With the UK committed to achieving net-zero carbon emissions by 2050, cities have a critical part to play in support of this national goal over the next three decades. How can we ensure they have what they need to deliver?
Decarbonisation is a global challenge, but many of the tools for achieving it may work best at a local level. The way that people live, work, move about and use resources varies from one community to another. While national leadership and direction is vital for net-zero, there is also an important role to play for local authorities, who are able to use their local insight and influence to identify locally applicable solutions, mobilise local investment, encourage community buy-in and improve access to local net-zero sources and resources.
In the context of the UK, cities will be particularly important to catalysing change. Many city authorities have recognised this by setting their own targets for eliminating carbon that match or exceed UK government’s ambitions. But the task they face is challenging in both its scale and complexity.
As major centres of production and consumption, around 80% of the UK’s emissions originate from within the boundaries of cities. Yet these emissions come from infrastructure and systems that are owned and operated by multiple stakeholders, over which the local authority may have little or no direct control.
What’s more, the key systems in a city – power, heating, water, transport, food distribution, health, education and so on – are interdependent. Change in one system will impact the others, positively and negatively, and progress in one area may be a precondition to progress elsewhere. Cities can accurately be described as a system of systems. Where city authorities can accelerate the transition is by acting as a systems integrator – co-ordinating beneficial change across the systems, overcoming blockers, facilitating the sharing of data and knowledge and helping the whole system of systems work together effectively.
So, how can cities be further enabled and equipped to play this part?
In our new report, A place-based approach to net-zero, which has been produced by Mott MacDonald and the net-zero infrastructure industry coalition, we identify four enablers that are needed:
- Powers.
Cities need an expanded mandate from national government to take ownership of the low-carbon agenda and intervene in local systems when they are best placed to act. - Partnerships.
New forms of partnership will be required, with central and regional government, with communities, and with the private sector, all with the common goal of long-term resilience and sustainability. -
A Data Platform.
Cities need to have better access to system-level data to improve integrated planning, help decision-making and to track the outcomes of their actions. -
People.
Enhanced skills will be needed within local authorities to manage these new powers, new partnerships and new insights.