86: 2023 Wrapped - Local Zero’s Festive Review of the Year

Somehow it's that time of the year once again! Becky, Matt and Fraser break down the highlights and lowlights of the year, are joined by Patrick from the production team to pick out their favourite episodes, and there might - MIGHT - be a Future or Fiction in there somewhere!

Thank you to you, our listeners, for your time, energy, and support this year.

Episode Transcript:

Matt:  Hello, it’s Matt and Becky here from Local Zero. Just a quick note to say, before the episode starts, that from April 2024, Local Zero will be looking for some new funding to keep it going. 

Rebecca:  We never imagined, when we started three years ago, that we’d rack up tens of thousands of listens across 130 countries and with a website hosting over 80 episodes.  

Matt:  We’ve also met and worked with some incredible people including Chris Stark, Hannah Ritchie, Jim Skea, Hugo Tagholm and so many more. We’ve been able to showcase so many amazing local climate initiatives from all over the UK and far beyond. 

Rebecca:  But sadly, keeping the pod going costs money. If you or your organisation would like to partner up with the pod as we move into an exciting new chapter, then do reach out to us. You can contact us via our email LocalZeroPod@gmail.com. Alternatively, you can contact us on X (formerly Twitter) @LocalZeroPod or on LinkedIn directly to Matt Hannon or Rebecca Ford. 

Matt:  Finally, to help us in our quest to secure funding, we want to hear positive stories from listeners about how the pod has influenced your life and your work and we hope to do a very special episode on this too. 

Rebecca:  So please help us continue the fight against climate change and bring local climate action to doorsteps across the world. Thanks for listening and now back to the pod. 

[Music flourish] 

[Sound of bells jingling] 

Rebecca:  Hello and welcome to Local Zero with Becky, Matt and Fraser. 

[Music flourish] 

My voice has finally returned and I am delighted to welcome you all to our final episode of 2023: a review of the past year and all things climate, energy and community action. 

Matt:  Yes, I can’t quite believe it’s been an entire year since we recorded our 2022 Wrapped episode. To be honest, it has been a very big year for all of us personally, professionally and also on the podcast. 

Fraser:  Yes, but before we get too sentimental, a reminder that we do love it when our listeners get involved in the conversations, whether that’s via X (Twitter) @LocalZeroPod or via email for longer-formed thoughts at LocalZeroPod@gmail.com. 

Matt:  As you’ll have heard at the very beginning, Local Zero is looking for new funding to keep it going. If the pod has helped you with your work or studies, please do get in touch to let us know. If you know anybody else who might like Local Zero, please do share the podcast with them. Word of mouth really helps us more than you might think. 

[Music flourish] 

Okay, cue Christmas cracker jokes, jingle audio indents or whatever you call them [sound of bells jingling]. How are we? Are we ready for the end of the year? 

Rebecca:  No. 

Matt:  [Laughter] Okay, Christmas is cancelled [laughter]. 

Fraser:  You’ve been listening to Local Zero [laughter]. 

Matt:  It has been quite the year. It’s no small feat that we’re going to have to try and wrap 2023 into a tiny little bow. I don’t know how you both feel about that. 

Rebecca:  I mean there’s a lot in there. I think you said, before we started recording, that anything pre-September has gone from your memory and wiped clean. 

Matt:  Completely blank, yeah. I was joking before. I personally blame Elon Musk for this because I haven’t used Twitter really since then [laughter] and, by extension, I used that as a second memory and now it’s gone. It’s not the remainder of 2023 but the previous five years [laughter]. It’s quite worrying really. 

Rebecca:  It’s like it never happened [laughter]. 

Matt:  It never happened, no. We are here in 2023. We are also waking up this morning to some fairly major announcements from COP28, the conference of the parties and the big climate change summit in the United Arab Emirates. We know what’s happened. I’m not sure we quite made sense of what’s happened but any quick hot takes on what we’ve heard this morning? 

Fraser:  It feels COPY, doesn’t it? It feels like COP again. 

Rebecca:  It feels COPY [laughter]. 

Matt:  A cop out. 

Fraser:  I don’t mean it too facetiously but it’s that process that happens all the time and the headlines versus where the exciting stuff tends to happen seem to be at a bit of a mismatch. 

Rebecca:  I think I’m still recovering from... 

Fraser:  Glasgow [laughter]. 

Rebecca:  ...COP26 in Glasgow and I can’t quite believe it was... was it three years ago or two years ago? I can’t work it out now. Isn’t that shocking? I really felt so much hope, inspiration and aspiration throughout the COP and I think now, I feel like the kid who’s woken up to a lump of coal on Christmas morning. 

Matt:  That’s not good. Okay, let me try and put some of this into perspective. I think one of the important takeaways is the COP28 agreed text which the various parties have to agree to which is taken forward. It’s the first time we’ve seen any of these conferences make reference to moving away from fossil fuels. There was a whole lot of debate around whether it should be phasing down, ideally phasing out and instead what we got really was a transitioning away. Make of that what you will. I think that’s a step forward. What I’m concerned about is the text that precedes it. Initially, there were rumours that it was just going to say ‘could’ as a sort of preface to all of this... you ‘could’ be a professional footballer or you ‘could’ sing on the mainstage at Glastonbury. Instead, it now ‘calls on’ but it doesn’t ‘demand’ or ‘require.’ There’s a lot that is going to fall out of this and I’m sure we’ll do an analysis episode in the New Year because it’s so fresh. I think it’s a bit like a two steps forward and one step back affair. If I’m going to be super-optimistic and positive, it’s that the wheels didn’t fall off at a fossil fuel COP in the United Arab Emirates. I do think it’s important that we keep this show on the road, whether you like it or not [laughter]. 

