Amit Verma, Sustainability Policy Manager, CIPFA
Climate change is one of the biggest challenges facing our society and the Climate Change Act 2008 legally binds the UK to meet its net zero target of reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by 2050. Initially the UK committed to reducing GHG emissions by 80% compared to the 1990 levels, this was later revised to 100% (net zero) in 2019.
The UK Government has taken several measures to demonstrate progress towards achieving this goal, including setting up an independent Climate Change Committee (CCC) under the Climate Change Act 2008, to provide advice to Government on tackling climate change and monitoring its progress on net zero agenda. However, there were gaps within the government’s Net Zero strategy, as highlighted in the June 2022 CCC report, such as challenges in policy delivery and management of policy delivery risks. It further emphasised that action to address rising cost of living need to be aligned with the net zero agenda reduce fossil fuels demand and energy bills.
The UK’s net zero targets cannot be achieved without support from local authorities across the country. As highlighted in the July 2021 National Audit Office report, “While the exact scale and nature of local authorities’ roles and responsibilities in reaching the UK’s national net zero target are to be decided, it is already clear that they have an important part to play, as a result of the sector’s powers and responsibilities for waste, local transport and social housing, and through their influence in local communities”.
Local authorities can also encourage and enable wider changes among residents and businesses to reduce carbon emissions and contribute towards achieving net zero acting as a catalyst and enabler.
However, in the current landscape of post pandemic recovery, global conflicts, social and economic inequalities, drastic climate change and financial constraints, achieving these objectives is proving challenging.
Role of Local Authorities in delivering Net Zero, key barriers and opportunities
Local authorities play an important role in delivering net zero in several key policy areas example decarbonisation of public transport including installation of electric charging points, implementing and enforcing minimum energy efficiency for the new builds, retrofitting existing homes and improving buildings energy efficiency, improving skills and capacity for carbon reduction projects. These initiatives are subject to constraints such as funding availability including lack of funds for critical projects, example development and delivery of infrastructure, renewable energy and heat networks.
Local authorities face several barriers to achieve their net zero goals including lack of clarity about their roles and responsibilities, fragmented funding mechanisms and use of competitive bidding for projects, lack of consistency in reporting of plans and progress on net zero, and lack of skills and capacity for climate change projects. These capacity and financial constraints faced by the local authorities can be addressed through developing policy mechanisms for funding through central government grants or private sector investments for the net zero. Both these initiatives however, require derisking against the cost and revenue uncertainty and maintaining government subsidies for the Net Zero projects.
Some of the key steps that can address these challenges include:
- improving funding and financial mechanisms for the local authorities to build affordable and green technology ready homes, such as installing hydrogen ready boilers,
- increasing capital funding to address the deteriorating local roads and highway network to encourage sustainable public travel,
- enabling local sustainable growth through sub-regional partnerships with effective industrial strategy, improved public transport and energy infrastructure, improved skills market development,
- developing local climate action agreements between national and local government,
- encouraging local climate action initiatives such as local wind and hydrogen projects across Orkney Islands, developing and improving local resource and waste management strategies.
Whilst local authorities are committed to supporting net zero targets, the route to their delivery will be extremely tough. There is no one size fits all strategy to enable the Net Zero targets to be achieved and only through developing robust mechanisms and policy levers to deliver net zero projects tangible progress can be achieved.