I think have really tried to understand how we can accelerate from where we are now to carbon neutral by 2038, which is the Greater Manchester Ambition. and and well I 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 little bit later. So if there was one thing, I think it's about capacity actually. When I first came into the role, the amount of resource that we had to put into tackling climate change was at the CA level, was relatively low. And over the last five years, bidding for successful projects and um and winning bids, we've built that capacity up so that we have more people, more technical detail and more capacity to be able to support those districts to do more. Brilliant and it'd be good to come back and talk a little bit about maybe some of that so joined up strategic planning because I know that's that's an area that Greater Manchester again has really been leading leading the way on so perhaps we can touch back on that later later in the conversation. Sure.
00:03:42
Speaker
Great. Thank you for joining us, Mark.
Insights from Shivali Mathur on Decarbonisation Efforts
00:03:44
Speaker
Also with us today is Shivali Mathur from Amberside Advisors, which is part of the STEER group. And Shivali joined Amberside at the end of last year and was previously in the Project Management Office of the Department of Energy, Security and Net Zero, or DESNERS as we like to call it. She's fresh from hosting our panel of experts at the Unlocking Decarbonisation event, which STEER ran at UK Wreath. So thank you for hosting that Shivali, it was a really good event. Do you want to tell us a little bit about you and also any key takeaways that you took from that decarbonisation panel that we ran? Thanks, Nicola. To be honest, on the UK Reef event, which happened a couple of weeks ago, one thing which it highlighted for me was the importance of collaboration. ah Mark mentioned about the teams and there is a whole i think emphasis on how public and private sectors need to work together.
00:04:33
Speaker
Not only to bring in the investment, but to share best practices and plan for net zero, the strategic planning part, as you said. So there was a whole theme running across different pavilions in UK reef. It also provided some insights on how can we accelerate decarbonization at base and scale. I think that deadline for our targets is not that far off now. and For me, Greater Manchester is one of the really good good examples in how to foster strategic partnerships, which was also another theme of UK Reef. Another one for Steering Ambersite I felt was market intelligence, apart from networking. There was a great emphasis on diversity and inclusion, which personally I do believe has a great impact on systems resilience. And if I'm honest, today I'm really honored to be here with
00:05:17
Speaker
Mark, my journey started off at GMC back in 2010 or 11 when we did the NEDO project. That was the first time I saw the power of collaboration between combined authority, local authorities, there were three local authorities working on it, on social housing project, and DNO. The DNO was involved and was a major stakeholder at the time, so my first smart city project. Brilliant. Well, it'd be great to maybe hear a bit more about that project through the conversation as well, Shivali. I think that was slightly before my time. 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 aren't familiar with the local area energy planning process.
The Role of LAYPs in Investment and Carbon Neutrality
00:05:54
Speaker
Mark, do you want to just kind of briefly explain what is a layout and how does it work? Sure.
00:06:00
Speaker
So, as you said, at the top of the program, layups are data-driven spatial collaborative planning tools to help unlock investment. And in our terms, what they really do is look at where we are now in terms of transport, built infrastructure and energy infrastructure. and look at where we need to be to get to carbon neutral by 2038 and they help help us to plot a course between now and our goal. It's a seven step process. First of all, you identify and engage your stakeholders. Then you look at setting an area of vision. so
00:06:33
Speaker
For us, Carbon Neutral 2038 are objectives and targets. You create an understanding of the local area energy system by looking at data and engaging with your partners. You investigate what the future local energy scenarios might look like, produce a local energy strategy, and then you you test it, lead some of the implementation, monitor, review it, and then you start all over again. Brilliant, so where where are you now in that process in in GM and are are they starting to actually deliver on the ground here? Yeah, so we produced our LEAPS about two years ago now. We have one for each district in Greater Manchester and we have Greater Manchester Plan which sums the 10 districts. And all of them have started delivering. We have programmes of activity looking at how we retrofit domestic properties, retrofit public buildings, look at how we install
00:07:26
Speaker
electric vehicle charging infrastructure, look at generating energy locally where we can make that work and look at things like heat networks, which are a little bit longer term, but more strategic, but highly important. And the idea behind the local energy energy plans is to almost understand how you can create a system on multi-vactor approach, which foresees how energy might be both used and generated in the future and how you can bring those two things together efficiently in effect. And by that, I mean the real purpose is to try and not leave ourselves without any white elephants, any stranded assets. So what we're trying to do is almost predict the future. Now, the energy system is moving so quickly, almost weekly, there's something that 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 the let-lapes come into their own, because what they allow you to do is plan for the immediate
00:08:18
Speaker
almost the no regret actions and you can start working on those so that you don't inadvertently invest in something that you might have been better leaving to a future date and all 10 districts in Greater Manchester are delivering on those plans and we're making good progress. We're still a long way away from our target and not gonna lie, a long way to go but we've laid a really firm foundation and and now I hope we'll be able to accelerate from here. That's brilliant. And were were there any kind of big new insights which came out of all that kind of data data analysis and engagement that you did? Yeah, the scale of the challenge was probably the biggest insight because we knew it was going to be difficult. But what the late process told us was that within the next five years, we need to try and retrofit something like 140,000 homes. We need to look at how we can generate nearly two gigawatts of renewable energy. We need to find enough charging infrastructure to support the implementation of nearly 200,000 electric vehicles on our roads.