Fraser:  There was some useful progress and what felt like more meaningful buy-in around loss and damage which is something that we made big pledges about at COP26 in Glasgow but the level of spending that governments internationally were supposed to commit to never materialised anywhere near how much it was meant to. Whereas, this year feels a little bit more like we’ve sort of bought into the idea now so let’s make it happen in practice. I think that’s positive but what matters is that it’s backed up with action and it’s not just another one of those ‘could you please if it pleases you...’ 

Matt:  The presidency opened COP28 with this big announcement. ‘We’ve got loss and damage dealt with. Rich developed countries are going to compensate the poorer ones for all the damaging effects of climate change which are effectively a result of developed countries’ addiction to carbon and historic emissions.’ As the details have come out, and, again, we’re still making sense of this, a lot of the actual contributions that rest upon that financially are maybe not as sizeable as one would hope. We’ve kind of dealt with COP28 just to a very minor degree there but we’ll return to this. Highlights and lowlights? I gave myself a certain amount of time to get through this and it felt like it was a self-therapy exercise. I’ve got a long list but, Becky, I think you were the first to it. What have you got here in the stocking? 

Rebecca:  I can say that my list starts with a highlight but I think I might flip that around and share my lowlight because I think, for me, it really leads on from what we were just saying about COP28. It’s really about the lack of action that we’ve just seen from our current government. Specifically, at the top of my mind, is the feeling that energy efficiency, which is going to be such a critical part of us reaching net zero, seems to be just moving further and further down that priority list. I was remembering the Powering Up Britain report that came out in March this year. I can’t believe it was that long ago. I was reeling from that for weeks and maybe even months about the sheer lack of focus on how we’re going to transition our heating away from fossil fuels to clean heating and, even more so, what we’re going to be doing about all of our homes that need retrofitting to be made more energy efficient. I know that there’s lots of stuff going on at the local level and the community level but it just felt strategic action, plans or vision from government is completely lacking in this space. 

Matt:  It’s like a street or two or three streets a day that need retrofitting in order for us to hit many of these targets. It’s not a house-by-house approach. It’s a street-by-street approach and that’s only if you deal with carbon emissions. What we’re now dealing with is a second winter of crippling energy bills. Fraser, you rightly pointed out in the last episode (maybe you just texted me) about energy bills going up 5% again in January and here we are. I was willing to give the government maybe the benefit of the doubt for last winter. Here comes a major energy crisis... getting that retrofit supply chain up and running to insulate homes but here is a second winter now. How many folk have you met who have had their loft lagged through subsidy and support from the government? 

Rebecca:  There is no supply chain. There isn’t and it’s the flip-flopping of government policy that has just dwindled numbers. It’s all well and good to say that we’ve got aspirations for this but unless we’ve got strong long-term strategies from the government, the investment is just not going to come in behind it and industry is not going to get in behind it either. 

Fraser:  No, absolutely. I think that point of almost giving the government the benefit of the doubt, I think they’ve lost it. I feel so fed up with it. I don’t think it’s worth giving any more. I think it’s about pushing and advocating as strongly as possible for detailed delivery and solutions because there is no reason you couldn’t have been horsing on with this save for complete ineptitude and/or disinterest. 

Matt:  Well, we’re now a decade in from major cuts to ‘cutting the green crap’ and that infamous line. In my view, it falls to the next government. That might be a reincarnation of this government. I think if you believe the polls, it won’t be and a government will form from a different party or parties. At that point, the question is what’s in those manifestos about retrofitting our homes and making them snug, warm, affordable and healthy. Labour, for instance, is going big on this if you see some of their announcements about this. As I understand it, they’re seriously considering a neighbourhood-by-neighbourhood retrofit approach. I do think there is a silver lining to this but if we can’t prioritise energy efficiency during a multi-year energy crisis, I don’t know when we can. 

Rebecca:  I agree but I will now flip to something a little bit more positive. 

Matt:  Something positive, please. That really was a lump of coal to begin with [laughter]. Satsuma, please, Becky [laughter]. 

Rebecca:  I think that the lump of coal from the government has really stimulated a lot of great efforts from community groups, individuals and local councils with action in this and related areas. Maybe we wouldn’t have seen such great and ambitious action if there hadn’t been such reticence from the government. We’ve had so many amazing episodes that we’ve done recently that have highlighted this. For one of the very recent ones, we had Emma Fletcher talking about her work with Swaffham Prior. It was just so exciting to hear about how, as a community, they really pulled together and have done something quite transformational. There are a lot of really amazing examples of that kind of community aspiration and dedication. 

Matt:  I keep having flashbacks to David Cameron in 2010/11 and his notion of a Big Society which was ridiculed a bit at the time. If I make sense of some of the agenda there which was about shrinking the state and austerity, in effect, you can argue about the reasons for it but that was the outcome, shrinking the state. Particularly, local authorities have seen their budgets cut year-on-year since then. I guess the underlying logic of a Big Society was that those public services would be picked up and delivered as civic or civil services through these third-sector grassroots organisations. I think, actually, what we’ve ended up with is having something akin to that now. 

Fraser:  That’s exactly how it happens. A lot of these initiatives have evolved purely out of necessity in the face of massive barriers because support doesn’t exist for the people around them and their own communities in a lot of ways. Some of these things have gone further and they’re on a bigger scale. When you think about some community-level action, particularly around supporting people directly around fuel poverty and energy efficiency (maybe less about big projects like Swaffham Prior), it’s similar to this idea that charity is a failure of government. It’s a very, very similar premise. 

