Innovate UK invests over £25m in local net zero projects

A £25m+ package of support from innovation agency Innovate UK will help local authorities across the UK tackle the barriers to climate action projects, speed up their progress to net zero, share expertise and unlock investment opportunities worth up to £500bn.

As part of Innovate UK’s Net Zero Living programme, seven local authorities will each receive Innovate UK funding of between £2m and £5m to run practical demonstrator projects, showing how the non-technical barriers to implementing carbon-cutting measures can be overcome.

The Innovate UK-funded demonstrators include a project in York to facilitate retrofitting homes with low-carbon measures, improving the householder experience of retrofit and contributing to better energy efficiency standards across the city.

At the same time, Innovate UK is also starting work with a wider cohort of around 50 local authorities on a two-year programme involving practical support and shared learning, as they take the steps needed to become net zero places in the coming years.

Called Future Ready, this work will provide technical help to councils in the form of training, skills-building and one-to-one support. The Future Ready programme will focus particularly on five areas most important for net zero progress: visioning and citizen engagement; planning; finance and investment; data; and policy and regulation. Beyond technical help, it will create a strong community of practice across the UK as the councils work together, generating insights, sharing learning, helping each other and coming up with new solutions. The information and learning generated by the programme will also be made available to all local authorities across the UK, to help speed up their transition to net zero.

As part of Net Zero Living, Innovate UK has also published new research and in-depth guidance for all local authorities, developed with PwC, on sourcing finance and investment for net zero projects - especially from the private sector. This includes a market intelligence report which shows that the local projects needed to deliver net zero will require £500bn over the coming years - an unprecedented investment opportunity.

Innovate UK has released new thinking and guidance, commissioned from Regen, on how authorities can effectively approach planning for decarbonisation at a local level.

Mike Biddle, Executive Director for Net Zero at Innovate UK, said: “We know that many local authorities find it hard to plan and deliver decarbonisation of heat, power, and transport locally. Often the technology is available, but there are big gaps in capability, resource, and evidence of what works best in reality. That’s why we have issued this package of targeted support to help places all around the UK tackle the challenges, prove what can be done, share experiences and speed up their journey to net zero.”