A network operator has described a “real mix of skills” among councils when it comes to decarbonisation plans, with some incapable of looking beyond the next election.
He said: “One of our observations in going out and speaking to these local authorities is just how variable the conversations have been. I’m not going to name any names because this could get quite embarrassing but we have noticed a real mix of skills.”
Hey said local authorities in its license areas differ in terms of their financial situation, funding priorities, and understanding of the energy system, as well the level of seniority at which they’ve been willing to engage in the first place.
He said the distribution network operator (DNO) is hoping to address some of these inconsistences by acting as a “bridge” between local authorities and the energy industry, “translating their strategic outcomes into actionable goals and requests of the networks in terms of what they want us to build.”
But Hey said one of the biggest differences they have noticed is between local authorities that have “a very strong executive that is empowered to make long-term strategic investment decisions, because that’s what we need in energy, versus those that are perhaps more political beasts where they are thinking about the next election which may well be less than 12 months away.”
The webinar discussed suggestions from a recent Energy Systems Catapult (ESC) report that local authorities should be given a statutory obligation to achieve net-zero emissions in line with the central government’s 2050 target.
Cheryl Hiles, director for the West Midlands’ smart energy innovation partnership, Energy Capital, said the requirement would ensure that all investments made by local authorities are aligned with the objective.
Hiles said Energy Capital has been working to improve collaboration between the various parties involved in the effort in the West Midlands.
“There’s definitely a disconnect in the way that planning for the different processes take place at the moment,” she explained. “We have spatial planning, we have planning for transport, which is actually separate from spatial planning processes but does align, and then we have planning for energy investments through the DNOs.
“Those process aren’t always understood by the different parties so Energy Capital particularly plays a role in supporting the translation between those different organisations and those process. But what we’re doing at the moment is testing if just a commitment to collaboration can actually improve the way we plan and then obviously deliver investment; so, sharing data, sharing learning, sharing modelling, sharing planning processes.”
However, Hiles said: “It may be that collaboration by itself isn’t sufficient and we might need to see some regulatory change to facilitate that partnership working and so we are calling on government to set that mandatory requirement on local authorities to ensure that all the investment that is made in the normal everyday infrastructure investment that takes place in transport, buildings etc helps us towards that net zero objective and doesn’t take us in the other direction.”
Eric Brown, chief technology officer for the ESC, stressed that in order for his organisation’s proposal to work, local authorities would need further support.
“I think it’s only fair to mandate they produce a strategy, create the obligation, if you give them the powers to execute on it, and therefore I think those two things need to be treated hand in hand.
“So, if they’re given a statutory obligation to deliver, then you need to enable them to gain access to the funding and the resources that they can then prioritise accordingly to deliver the types of outcomes that they need.”
He also called for greater standardisation in local authorities processes for developing Local Area Energy Plans, which he described as “essential” for exploring potential pathways to net zero: “In our work, we’ve highlighted the need and benefits of a standardised approach to doing this so that there’s consistency in the way that local authorities approach the planning process and gives the opportunity to embed best practice, and how that’s achieved should make the productivity of the process higher.”
Hiles agreed on the need for some standardisation between local authorities’ efforts, but said they already have a clear framework to work within at the national level: “We know what our objectives are by 2050. We are seeing government producing a whole series of policies and strategy documents that are coming out to give us that national framework.”
“Ambition locally generally tends to move faster,” she added. “Not everyone, but most of the local authorities that have declared climate emergencies want to see change more quickly and want to understand what they do to enable that.
“I think where there’s benefit in sharing is not everybody having to invent the same wheel. Through our projects, we have seen there are certain aspects that work much better at an aggregated level.
“That’s not always nationally, I have to say, but there’s perhaps a framework where you could work with larger regions or groups of local authorities with national guidance.”