Matt:  Right, who is going next? Who is going to have a rummage in the Christmas stocking? Coal or satsuma, Fraser? 

Fraser:  I think I’ll go with the same order. I think I’ll start with coal. It’s quite fitting. It’s fossil fuel specific actually. I guess there are two sides to mine. The first, which we’ve already touched on, is that energy bills are still through the roof. We are now at a point where supplier debt, as in the debt that households have with suppliers on their energy bills, is at record levels and over £2.6 billion. This is against the backdrop of over 30 suppliers in the last two years collapsing completely. That’s quite an alarming amount of money for suppliers to be owed from households and it’s a lot of debt for households to be in. Also, there are record levels of self-disconnection over the summer and not over the winter by people who can’t pay their bills over the summer this year. I guess it’s that frustration that there was some support last winter and it was welcome but we’ve moved the conversation on completely despite the fact that, for millions of people, this is still very much the main thing happening in their lives and the main source of adversity in their lives as well. I think the scale of this crisis is rolling on, it’s snowballing and getting bigger. We’re kind of just pretending that it’s not happening anymore. I think that’s really, really concerning. We know this, right? We know this stuff already. I think the second lump of coal was the announced closure of Grangemouth oil refinery in Scotland. The reason for that is not necessarily that we’re stopping refining oil but it’s that we’ve given it big licks in Scotland about how we’re just transition leaders globally, how we’ve got all these plans to support people in high-carbon jobs into low-carbon jobs, how we’ll make sure that communities aren’t left behind the way that they were left behind in the coal transition and we have clearly just failed to put the right skills, training and new opportunities in place to make sure that happens. That has really, really frustrated me. I know, Becky, you’ve been doing so much Scottish-based just transition work and skill supply chains. It must frustrate you as well. 

Rebecca:  It’s so infuriating, yeah. It feels like a lot of this is just... I’ll tell you what really is my bugbear. There is so much knowledge that we’ve built up in the academic community around how to do this stuff well and none of that is translating through into action. We know that when you’re making these big changes, you want to do things with people and take these participatory approaches. There are opportunities to support those people and really engage them in the process and none of that is happening. Everything is just being done to communities. Obviously, you’re talking about Grangemouth here but there have been so many other examples like the Hydrogen Village which was done to people. They didn’t want to see it. It’s no surprise it was a failure. We could probably drum up heaps more of these. I think that’s really challenging. You brought up skills as well and the other thing that I really do struggle with is that we know a lot of the skills that are needed. Coming back to energy efficiency and clean heating, because it’s a massive challenge at the moment, we know what skills are needed but there are no really good incentives or support mechanisms to get people into them. All of this, while it might manifest and be delivered locally, has to come from national strategic priorities and, again, we’re just not seeing this kind of joined-up thinking. 

Matt:  A big lump of coal, Fraser. Thanks. I’m going to go with satsuma, please [laughter]. What else have you got to lighten the mood? 

Fraser:  It’s a little bit of an upside of that type of story and it’s ULEZ. We’ll all remember ULEZ. We’ll all be sick of hearing the phrase ULEZ. 

Matt:  We should unpack it for the uninitiated. 

Fraser:  The Ultra Low Emission Zones... 

Matt:  In London. 

Fraser:  ... in London which was the dominant theme of the Uxbridge and Ruislip by-election. The idea was that ULEZ, this Ultra Low Emission Zone, was a policy proposed by the Labour local government and proposed by the Labour candidate to effectively reduce emissions from combustion engines, particularly older diesel vehicles driving in and around the area of Uxbridge and Ruislip. After the Labour candidate lost, even though they were very much expected to win, the national press picked this up and ran with the story that; ‘It was ULEZ that caused it. There’s a massive backlash and people don’t want to see your silly green policies. You’re trying to penalise people.’ 

Matt:  It was demonised, wasn’t it? Completely demonised by the press, yeah. 

Rebecca:  Massively. 

Fraser:  Completely. It was hung out and held up, particularly by GB News, The Telegraph  and the Daily Mail as ‘Look, people reject your net-zero agenda.’ But what we saw in the days and weeks after that wasn’t a rejection of net zero. Actually, support for net zero, which was at an all-time high, remained at that all-time high. For me, what was really, really interesting about this and quite encouraging was an actual robust public discussion about fairness in the energy and net-zero transition in a way that I don’t think we’ve had that discussion before now. It was tough, it was crabby and it wasn’t always pretty or clear-cut... ‘Oh, we’re on the right of it and we want it fair, fluffy and nice with rainbows and unicorns,’ but we got into the detail of a conversation that I think we need to be two feet, studs up and getting into now. We’ve done the high-level stuff. We’ve done the ‘should we do it?’ Now it’s about getting into the nitty-gritty of how we do it and I quite liked, even though it wasn’t pretty, that that’s where that conversation went to. I don’t know, Matt. I know ULEZ is on your list as well. 