00:09:16
Speaker
And we need to think about how we develop heat networks that could support 8,000 homes and 116,000 heat pumps. So there are big challenges and big delivery challenges over the next five years if we're going to try and keep on track to be carbon neutral by 2038. So the scale of the challenge came home to us because to put that into context, even with the work that we're doing at the moment, we're we're probably retrofitting or supporting the retrofits of around 7,000 homes a year. That's a long way away from what we need to, which is nearly 60,000 a year. really. However, I'm only counting in that the ones that we are involved in from a local authority perspective,
Challenges in Retrofitting and Renewable Energy
00:09:52
Speaker
obviously, householders all over the conservation are investing in their own property and it doesn't include those numbers, so we need to add those into the 140,000 target.
00:10:03
Speaker
Great. Shivali, I suppose you've been working at national levels through your previous role. but What's your perspective on how, I suppose, the role of national government in kind of supporting this acceleration towards net zero and decarbonisation? they wrong whichbel GM contributes to 3% from a heat perspective, so it's one of the biggest cities in that realm, and then Bristol is another one. The whole idea of layups being data-driven, especially, I think that's a good starting point, put into a zoning methodology software, and then it goes into refinement from towns and cities perspective, and then drill down.
00:10:37
Speaker
I think policies, regulations, the support coming from the central government it is helpful for the combined parties and local parties. On skills apply chain, so a lot of emphasis recently from PSDS perspective and also skills development has been drawn from designates as well, some schemes, but locally I've seen there has been, and especially working with grand Greater Manchester from years ago, a lot of emphasis on how can the skills and supply chain be built in in the regions itself. How can the 10 local authorities or districts upskill their own contractors to be able to deliver and look after the heat pumps in future? So I think national level and local level almost needs to work in tandem for the wider outcomes.
Social Housing Project Insights on Heat Pumps
00:11:20
Speaker
That's great. And do do you want to talk a bit more about that social housing case study? Because that sounds sounds really interesting. Oh, the NEDOK study. and that that's I think that was the first smart city project mark in the country. I would say the aggregation of 550 heat pumps.
00:11:34
Speaker
Greater Manchester was bold enough to put their three councils in in front and get the funding from Ministry of Japan. And in the first, I think it was first time ever, even and from a heat pump manufacturer perspective, we had seen aggregation at that level from social housing perspective. Catapult were indirectly, or EDI at the time, were involved. And it was the challenges which we saw were quite unique at the time. Community engagement, first of all, even to get a free heat pump in a property was a challenge to explain how it would work. The whole concept of low temperature radiators and radiators not being super hot at 70 degrees was another challenge. But I think working together, one of the learnings was working together with the councils for a manufacturer and for delivery contractors was key. One of the key learnings we saw from that project. So I think now that has become
00:12:26
Speaker
a gospel that everyone should involve communities. Second one was DNOs, so I remember that case of and Mark might be able to say that in details because I just attended one meeting on that one was sheltered housing. The project was also going almost going to stop at that point because DNOs mentioned about the constrained network and we had to find out other ways of doing so. Maybe Mark you can expand a little bit on Neto project. Yeah, so we were fortunate to get investment from the new energy demon demonstration organization of Japan, which as Shumali says is part of the Japanese government, into the tune of about 30 million. And the program lasted about four years, I think, eventually. It just kept going. And the whole purpose was to test the idea that you could shift demand for energy away from the peak times. So it was really about how do you unlock some of the constraints in the energy grid, by which I mean the electricity grid in particular has peak times in the morning and peak times in the evening.
