I just wanted to say a special thank you to you for your support with these events. I have really enjoyed working with you and think I have learnt a lot as well. Even though we had the coronavirus come in and upset our plans we managed to turn it around and host two great online meetings which are very different to others available at the moment. I hope we can work together again soon.
Lucy Glynn, Switch2
Bristol – leading the way in city sustainability?
I was in Bristol last week at an event as part of the city’s year as European Green Capital (https://www.bristol2015.co.uk/). I worked with Bristol City Council and other stakeholders as part of the Carbon Trust’s Low Carbon Cities Programme (a looong time ago), so I was curious to see how sustainability initiatives had developed in the city…
The news was great! Bristol has managed a sustained commitment to environmental activities – driven partly by top level leadership at the Council but also by the strong network of advocates in the city. A snapshot of the people at the event indicates the power of this network: there were representatives of large multinational corporates, SMEs, community organisations, charities and environmental groups, as well as individual residents with a passion for the subject. There were engineers, lawyers, researchers, academics, a handful of us consultants, teachers and other practitioners. Combine that breadth and depth of network with longstanding political commitment to sustainability and you can see why the city has managed to keep going where others might have faltered.
Action is happening strategically and operationally, always reassuring.
The Council is soon to complete a mini-Stern review for the city, exploring the economic case for investment in tackling climate change (and based on a similar study carried out for the Leeds City Region).
The Council is building on this and other strategic documents to put in place an energy framework for the city.
The Centre for Sustainable Energy (and partners - http://www.smartsteep.eu/) are also finishing a piece of work to develop a wiki for energy related data and maps – an important step in collating and sharing information about, eg, heat demand, potential for renewables AND making that data available on an open source platform. This could empower community groups to start up local energy projects, inform neighbourhoods of the potential for sustainable energy generation in their neighbourhoods and widen participation in the debate about potential futures for the city’s energy system.
There were interesting discussions – also featuring Arup, the University of Bristol and the Bristol Green Capital team – about how far a city can go and the loci of influence and control. What can a city do when it is still part of a national energy system? What are the decisions that can be controlled or influenced by the city and what’s out of the city’s hands? Discussions also touched on TTIP and its potential influence on a Council’s attitude to investment and risk, the dependencies between different aspects of an energy system, the lack of planning when it comes to energy (and the idea that you get a better outcome if you can plan things in advance) and the way that things seem to get more complex the further you get in to the design, delivery and administration of them (this wasn’t a Green Deal comment, but it could have been!).
All in all, a really rounded and interesting discussion. Thanks for letting me come along!