6. Partnerships and data

Globally cities are responsible for over 70% of carbon emissions, so action by councils and local authorities will be key to reaching carbon net zero. Some of the biggest advances by cities are being delivered as a result of partnerships – either with other local authorities or with the private sector – to ensure knowledge is shared and the benefits are broader.

The Scottish Cities Alliance is a prime example of pooling knowledge and the eight cities within the alliance represent around three quarters of the population of Scotland. Dundee City Council leader and Scottish Cities Alliance chair John Alexander explained that the wide representation meant the cities are better able to come together to demand action and make the biggest impact.

He said: “The Alliance brings us together to focus on the net zero challenges we face. We each have our own focus with specific cities taking the lead on certain areas. Aberdeen is leading on hydrogen, Glasgow is taking the lead on smarter cities and Dundee’s focus is mobility as a service and what that looks like in terms of transport decarbonisation.

We try to play to our strengths and learn from each other.

“The knowledge, data and investment spearheaded by the cities is then used by other local authorities in the Alliance. We try to play to our strengths and learn from each other.” Collectively this represents a great learning resource.

John added that the Alliance also shares where ideas have failed in order to address the underlying issues and improve the situation for the cities taking part in the next phase of development of the approach.

Role of civic leadership

In Manchester, a broader partnership is also benefiting climate resilience, according to Trafford Council leader Tom Ross, who is also the portfolio lead for Green City – Region for Greater Manchester Combined Authority (GMCA). Ross points to Manchester’s Integrated Water Management Plan, which brings together GMCA with the Environment Agency and United Utilities, as an example of how external partnerships can benefit local authorities. The aim of the plan is to review how excess water and drought is managed and ensure water systems are interwoven into future growth and development zones.

“We had a number of round tables to bring the various partners from across Greater Manchester together and it was crucial to have civic leadership to do that,” said Tom.

Long term relationship gains

E.ON commercial and strategy director Mark Daniels urges such partnership to be longer term ones in order to fully derive the potential benefits.

E.ON has just entered a 15-year strategic energy partnership with Coventry City Council, which will see the two organisations collaborate on revolutionising energy use in the city for the benefit of local communities and the wider economy. “It is going to work in a fundamentally different way from anything seen before,” said Mark.

It was crucial to have civic leadership.

“The first point is that the length gives the partnership time to tackle some really difficult and big topics. The partnership has also gone through a very strong procurement process so has the right to deliver projects with the council and has a different governance process to what has been seen before too. As we go through the gate processes to build the business case together, we have flexibility over the method for delivering them too.”

In addition to sharing knowledge, partnerships are also helping to create better low carbon funding options for councils. One of the biggest is the Cities Commission for Climate Investment (3Ci), which is a partnership between Connected Places Catapult, Core Cities UK, London councils and other local authorities that aims to help secure the necessary long-term finance needed for achieving net zero. “Essentially it is pooling, bundling and blending to crowd in green finance,” explained Mott MacDonald global practice leader for cities Clare Wildfire. “By going large and pooling pipelines of work across multiple cities it is attracting institutional investors. It is bundling work to take attractive propositions, such as renewables, and bundling them with the less interesting ones, like energy efficiency. Then it is blending public and private finance to make the funding go further. This approach in creating a pipeline of more than £200bn of low carbon investments in the UK’s 11 biggest cities.”