00:13:23
Speaker
And in between those peak times, the demand for electricity is relatively low. So what we need to do as a society is either increase the capacity of the grid, which is incredibly expensive, or we need to shave the peaks off those peak times and smooth them out a little bit. So we allow the existing capacity to be more spread over at the dial per of the day. And that's really what the NATO project was about. It's about how do you get 550 heat pumps working in social homes across Greater Manchester to store heat at times when the demand on the grid was low and utilise that heat in the home when the demand on the grid was high. So you're taking demand off the grid.
00:14:08
Speaker
And it worked very well, but as Shivani correctly said, we probably learnt more about and citizen and community engagement and what it takes to take people on the journey to explain what a heat pump is. And not just that, but you have to try and dis but yeah understand what demand-side response is. and What we found ah was actually that the residents that just took the technology and let it be set up for them and let it run were highly satisfied. The satisfaction rating was like 70, 80% or more. But of course, yeah with any new technology, some people like to play with it a little bit. And what we found was least we'd set up the system so it would work at its optimal temperature or its optimal range.
00:14:49
Speaker
and then the resident would play with it a little bit or we had cases where some wires became dislodged and that stopped talking to the internet and there were all sorts of technical issues which we learnt from and it's absolutely right, you have to take you your communities with you on the journey and explain step by step what the technology is. how they benefit from it, what are the values they will get from it in a warm comfortable home with with lower heating bills but also it's almost like a plug and play you can you can almost let it take care of itself with a ah smart meter inside and it was I think valued as a ah a good learning experience as well as being a successful project for the residents that benefits from the technology.
00:15:27
Speaker
Nicola, can I just also link this to your ah first question on the local area plans? And it would be really interesting to hear from Mark on that side. Completely agree on the seven stage process, Mark, and I think Catapult's defined those processes quite nicely and neatly. Where I feel, and this is probably a personal opinion on the layups, there is a gap on delivery and also being slightly static. Yet, yes, they give the immediate actions from from no regret options perspective. But that part of community engagement, the place-based solutions from the whole behavior change perspective on how do we bring in that and especially the complex challenge of combined authority where 10 districts or 10 local authorities have to be brought together from their diverse approaches. Do you think does it lay up would work for others? So I think GM has done it in a very different way ah and successfully. But for others nationally, do you think that could work?
00:16:19
Speaker
I see no reason why not. I think you're right to point out the complexities of working across 10 local areas, but we work very closely with those areas in Greater Manchester and you also benefit from the interaction between the districts talking to each other about their challenges and their successes. So they learn from each other, but they also share each other's burdens when things don't go as well or as planned. So i I think what the late process does is give you a common understanding of the energy system across 10 districts. It puts it all on the same plane so you can understand how your district varies from a different district next to maybe a neighboring district.
00:16:59
Speaker
And also what it helps you to do is look at the interrelationships between those districts. So if we want to take forward a large retrofit program, let's say, if we do it across 10 districts, we can get economies of scale, we can look at demand, we can look at aggregation of procurement of those technologies that hopefully reduce the cost. You can look at the different ways that you can engage your citizens and learning from what other people have done, what's been more successful, what's been less successful. So i I would probably advocate LAPES being shared across a wider geography than just one local authority area. But I see no reason why they wouldn't work in every local authority. I think they probably will work better in urban locations, perhaps over rural, because I think rural local authorities have
00:17:43
Speaker
different and in some ways challengingd more challenging aspects to decarbonize. In urban conurbation where you've got high concentrations of people and high concentrations of energy use, whilst you're scaled the scale of your challenge is bigger, you have everything that you need to be able to bring the solution in one place. So really it's just about convincing people to go on that journey with you. So just maybe just thinking a little bit about that kind of joined up planning. And again, this is you know something that Greater Manchester has really led the way on. Do you want to talk a bit, Mark, about some of the strategic planning that's been going on around infrastructure more generally, perhaps work on places for everyone plan, which covers covers all aspects of planning and maybe some of the structures you've put in place to help improve collaboration between the different stakeholders that will actually be responsible for delivering all of this new infrastructure and working towards net zero.
00:18:34
Speaker
Yeah, sure. So Places for Everyone is the name of the Basial Plan that has just been approved that covers nine of the 10 districts. Stockport decided to to go do their own thing. And as you say, it's a planning tool that covers not just energy, but the wider planning system. And that gives us a good framework again for embedding some of the late proposals into a wider planning policy framework. What it also does is ah give us a ah common base from which we can understand how some of the more challenging infrastructure pieces, you know, heat networks, for example, can be quite disruptive within the physical environment.