Matt:  It’s fine. You’ve eaten my satsuma and that’s okay [laughter]. The only thing I’ll add to that because you’ve put it more eloquently than I would have, is that I think two things happened. Not only did the net zero agenda and, associated with that, the just transition agenda take a big step forward and wasn’t knocked on its arse, as it were... and it was strong before it, we actually ended up with a policy that did some real good. I think from September, it was reported in The Guardian, and these were figures from the Greater London Authority I believe, and it said ‘about 77,000 or 45% fewer non-compliant cars and vans (the dirty ones) were detected on an average day in September, the first month of operation of the expanded ULEZ (Ultra Low Emission Zone), compared with June 2023.’ It will take a number of months and we’ll return to this to see the actual impacts it has had but we’ve got cleaner streets, according to this anyway. We also cannot miss the underlying logic that was associated with that and also how people were able to connect the logic of that with a demonstrable and tangible benefit which is cleaner air. I haven’t met a Londoner yet who likes dirty air and poor health [laughter]. 

Fraser:  By the way, anyone listening in London, I don’t know how you guys walk around breathing that stuff. It’s like soup. How do you get on the subway and come out alive? How does that happen? Have you ever travelled down and travelled back to Scotland and then blown your nose when you got past Birmingham or so? 

Matt:  Glasgow has some of the filthiest streets in Europe like Hope Street. That’s why we’ve had our Low Emission Zone and I think that’s also another part of this. We had our own separate debate about the virtues of this and who gets impacted. We’ve ended up with the policy and it’s still there six months later. Again, I think we should do an episode on Low Emission Zones and what impacts they’ve had actually. I’m just noting that down. 

Fraser:  Sure. I think we should and I think that discussion is exactly right. There was an initial discussion saying they wanted to penalise drivers with the Ultra Low Emission Zone. It was going to cost low-income people however many hundreds or thousands of pounds and it was going to cripple the local economy. We were having discussions and saying, ‘If you clean up the air, these are the benefits in terms of equality. Health impacts and pollution aren’t felt equally either. These are the benefits to the NHS. These are the benefits of less pollution in general.’ Having those discussions and getting into the bones of them, I think that’s a positive development. 

Matt:  Yeah, I agree. 

Fraser:  To have the public consciousness to be at that level, I think is a really positive thing. 

Matt:  A hundred per cent. I’m saying this with the fear that you may take another one of my satsumas [laughter]. Have you got anything else in your stocking or not? Is that it? [Laughter] 

Fraser:  No, that’s everything. 

Matt:  Are you sure? 

Fraser:  I’ve got some personal stuff, I guess, but let’s stay with this. 

Matt:  Yeah, it has been a big year, Doctor, so congratulations. A father, a Doctor and, as I understand it, somebody who is able to drive a vehicle around the streets of Forfar legally now. 

Fraser:  Yeah, yeah. I actually joined the anti-ULEZ campaign [laughter] and I’m also campaigning for all school zones to be abolished. 

Matt:  Yeah, quite right. Okay, I’ll have a rummage. What’s in the stocking? I won’t rehash all of the points that you’ve made. What I would say is that this is a little bit of an antidote (my satsuma) to Becky’s point about slow progress on energy efficiency. Actually, 2023 was the year of accelerated uptake and deployment of subsidy-free solar or rooftop solar, electric vehicles and - and we’ve covered this another of times and I’m thinking many of the listeners have been part of this – the Demand Flexibility Service (DFS); aka, the Saving Sessions – turn it down and get paid for not consuming your power during dinnertime when the kids are really hungry. Those are three real positive things. I’ll just put some numbers to this because, whilst I’m not really a numbers man, I think you need them to make these things make sense. 

Fraser:  Professor of business, no? 

Matt:  Professor of numbers [laughter]. 

Rebecca:  Mr Graphs and Charts [laughter]. 

Matt:  I do like a chart. I like a killer stat [laughter]. On solar, by the end of August 2023, we had installed as much rooftop solar in the UK as for the whole of 2022.  

Fraser:  Wow! 

Matt:  We’re back, baby. We’re back to pre-subsidy cut levels. When the Feed-In Tariff was cut, we’re kind of back around those levels. In the intervening years, solar has gotten cheaper and also, crucially, the other factor is that electricity has become more expensive so the payback, for many people, has been worth it. On EVs, 16% of all new cars being bought this year to date are EVs with total sales up 28%. You’re more likely to pass a house with an EV on the drive and solar on the roof than you were this time last year. It’s not a lot more likely but they’re out there. The final point about the Demand Flexibility Service is that we delivered, over the 22 events, enough electricity to power nearly 10 million households; that power that would have been used during those peak periods. The turndown then created a headroom of 10 million households’ worth of electricity during those peak periods. I do think that’s worth emphasising that how we’re consuming energy in the home and how we’re commuting or getting around for leisure and pleasure in our cars is changing. We’re at the beginning of this upward curve. Fast forward five years and I just think the landscape looks completely different. This was the year... the year. There we go. That was a big, fat satsuma for you both [laughter]. 

Rebecca:  It is and it isn’t [laughter]. I feel like these are really amazing stats but I think, with a lot of them, the devil is going to be in the detail of what it actually means coming back to this fairness issue. Who are the people who are installing solar? Who are the people who are purchasing new EVs? Who are the people who are able to be rewarded for the DFS? I’m not saying any of that is a bad thing. I think you’re right that it’s all a great thing but I think that as we start to see this proliferate across the UK in years to come, we just need to be so careful that there’s not a divide created and people are left behind. 

