Over 300 UK councils have declared a climate emergency, but how can they attract the low carbon businesses they need? Katherine Burden lifts the lid on the councils leading the way.
Councils have a huge role to play in the transition to a thriving, net zero economy. Experts have concluded that empowering solutions at the local level is pivotal if the UK is to have any hope of meeting its looming climate deadlines, and local authorities hold many of the levers to making this possible.
We also know that council areas with the most established and capable local supply chains for low carbon goods and services stand to benefit the most, by ensuring public and private investment in net zero stays within the local economy.
So how should councils go about growing a strong low carbon business base and which ones are already leading the way?
Green Economy was recently commissioned by the Local Government Association (LGA) to answer this very question. We looked at what 30 councils across the UK are doing and identified key areas of best practice – including those taken in council areas that have recently been named in the UK’s top 20 ‘net zero hotspots’ such as Greater Manchester, Nottingham and Cambridgeshire.
Formal Climate Action Plans (CAPs) are now a common document on council websites. A good CAP includes a clear net zero target, SMART goals and a focus on both the council’s own estate and the wider local area, but it should also be easily accessible to businesses wanting to understand their council’s commitments.
Potential investors, innovators and suppliers of low carbon goods and services should be able to read a council’s CAP and be reassured that they are in the right location to maximise their impact.
However, our research found that most councils don’t yet have a good understanding of the scope and scale of their low carbon business base, which is likely to result in missed opportunities to capture the full benefits of the net zero transition.
A great example of a local authority bucking that trend is Hackney Council. Hackney’s CAP sets a target to double the size of its low carbon business base and highlights the economic opportunities for low carbon businesses in each of the plan’s core focus areas.
Integrating climate commitments into wider council strategies is also important. For instance, procurement strategies can be used to leverage a council’s purchasing power to increase demand for local low carbon goods and services.
Manchester City Council is an early leader in this field. To drive greater use of low carbon suppliers, the council has started to apply a minimum 30 per cent social and environmental value weighting on all tender evaluations.
Integrating climate into planning and economic development strategies is another area of best practice. For example, South Cambridgeshire District Council’s ‘Green to the Core’ strategy brings planning policy into the mix by committing to promote net zero developments and more sustainable travel. Greater Manchester’s inward investment agency, MIDAS, has updated its key performance indicators (KPIs) to prioritise projects that attract foreign-owned low carbon businesses, thereby ensuring regional investment is aligned with the city region’s carbon neutral ambitions.
Councils have an crucial role to play in demonstrating climate leadership in their local area, for example by investing in flagship decarbonisation projects or championing climate action among local businesses more generally.
Many councils participate in innovative demonstrator projects, often on their own public estate, as well as access national funding to decarbonise public sector and residential buildings in their area. However, this only translates into opportunities for local businesses if councils engage directly with their local supply chain.
To quickly mobilise projects in tight timeframes, councils often draw from existing supplier frameworks which typically lead to the appointment of large national contractors. These contractors are not usually required to engage with local businesses and this is something Green Economy is working hard to tackle.
For example, when Greater Manchester Combined Authority recently appointed E.ON for domestic retrofit projects across the city region, we worked closely with E.ON and the local supply chain to ensure Greater Manchester based installers had an opportunity to get on the supplier framework.
It goes without saying that councils cannot achieve anything in isolation. The councils leading the way in climate action are adept at working in partnership with local Growth Hubs, technology clusters, anchor institutions and other Centres of Excellence to support low carbon businesses.
Projects such as Marine-I in Cornwall, Salford’s Energy House and the North East’s Hydrogen Cluster are all examples of valuable initiatives councils can tap into to help local businesses test new ideas and commercialise new products.
Nottingham City Council is a great example of a council that has a long tradition of working in partnership with local stakeholders on its journey to carbon neutrality. It leads the Nottingham Green Partnership, a group of over 20 organisations and businesses that develops, shares and encourages local climate action.
Manchester has a similar body in the form of the Manchester Climate Change Partnership, which was established in 2018 to ensure the city’s response to climate change is delivered collaboratively with the city’s key stakeholders.
What’s crystal clear, from our own research and others, is that net zero cannot be achieved only through a top-down approach from national government. We need bottom-up solutions delivered locally, which means empowering and supporting our councils to do more.
You can find a useful overview of your local council’s climate commitments and current action plan via UK charity Carbon Copy’s Discover Your Local Warming Stripes tool. We also recommend checking your council’s website for further information or contacting your local councillor.
Green Economy work with local partners to deliver their transition to net zero, by analysing and developing the local green supply chain and providing support to businesses on their journey to net zero.
Green Economy were commissioned by the Local Government Association to deliver this research. Read for full report on their website, or contact us directly for a PDF copy.