Integrating Energy Plans into Policy Frameworks
00:19:14
Speaker
So it helps us to understand how those sorts of disruptions can be minimized or can be done at the same time as other forms of utility development to try and a reduce costs, but also reduce disruption to residents.
00:19:27
Speaker
We have a strategic infrastructure board that's been set up for a few years now that includes our DNOs, and u took United Utilities, the Water Undertaker, some of the regulatory bodies and obviously the local authorities in GMCA yeah and that's really there to try and look for synergies to understand how in planned investment over the next plan period, ED period. what each of the utility undertakers is planning to do and whether they can be aligned and whether we can minimise the disruption that that might cause. As I said, just to reduce costs where we can but also to reduce disruption for citizens. I should have mentioned actually that the DNO, our electricity north-west is our electricity DNO.
00:20:08
Speaker
have been heavily involved in the development of our local energy plans as has Cadent which is our guest you know and have been very supportive right from the very beginning so the very first leap that was produced was in Bury one of our districts and it was a pilot and it only looked at heat and it was part of a program called smart systems and heat which is funded by Bays at the time and was led by the energy systems catapult And it was the forerunner of the the late process. It was the test and trial to see how these things worked. And then when we'd completed that piece of work ah with the DNA, we said, well, this is great, but we can't just look at one vector. It can't just be heat. We've got to look at multivectors and multi-instructed types because the interrelationship between
00:20:51
Speaker
transport infrastructure, energy infrastructure, built infrastructure. As we decarbonise, those three infrastructure types become ever more interrelated and ever more complex in how they utilise energy. And so you need to look at each of those three infrastructure types. I'd probably throw a natural environment in there as the fourth infrastructure type, which effects has effect on cooling. The plans allow you to align those and understand how a systemic approach can be adopted. Brilliant. That's great. Thank you, Mark. We've sort of touched a little bit on some of the delivery challenges. I guess one of the big topics at UK Reef was around investment and and financing of that energy transition.
Financing Energy Transition: Public vs Private Roles
00:21:27
Speaker
How do we actually make this happen and around developing robust business cases and so on? It'd be 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 the the things we'll need to actually make this transition happen.
00:21:42
Speaker
So the other benefit of local area energy plans is that once you've identified your pathway and decided what pathway you're going to go with, it allows you to cost on what the transition might look like. Now in Greater Manchester, if you sum all of our 10 local energy plans together, We estimate through a strategic outline business case that to get from where we are now to carbon neutral by 2038 will cost something like 64 billion pounds. And that sounds like a lot of money and of course it is a lot of money. But it's important to recognize that 70% of that 64 billion would have been spent anyway under business as usual. So what you're looking at is something like 19 billion pounds increase in the cost, which again is quite substantial.
00:22:26
Speaker
And that can be broken down by ah about £11bn operational cost and and rest is sorry capital cost is £52bn and the operational cost is £11bn. But and if you take away the business as usual, then you're left with about £19bn. Of that £19bn, we think about £12.5bn is within the influence of local authorities. And that means that we you look at the asset classes that the combined authority and the local authorities have some influence over, which would include things like generation storage, social housing retrofit, public building retrofit, heat networks and electric vehicle charging. Those five asset classes, we don't control or own in many instances, but we have some ability to be able to influence them.
00:23:11
Speaker
And what we're trying to do now, and this is our next step, is work out how we can fund those asset classes by blending public finance that's available. um We've been quite successful in getting national government grant with available ah local public grant, public funding. With then private finance and we are in the process now over the next two years of working with desners as what they call a net zero accelerator ourselves and west middle is combined authority of the two accelerators or trailblazers that they've been working with.
00:23:44
Speaker
to understand how we can bring forward billions of pounds worth of projects to be able to take to market and blend that with other forms of finance to create viable and deliverable investments in decarbonising our city region. So leaps also allow you to start planning for how you finance some of these transitions. And presumably they make that investment more credible to people who are looking to come into a city region like Greater Manchester. You've done your homework, Yes, certainly. and And I think also we recognize that the public sector may need to take some of the early risk to encourage the private sector to come through. But we've had some really positive discussions from pension funds and other investment organizations who are genuinely keen to invest in low carbon solutions.