Matt:  I couldn’t agree more. It’s the sharp-elbowed, middle class. I’m basically referring to myself here [laughter]. They’re the folk who are lucky enough to own their own homes. I don’t have an EV but I’ve got a plug-in hybrid (poor man’s EV) [laughter] and secondhand as well. I aspire to be the man with... in fact, I’ve got one on the drive as a courtesy car right now because my other one broke down [laughter]. So I’m pretending to be the person I want to be for two or three days. I completely agree, Becky. A lot of this stuff is only attainable for folk who can unilaterally make the decision to put solar on their roof and afford it, who have a driveway and can access a cheap-as-chips tariff at night, who have a smart meter and also have the flexibility and maybe the appliances at home to turn down their power consumption for the Demand Flexibility Service. All of that raises really fundamental justice questions and I think they’re just going to get bigger and louder. So good news initially but, yes, you’ve tempered my satsuma a little bit there. 

Rebecca:  Sorry, Matt. Give us another satsuma. 

Matt:  That was it! I only had one this year [laughter]. 

Rebecca:  Oh no! 

Matt:  No, I think I had a couple and Fraser mentioned them. I’m going to give you a lump of coal which I will magically transform into a satsuma.  

Fraser:  Do we have a ratio? Do we have a count of satsuma to coal here?  

Matt:  One to one I think, yeah. That was the quota. 

Fraser:  It’s very, very coaly. 

Matt:  Rations this year. 

Fraser:  It doesn’t feel that way. 

Matt:  In terms of a lump of coal, just to note that 2023 I believe was the hottest year on record but I’m not going to go into that because I think that’s just too big and too depressing right now. What I will flag is the demise of Twitter. Now it doesn’t feel like that’s particularly climatey or energy but it is. I was a bigger user and I know Fraser has been and probably continues to be but I felt that, in the late 2010s, early 2020s and particularly during lockdown, it was a really, really important community to transfer information. I learnt so much during that period. I also watched a lot of cat videos that I regret now but some of the time was very well spent and there was a very tight-knit community. I connected with a lot of people who I ended up meeting in person and learning a lot from. That was blown apart this year – completely blown apart. It’s been in the offing for a little while but I felt a bit... I don’t know... at a loss as a result. I feel like I’m not ingesting some of the information that I once was from the people that I respect and really enjoy the commentary from. So that’s the bad news. The good news is that I think that community has been decanted elsewhere and I’m seeing green shoots on other platforms like Bluesky. I also think it’s forced people to connect in other ways, not through social media, and to maybe go a bit more old-school actually, particularly post-Covid at in-person events - he says, knowing how many people he knows who have got Covid currently. I don’t know. I’m flagging that it’s really important to have these platforms and these links for this information. I feel like during COP28, I haven’t quite been on top of it in the way I maybe was for COP26 when Twitter, I would say, was at its climate peak really. 

Fraser:  I agree with that. I’m with you, Matt. I haven’t moved elsewhere but I haven’t been on Twitter properly for months now. Partly, that’s about having a tiny child at home to look after but predominantly, it’s just so overwhelming. The Musk effect has been rather than diversification or pluralisation of voices, it’s very much hyper-polarisation. You need to have a super strong opinion to gain any traction and those are the opinions that you’re faced with all the time. I can’t bear scrolling some days. I’m looking at it and thinking, ‘Oh my god, the world is on fire and the Middle East.’ All of this stuff is going on and it’s all the time. These days, I’m very much with you as well, Matt, and I’m much more picking up the phone to people, organising coffees and chats. You feel like you’re missing out. I still haven’t overcome the FOMO on one side but I kind of feel a little bit nicer, human and connected on the other and I haven’t felt this way in years [laughter]. I feel like a person. 

Matt:  I’m not sure, Becky, you’ll lament the loss of it in the same way that we have. 

Rebecca:  Not at all [laughter]. 

Fraser:  I like to think that you’ve raised us up, Becky, rather than we’ve sunk to your depths somehow [laughter]. It’s a nicer place to be probably. 

Matt:  I’m positive with the way things will go. The world is changing and that’s okay but Elon Musk is not on my Christmas card list. He will be devasted about that [laughter].  

[Music flourish] 

I’m about to bring in a little elf. 

Fraser:  It’s not Elon Musk, is it? [Laughter] Is that our special guest? Is that what you’ve been building up to? [Laughter] 

Matt:  No, it wasn’t a derogatory term I should add. I’ve got nothing against the elf [laughter]. I am going to bring in a little elf now. His name is Patrick and he is our producer. Welcome, Patrick. 

Patrick:  Hello. 

Matt:  Is that your elf accent? Patrick is here to help us play Christmas Bingo. The rules of this, I think, we concocted about three minutes before we recorded [laughter] but I think they involve Patrick pulling out of an imaginary hat a number and an episode name that relates to (drum roll please) our favourite episode of the year of Local Zero. I should say not Coronation Street or whichever box set. Patrick, it is a great pleasure to have you here and it is over to you to do the honours, please. 

Patrick:  Thanks very much, Matt. The hat is very much not imaginary either. There is a real Christmas hat. 

Matt:  It’s a cup [laughter]. 

Patrick:  It’s a cup, yeah. Don’t ruin the festive spirit, Matt [laughter]. 

Matt:  I was really hoping you had a little elf hat there. Sadly not. 

Patrick:  The first episode is one for you, I believe. It’s a kind of four-in-one. It’s episodes 67, 68, 72 and 73 which cover the entirety of the Carbon Offsetting for Communities mini-series. 

Matt:  The omnibus, yes. 

Fraser:  Pick an episode, Matt, and he picks four. 