00:24:32
Speaker
but need to be provided with surety that they've got long term pipeline of projects that are viable, investable and will create a return. yeah Nobody's going to do it for free sadly. So we do need to create projects that will generate a return on investment. The benefits of taking local energy plan approach is that different projects will have different return values by taking them as a bundle or a package you're able to bring together projects which are highly desirable but with projects which are perhaps less desirable and create a blended approach so that what you don't end up with is companies investing in the low hanging fruit or the prize apples on that low hanging fruit and leaving the higher hanging fruit which nobody wants which become more
00:25:18
Speaker
difficult to invest in in the future. So it's a blended approach to 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 project pipelines, wasn't investment pipelines, wasn't there? Chevalley at the UK Reef events. I don't know if you've got anything else you want to add to that topic. but I think from a private finance perspective, I echo what Mark said that, yes, there are lots of pension funds, infrastructure funds, institutional investors, In fact, even utility companies in this area would like to invest into similar projects and the asset glasses, as Mark mentioned. But these asset glasses like heat networks or solar wind generation or be public sector buildings and EV charging, as you know, they the risk profile is quite different. And it's that next step after layups. So layups, they present data for me at a very high level.
00:26:06
Speaker
but the project origination is often hyper-local. So it's that blend of how do we categorize the risk of a heat network project against a public sector building. I think the risk is pretty much low in a public sector decarvest because the political will is there, local will is there, there are probably public funds and a heat network there, you have different risks involved in it. Maybe charging is a different risk profile. So it's mapping the risks to the asset classes for the investors. and matching it to their appetites. It's almost creation of an investor prospectus, which was again another theme in the UK race. And there was a question from one of the one of the audience in the in our own panel where they asked that, would it be useful for local authorities to have an investor prospectus ready for the investors? That which asset class provides what sort of return and what risk level? So it's easier for them to just choose and we had Andrew Fariman from Aviva investors as well.
00:27:01
Speaker
with a similar thought process. So really, really keen, I think, to take that next step. And I and and i don think that Greater Manchester is already looking at testing the assumptions of the strategic OBC and take it to the next level before the DPS is ready on the net-zero accelerator. So is that bridging the gap from layups to delivery for the investors? And I guess one of the other challenges around delivery is how you bring all these different programs of activity together. So you're not digging up the same street, you know, a year apart to put in a heat network or to put in a cycle lane or to install EV charges or or whatever it might be.
00:27:36
Speaker
Have you had any thoughts about that in Greater Manchester in terms of how you bring these different programmes of investment that all have to happen probably over the next five to ten years? But delivering those in ah in a kind of integrated way is going to be quite challenging. I don't know how how you're thinking about those challenges. Yeah, we're working quite closely with other utility providers to try and map out what their investment decisions are for the next few years. It's quite difficult to match some of those things up, but it is possible in certain areas.
00:28:06
Speaker
Because obviously we we want to try and reduce the costs and and minimize disruption. I think it almost comes down to a project by project basis. And so and let's take heat networks, for example, we have five heat networks that are approaching detailed design. It's only once those get to the point where you know that they're economically viable that you can start talking to other utility providers about what their course might be, what the capital works might might be involved in bringing those heat networks together, and whether they have similar types of of capital works that 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 outside of the sphere of energy, we've, for example, we
00:28:50
Speaker
developed an integrated water management plan with the United Utilities and the environment agency that looks at how do we potentially co-invest in areas to both 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 ah on a case-by-case basis, I think. i I do think that there is more to be done in aligning different types of funding for different types of asset class by which, I mean, if if we're going to generate more renewable energy in Greater Manchester, The biggest opportunity by far is through solar PV, largely rooftop mounted. And whilst we're doing quite a lot of work in the public sector estate, there's no reason why the private sector a estate couldn't also undertake that same sort of activity. So the question in my mind is, well, how can we potentially 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 and explore as well as part of the Netzera Accelerator over the next few years.
00:29:47
Speaker
and And do you think there's any role that national government can play? This may be a question for both of for you, actually, in terms of helping to streamline some of that, because you' get you know you'll be getting funding from the Department of Transport, from Desner's, from DEALUP. Is is there anything anything more they could do to kind of help make that a bit easier to coordinate? Well, I agree with Chevalley's sentiments earlier. I think that to deliver a low carbon transition will require national government and local government to work hand in glove. I think we're starting to get that. So there's no funding the next year accelerator of the next two years and we'll work closely with us on the delivery of that accelerator and what the accelerator will do is is look at bundling together projects to take to market.
00:30:28
Speaker
And in that process, we're all hoping to learn from the exercise, what works and what doesn't work, and we'll be able to share that experience with other local authorities around the country. So one of the benefits we have in Greater Manchester and West Midlands are in the same boat, is we also are negotiating a devolution deal with central government, looking at how we can devolve public finances from national government to local and give local government more flexibility and more security over those finances and in essence that's the key we need to unlock the challenge of how do you blend finance because it's not just low carbon funding which is being devolved it's also some transport funding some brownfield land funding some employment work and skills funding so you start thinking about how you can bring forward not just low carbon projects but low carbon projects which
00:31:18
Speaker
interact potentially with the transport system and how do you create supply chains and bring people into those supply chains so that it's local people undertaking that work that suitably skilled up to benefit from the green transition and help us towards growing the sector which will be required to undertake the changes that I mentioned earlier that the number of houses that need to be retrofit, the number of heat pumps that need to be installed. If we can get people who can go into those good quality jobs to be trained up and deliver those jobs locally then it isn't just about delivering low carbon it's about developing a good quality of life and hopefully a good living for the people 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 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 be made.
00:32:13
Speaker
You asked about the national level, Nicola, so I think I completely echo what Mark said about the role of working together, national and local level. But there's another really, really important stakeholder, the network operators. But there is, I think, and specifically is having lots of discussions internally with steer transport consultants who have been in the market for more than 20 years. I think there is a lot of learning from local transport plans and RTBs. So there are boundaries that RTBs work on, regional transport bodies that could possibly help the RDSB is the new regional energy strategic planners to at least understand what sort of challenges 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, it's about investing into the pipes and to the ground, for example. And the regional transfer bodies have a lot of experience from the last 20 years in establishing it. So I think to be able to then fast track this process, it's almost how do we work together as a system and probably also bring those consultants on both sides together to to create the momentum for happy communities, as Mark said. If people feel that, yes, it's bringing value to them, it's fashionable to drive an EV car, Tesla, but probably not as fashionable to have a heat pump or connected to a heat network. So we probably need to combine the non fashionable and fashionable items together to make it more valuable.
00:33:30
Speaker
Yeah, I was listening to Mark talking about this, kind of how you manage those peaks in energy demand and do you try and increase the capacity just to cater for those peaks? and No, that's exactly exactly the challenge that we faced, maybe slightly less so post-COVID, but with transport and you don't want to have roads that are wide enough just to deal with those those peak periods, which are relatively short. So yeah, I think we're we're facing a loss of the same challenges across different sectors and I think there's lots more that we could do to kind of share tools and techniques and ways of thinking about these these challenges and and how we tackle them a bit more collaboratively, which is certainly happening in Greater Manchester.
Data Challenges in LAYPs and Need for Visualization
00:34:05
Speaker
I wanted to come back a little bit and just touch on data because the layups are very data-driven. I'm guessing there's more data that you would ideally want to have to really improve your understanding of how those systems are working and where the opportunities lay. Can you see any opportunities or any kind of gaps in data, Mark, that you would you would love to be able to fill or are there any kind of new data sources which are starting to give you different insights into the challenge? Where where where are you with data? So when we developed the LAPES, probably the developments phase was three and nearly four years ago now, we had to do quite a lot of research to bring together the best available data that we could get a hold of. So we undertook a stock condition modeling of 1.2 million homes using yeah EPC data for for public buildings. We used display and certificate data.
00:34:58
Speaker
We had a program called Go Neutral which looked at our public buildings and land and analyzed them for the potential for on-site renewables, storage, ABM structure charging. We'd been working with Bays as it was, Desnes now, on the heat network development feasibility studies under a program called City Deep Decarbonisation. We'd looked at work that you were probably involved in, Nicola, looking at TFTM's work and studies on historic analysis of ABM structure. We looked at energy network data from the DNOs and GNOs and we used national data sets. So we all of this data needed to be pulled together and it was one of the more challenging parts of developing their labes. My difficulty I think is that even though we've used the best available data that data is constantly improving and so my question is well how do you keep the labes up to date with the best available data?