Matt:  Yeah, I know [laughter]. It’s Christmas. This was one of my favourites but probably not Patrick’s because he really helped me cut this together which was an absolute marathon. We had a two-day summit at the University of Strathclyde in March 2023 where we brought folk together to ask the question of what carbon offsetting means for communities. There was a focus on Scotland primarily but this is relevant to the UK. There’s a lot going on in Wales I might add. There are huge swathes of land being bought up for carbon-offsetting purposes, afforestation and peatland restoration. This is only going to go one way, particularly if we’re going to be sluggish about coming away from fossil fuels. What it means for communities, that are either co-located on these sites or adjacent to them, is not clear. I was really happy to dig into this. There is a report forthcoming from this but it was a big effort and I just want to thank Patrick for all his efforts. If people want the idiot’s guide to carbon offsetting and what it means for communities, check out the omnibus. You will need to clear a whole weekend I think but it’s probably worth it. 

Patrick:  Number two. 

Matt:  Thank you elf. 

Patrick:  You’re welcome [laughter]. I’m just making sure I get the sound effect of the cup [laughter]. It’s Episode 75: How Can Our Gardens Protect the Environment? 

Rebecca:  Oh, this is mine, this is mine! I loved this episode. Originally, Matt grabbed it and then he had to relent because not only did he have the four-in-one but he had... 

Matt:  Yeah, just like Christmas when you want somebody else’s present [laughter]. 

Rebecca:  I know. I was very excited to get this back. I absolutely loved this episode that we did with Kate Bradbury. Kate is an author and journalist but she really specialises in wildlife gardening. What I especially loved about this episode was how real and tangible Kate made all of the actions and tips to me. It really felt like something that everybody could take part in. Whether you live in a mansion with acres of land or whether you live in a flat with just a window box, there was something for everyone that you could do. I also loved the episode because it felt like a bit of self-help. I got some specialised tips and hints. I have to say that this summer, we managed to grow courgettes very successfully and tomatoes successfully for the first time. I’ve never managed to grow any in Glasgow but they absolutely bloom down here. Brilliant. 

Matt:  The blight. 

Rebecca:  Yeah, exactly. We also grew chillies. My husband actually made his own chilli sauce from all of the chillies he grew. It was brilliant. Yeah, an absolutely fantastic episode. 

Matt:  Can I come and live in Cornwall because it sounds like the Garden of Eden [laughter] versus the Central Belt [laughter]? 

Rebecca:  I will say that no homes where I live have actual proper grass gardens because we’re so coastal that the soil is not very good. We did all of this in little garden boxes. Yeah, it was an absolutely fantastic episode. It’s definitely worth checking it out if you want something very, very practical that anyone can do. 

Patrick:  Returning to the cup. I think the episode just after called Episode 75: Rights Community Action. 

Fraser:  That’s mine. That was a great episode. It was another one of those episodes with really tangible recommendations. For anyone who hasn’t caught up on that episode just yet, Rights Community Action is an organisation that supports communities, people and places around the country to either advocate in the local decision-making process for exciting or ambitious net-zero projects or to fight against potentially harmful projects. They’ve been very active in opposing fracking, for instance, at a local level. That was with Naomi Luhde-Thompson who heads up Rights Community Action. She was telling us all about the processes that they go through to effectively train community organisations and people in communities to stand up at a town hall meeting about a planning application for a local wind farm and to make the case for why they think it’s a good thing locally for the community, or to push for new, low-carbon, affordable housing, or whatever it might be. It’s a really proper grassroots, ground-up organisation building capacity and building expertise to support people to take ownership of their local areas. I think it’s a really excellent organisation. I distinctly remember, Becky, leaving that conversation feeling just massively energised. I also think that was one of the episodes when it was raining. I was in my shed and I almost got flooded out halfway through [laughter]. Apart from that, it was an amazing episode. 

Matt:  Good stuff. 

Fraser:  I like this format. 

Patrick:  Episode 64: Local Zero Live. 

Fraser:  Hey, me again. 

Rebecca:  That was such a good one, Fraser. 

Fraser:  That was a good one. We identified a common theme in these two episodes, my two episodes, which was the absence of Matt Hannon [laughter]. It happened last year when we did the debrief. 

Matt:  Purely incidental. 

Fraser:  It is. We had some great episodes this year, Matt. 

Matt:  Correlation is not causation, Fraser. You should know that [laughter]. 

Fraser:  Local Zero Live. This was the energy smart places and just transition episode that Becky and I hosted at the EnergyREV conference in London in March I think it was, wasn’t it? 

Rebecca:  Yeah, March. 

Fraser:  It’s going back a little bit now. We had a really, really interesting panel; a great collection of people with amazing insights. We had Karen Barass from Climate Insights. We had Donal Brown from the University of Sussex. We had Joanne Wade from ADE (Association for Decentralised Energy) and UK Energy Research Centre (UKERC). We also had Syed Ahmed from Community Energy London. We talked all things justice and local and community energy as well as the innovation happening around making cities, towns, villages and places smarter and net zero. Another one of those examples, I think, of people working directly, whether at the coal face (no pun intended) of innovation on net zero in terms of technology, business models and policy and regulation to people like Community Energy London working directly in communities to bring people along on that journey. Another one of those here’s how we get our sleeves up and get it done to make sure that it’s fair and to make sure that we’re delivering an energy system and a net-zero future that reflects the needs of people and supports the realisation of social value, economic value, better homes, places, towns, workplaces and lives across the board. Yeah, it was a really fun event. 

Patrick:  The penultimate one... is Episode 81: Swaffham Prior. 