00:35:51
Speaker
I think that's a real challenge, not just for Greater Manchester, but ah but for anybody else going down this route. So what we're working on at the moment is trying to understand how we can visualize that data in a different way. How can we keep the data regularly updated rather than just doing another leap every five years, which is the other way to do it. It's perhaps the traditional way to do it. You put a plan in place and then you do it again in five years time, you see what's changed. What we really want is a live interactive system that you can plug new data in as soon as it becomes available and then utilize that data, not just to and visualize what your um system change might look like, but also to be able to ask the what-if questions. So if we put a heat network over here, what does that mean in terms of our ability to be able to generate heat and utilize heat and maybe expand the heat network into a domestic setting over ah to the north or to the south? So so we're we're doing a little bit of work
00:36:44
Speaker
with KPMG, looking at how we can visualize the data using a digital twin. It's quite a light touch approach to begin with because we want to see how digital twins really will work and what benefit they can offer to us. But if it's successful, then I think that's something 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 which to develop policy and make decisions. That's great. so So thinking about much more agile plan making, I guess, and particularly when you've got a car a finite carbon budget that you're working within, being able to kind of monitor and evaluate that on a on an ongoing basis, I guess, is is really critical. and Any thoughts from you on data?
00:37:28
Speaker
of the changes and challenges. chevale Without mentioning particular schemes that I've worked on, but yes, data has been a challenge, and especially if we look at domestic and non-domestic side. From energy perspective, maybe transport's likely, I think, different and we can make assumptions. There are places where I think, so we've got the Geospatial Commission, the National Underground Asset Register, which looks around subsurface area. And I think there are still opportunities of combining all those data sets to be able to find value in the system. Also what we capture through the geostationary satellites. And I think there are a lot of advancements that have happened from data collection from space agencies and satellite communications and those that that's sort of an industry sector.
00:38:08
Speaker
But again, we we need to do it jointly. And I think there is a whole need of collaborative working across those sectors to, again, share best practice and also understand the value of combining the data. Another aspect, and I think, especially looking at some of the project work which we've done recently in Steer, Nicola, I've realized that monitoring and evaluation almost needs to be thought at the time of developing a process like layer. Right, this is the baseline. This is where we want to be. But during that process, how am I going to monitor? Am I reaching my wider outcomes? The fuel poverty, if suppose it's going to go down, but then increase because of another factor, how am I measuring it through the actions of progressing from the setting of the goal to reaching of the goal? Air quality?
00:38:53
Speaker
which is almost, I think, everyone's challenge, skills, development, supply chain development, jobs, growth. I think there're there are those wider outcomes, which we all want. But how do we monitor and evaluate it? I think it's part of data for me. So it's not only at the point of collecting the data, but how are we going to be evaluating it almost comes together. though Yeah, and I think that's massively important, isn't it, for making the case for future investment as well, and I guess for persuading the decision makers, the politicians that this is the right thing to do, and there are lots of wider benefits from these kind of improvements.
00:39:27
Speaker
and And I kind of wanted to touch briefly on maybe the political angle, if you're happy to go there, just in terms of how how do we sell the benefit, not just of producing these plans, but actually delivering them to our political leaders, whether that's locally or at a national level. It'd be great to hear your thoughts on that. I think irrespective of the colour of the government of the day, as a country we have signed up to legally binding targets for carbon and as part of a global citizen we have a responsibility I think to lead the way.
00:40:01
Speaker
I also think, though, and you'll you'll hear many people say this, that there is a benefit in going first sometimes. I mean, yes, you you do trip over things because you're doing things for the first time, but you also are right at the forefront of innovation and you are able to look for ways to do things differently, which other people might benefit from. And that does have an economic benefit. By which I mean, you can look for opportunities to reduce the cost or increase the efficiency of a given technology if you take it to a scale that it hasn't done before. Heat pumps are a very good example. yeah we We should be seeing, in my view, a reduced cost of heat pumps and an increase to efficiency of heat pumps as their uptake increases. That's certainly what we're saying to the manufacturers, and that's what they need to produce for us. And that has a benefit in terms of
00:40:50
Speaker
understanding how you can reduce the overall cost and increase the delivery through greater aggregation, but also how do you link together different technologies so that it makes sense to deliver at a local level. So let me give you 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 carbon, I know nothing about your home, Nicola, but let's assume it would probably require you to put insulation in your home. It would probably require you to put a heat pump or change out your heating system for one which is lower carbon. It will probably require you to have some form of smart energy system, non-management system in your home. And it'll probably require you to have some form of energy energy generation on your roof if you're if your roof can take it.