Rebecca:  That’s me! This was a great episode. This was an episode we recorded relatively recently actually with Emma Fletcher who is now the Low Carbon Homes Director at Octopus Energy. We talked a little bit about her work there but we predominantly focused on what she had done in Swaffham Prior which is a village in East Cambridgeshire and around developing their own rural heat network. I think what I really loved about this episode was just how inspirational it was and hearing Emma talk about the way that folk came together and actually did something quite remarkable in line with net zero and addressed some of these massive clean-heat transition challenges. I think the reason I loved this was because I just felt so inspired by the action and it made me feel like this is actually achievable. This can be done. It’s been done by this community against a number of real challenges and... why can’t we all do this? Yeah, I loved this episode because of how ambitious and inspiring it was. 

Patrick:  And last but by no means least, Episode 76: Water, Water Everywhere. 

Matt:  Yeah, this was a cracker. We had Hugo Tagholm along from Oceana. Really, he’s been one of the loudest and I think most informed voices, alongside Feargal Sharkey, about the state of our waterways, lakes, rivers and our coastline which are absolutely filthy at the moment and getting worse. This is a classic example of underinvestment, under-regulation or poor regulation and the privatisation of essential networks on which our livelihoods and health depend. It’s not just drinking water but it’s also about how we use these places and how communities use these places for fun, families and friends. I guess, a bit like you Fraser with the Rights Community Action episode, I came away from this thinking, ‘Thank god somebody like Hugo exists and is doing what they’re doing,’ because without people like him and Feargal Sharkey, I’ll tell you what, it wouldn’t be on the front pages in the way it has been. I have genuine hope that we can resolve this. It’s going to require major intervention from the next government but I think the public is behind them. So well done, Hugo. Happy Christmas to you. 

Fraser:  Hear, hear. 

Patrick:  And this elf shall reappear in 2024. 

Matt:  Thank you elf. Back to the workshop, please. There’s plenty of work to do [laughter] instead of messing around here. Thank you, Patrick. 

[Music flourish] 

Lovely, so on to our final segment. We look forward and we gaze into the crystal ball of 2024. We have one opportunity for a final request from someone who I call Father Christmas but I’m reliably informed by everybody in Scotland is actually known as Santa. You pick whoever it is... St Nicholas. If you were able to choose one present for 2024, what would you wish for? I should say this isn’t an actual Christmas list [laughter]. It can’t be a battery-electric vehicle or a trip to California [laughter]. It relates squarely to climate and energy. 

Fraser:  Mine kind of follows some of the points that we raised earlier with our satsumas in particular. Predominantly, it’s details, details, details and a lot of action. We’ve talked an awful lot and there’s still a lot of talking to do to make sure that we keep net zero and we keep these conversations at the top of the agenda around justice, fairness and how we realistically achieve it. I don’t imagine it’s going anywhere soon but it’s important to make sure that we’re on the front foot with that conversation. I think what we really, really need now is to move on from the hypothetical side of things. I think we’ve settled on whether we do it or we don’t. We have to do this. We know we have to get this done. I think the time is now to put the detail behind warm words, whether that’s us collectively, Local Zero listeners or a lot of people who work in this space on a day-to-day basis putting the detail behind those words and crucially, putting the action behind them as well. It’s one thing talking about it like we do here every couple of weeks but it’s another thing getting the sleeves up and getting it done. That’s partly a challenge and partly the gift that I would like for 2024. 

Rebecca:  I want to see radical action to help people decarbonise their homes with energy efficiency and clean heating as priorities. I want to see a really strong vision and strategy from our government. We know what needs to be done. We have the evidence that it needs to be done. I think pretty much everyone other than the government is very clear on what needs to be done but we need to see that long-term vision and strategy. We need to see that aligned with investment and support from a lot of these big companies who have a stake in the game. Even electricity retailers have a massive stake in this game and are hugely intertwined with the broader decarbonisation agenda. I would like to see a lot more coordinated action and a lot more strategic action from those big powerful players. 

Matt:  Very good and I wholeheartedly agree. Mine is much mushier and more Christmas-like in that my request for next year is more Local Zero. Why? Well, I think 2023 has been the year that we’ve finally landed on a really nice balance of different issues that cut right across the climate and energy spectrum. I’m hoping, if people look through the episode list this year, there’s something for everybody and there’s something for everybody that relates squarely back to how they can lead more sustainable lives and how they can empower others to do that in their neighbourhood and beyond. I’m not going to go into a funding plea here. We’ve already done that but we are looking at how we keep this going. I think it’s really important to have these platforms because I’ve learnt a tremendous amount. I’ve taken a lot of the insights away into my own work, whether it be through education, research or working with practitioners. We have a really engaged and solid listenership who I know are listening to this too. If we can keep this going, I think the only way is up and 2024, hopefully, is the year that we figure out what that next chapter looks like. As I said, very warm and mushy but hopefully, it’s a good one. So I think, on that note, we should thank our listeners. 

Fraser:  Whoa! 

Matt:  Hold up! Is there a Christmas surprise? 

Fraser:  My son agrees. This is a very exciting Christmas surprise. 

Matt:  Is it our new host? [Laughter] 

Fraser:  It is, yeah [laughter]. 

Matt:  Have I been given the heave-ho? Is this how it happens? [Laughter] Heave-ho-ho (terrible pun). 

Fraser:  It’s not a new host you’ll be sad to hear. However, because it’s Christmas and because you’ve been so good this year, it is... [drum roll] Future or Fiction! 

Matt:  Give the people what they want. 

Fraser:  We have to, we have to. 

Matt:  You may have to remind our listeners. It’s been so long [laughter]. 

Rebecca:  You may have to remind us it’s been so long. 