00:41:36
Speaker
And each of those technologies exist, so we're not talking about anything that is unicorn land. All of these technologies exist. But for you as ah a homeowner to put those technologies in place, you'll have to go and negotiate with a whole raft of different suppliers. you'll have to make sure the technologies that you're selecting will talk together. When they do talk together, that they will work with your energy supply, whoever that is. And I think we need to get an awful lot smarter at that. Now, to be fair, 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 having a smart home and having a comfortable home and having an energy efficient home, as Shivali said earlier, becomes something of a status symbol. It's something that people aspire towards, just as many people aspire towards having a conservatory.
00:42:20
Speaker
and that adds value to their property. We need to see this sort of transition to low-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 money back, the money they've invested back. And I think that becomes ah becomes important, but also it helps us to sell this to our politicians because what you're then saying to the politicians is, well, We're heading towards greater autonomy of energy, creating prosumers, so we're heading towards a just transition. You're reducing the potential energy bills, bills of the most ah vulnerable citizens we have. You're understanding how you can grow the supply chain so that you can create those good quality jobs that I mentioned earlier. So it becomes not just about doing good for the environment, it comes about creating a new system that supports our economy and creates greater social wellbeing. What isn't to like about that?
00:43:13
Speaker
Yeah, I think that that's really powerful, isn't it? and And it creates people who are more aware of how they're using energy and and perhaps 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 when i use my appliances, obsessing over whether my battery's filling up and so on. So I have a completely different and level of understanding now of how much electricity I'm consuming and what time of day than i than I would have done previously. So I think all of these things just just kind of increase our consciousness about about our own personal impact.
00:43:47
Speaker
I think Mark and you have given beautiful example, and it sums it all. But I'll give i'll give a very, very recent example of what happened, and that that has sort of stuck with me. So at the UK Reef event, I was at the catapult stand, and I was standing next to Nicole Endeveni, and she was being congratulated. And I i congratulated her for saying, because she has recently been elected as the police and crime commissioner for Derbyshire. but My instant question to her was, and maybe it's my naivety, that what was her role in UK Reef, where we we're all talking about clean energy, decarbonisation as a service, how can we bring scale and pace? And when she answered to me, I think it's all about the narrative. She said she would like investors to think about how they can invest into ESGs and reduce crime by offering more jobs.
00:44:35
Speaker
And my answer in question was, yes, that's that's really good. And I think businesses do want to 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 the crime decreases of the area, the property value increases. So it's a direct return. It was so beautiful of the reduction of crime proportional to an investor return. which I hadn't thought about, and it's all about the narrative of how all of us can get value from just doing the right things and doing our bit towards the wider social outcomes. Brilliant. So yeah, I think that brings home nicely the importance of thinking about these things in a ah much more integrated and holistic way. Everything that we're doing is interconnected and that it's so important that we start to develop develop our plans in in that more systems-led way.
Priorities for Accelerating Decarbonisation
00:45:22
Speaker
So I think we're probably coming to the end of our conversation. It's been great to talk to you both. I'm going to slightly put you on the spot with one last question, which would be, what what would what would be your top priority for accelerating progress towards decarbonisation? Let's say over the next 12 months, like things that we could should be getting on with immediately. Mark, I'm sure you think about this all the time, but what would be top of your list of priorities? The next 12 months, I think, is all about creating investment cases. So some of the figures I ah gave you earlier are strategic figures, and they're great. But we need to take those down into outline business cases that we can better understand the financial viability of a package of these schemes so that we can understand what we can pitch to the market and whether that is going to be attracted to the market. And that will be key for us in the next 12 months.
00:46:19
Speaker
And we are having conversations with investors and their first question is, well, what does the pipeline look like? And I think whilst we have a developing pipeline, understanding the quantum of that and what the return of that pipeline might be is something that we need to develop over the next 12 months, a veteran standing up in the next 12 months or so. So that's my priority. Brilliant. Thank you, Mark. Shivali, what would your top priority be? For the next 12 months, collaboration to bringing effective public-private sector partnerships for the outcome of happy communities. I think that, for me, that sums it all and can get the right outcomes, which will hopefully lead to the right outputs and correct inputs.
00:46:58
Speaker
Brilliant. That's great. Well, thank you so much, both of you, for your time this afternoon. We've covered an awful lot of ground there, given me lots of food food for sort, and great to hear the latest work in Greater Manchester, how that's progressing, Mark. Yeah, keep us up. It's fantastic. Thank you all very much.
00:47:34
Speaker
Bye!