Fraser:  Future or Fiction! For the uninitiated, it is a game where I present our esteemed hosts, Matt and Becky, with an innovative, net zero-based technology and they have to decide if it’s real, i.e if they think it’s the future or if it’s fiction, in which case, they think I have completely made it up. This year’s festive Future or Fiction! innovation is called On A One Horse Solar Sleigh. It’s not my best [laughter] but we’re going with it. We all know that Santa is super-concerned about the climate crisis. That’s why he no longer puts coal in stockings. He’s gone net zero. How about this? Researchers have developed a fully solar-powered hot air balloon which could help Santa with more environmentally friendly deliveries. The balloon uses a special fabric along with standard solar panels attached to the sides to capture solar power and power internal jets to keep the balloon afloat. Do we think it’s future or do we think it’s festive fiction? 

Matt:  Ugh, it’s a good one. It’s a goodie. 

Fraser:  The Santa reference is gratuitous and completely irrelevant [laughter]. 

Matt:  Yeah, it’s one of the weaker segues we’ve had [laughter]. Becky, what do you think? Help me out here. 

Rebecca:  I’m inclined to believe this actually because I’ve seen research articles but I can’t remember for the life of me where. I know that I’ve read about more flexible solar panels being able to be weaved into all different sorts of things. On that basis alone, I feel like I’m inclined to believe that this is possible. I guess, for me, the thing I’m thinking about is just the amount of energy that one might need to actually power up that much hot air. Also, I’m not somebody who has ever ridden in a hot air balloon but what happens if the sun suddenly disappears? [Laughter] Is there any backup? 

Matt:  Like the opposite of Icarus [laughter]. 

Rebecca:  Are we just going to see all these balloons falling out of the sky? 

Matt:  It’s a pretty major health warning, isn’t it? 

Rebecca:  Yeah, I don’t think you’ve thought through the health and safety on this. 

Matt:  No. This is my take which is not dissimilar. Let’s begin with the positives. You mentioned the fabric itself was solar and I do know you have organic photovoltaic cells and you can print these out. I think there are applications where they can be appended to a t-shirt, cap or whatever. That’s not completely mad. Hanging off solar panels around a basket... is not going to help a great deal. I also wonder how big this thing is. This could be tiny.  

Rebecca:  For mice or something? 

Matt:  I don’t know. Maybe our elf, Patrick, who is very small, would be light and small enough to be lifted into space. 

Rebecca:  For Lego people. 

Patrick:  I’m not getting in [laughter]. 

Matt:  He took offence at that. So I’m out I think. It’s a no but I can imagine a route where we get here and it might be that you need a blimp-sized... there will be physicists listening to this and thinking, ‘Shut up!’ [Laughter] Maybe if you had a balloon that was the size of Cornwall or even Yorkshire and one basket that could lift a mouse or an elf, then possibly. 

Fraser:  What are you talking about? What are you talking about? [Laughter] 

Rebecca:  Hang on a minute, Matt. You can put solar panels on the roof of a home to the point of powering your home, including ignition for hot water or the equivalent of hot water, right? 

Matt:  You were the one who was ruling it out. I’m just in your slipstream here. 

Fraser:  I don’t know that you could power a balloon the size of Yorkshire but I don’t think you need to in any scenario. 

Matt:  Well, you’re going to put me out of my misery anyway, hopefully, that I’m right. I’m out. I’m out like Duncan Bannatyne out. Becky, over to you. 

Rebecca:  I think I’m in. You’ve been so sneaky in your wording. I think I’m in. I think this is the future. 

Fraser:  Becky is going future. Matt is going fiction. Sticking by it? 

Matt:  Fiction... radical fiction. 

Fraser:  The answer is... [drum roll] it’s fiction. Matt, you were kind of spot on. There are hot air balloons that have solar weaved into the balloon itself and harness that but they’re still very much powered by propane. You can’t power a hot air balloon through solar alone, sadly, not that I found in my ten minutes of research this morning. I actually saw the idea on a really terrible Channel 5 Christmas film [laughter]. 

Matt:  Research? Channel 5... 

Fraser:  That’s where it started [laughter]. 

Matt:  ...is your research channel for this podcast [laughter]. My goodness. Well, if any funders have heard that, we ought to edit that out [laughter]. Right, thank you, Fraser. It was good to have Future or Fiction! back. 

Fraser:  Very welcome. Merry Christmas. 

Matt:  Merry Christmas to you all and a Merry Christmas to all of our listeners. Thank you for listening this year. Thank you so much for supporting us. Thank you to our guests for actually enabling us to pick your brains and learn a few things. A huge thank you to Bespoken Media and to the whole team, Patrick, Dave and Carys as well for supporting us through this because without you, we would not have a pod. So Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to all of you. 

Rebecca:  You’ve been listening to Local Zero. The number one way you can help this pod is to share it with someone you think might like it. So if there are any other climate change or energy geeks out there that you think would like Local Zero, please do recommend us. If you are still listening right now, please do take two seconds to rate and review us. This helps us reach new listeners and climb the podcast charts. Let’s keep local climate action firmly on the public agenda. 

Matt:  Absolutely and if you’re still on X (Twitter), you can tweet your thoughts to us. We’re still there and we’re still listening @LocalZeroPod. We also love our emails from listeners at LocalZeroPod@gmail.com 

Fraser:  But for now, thank you, goodbye and we’ll see you in 2024. 

[Sound of bells jingling] 

Produced by 

BESPOKEN MEDIA 

Transcribed by 

PODTRANSCRIBE