30: COP26 team debrief

Post COP26, an extremely tired Local Zero team gather their initial thoughts and responses. We return to fortnightly Local Zero episodes, every other Thursday from today.

Episode Transcript:

[Music flourish]

Matt:   So I’m in the Blue Zone for the first time this morning. I’ve got a ticket for the whole week. It seems to be moving pretty well given that we’ve heard many horror stories about people queuing up for an hour or two but I have to admit, I’ve been a little bit lazy this morning having had a weekend of events and little time to pause.

[Music flourish]

So we’re through the airport-style security. There’s just a constant buzz really. It’s chaos but in an organised, energetic fashion. I’m about to register and get my blue badge – my UN NGO observer badge and it remains to be seen what’s on it – and then straight in. President Obama is just around the corner meeting and greeting folk. I’m probably about 100 yards away from him.

[Music flourish]

Female speaker:  We need to understand that net zero does not mean zero. What net zero by 2050 means is that in 2050, 30 years hence, anyone could just be offsetting their emissions that year.

Female speaker:  The concern is that this is a form of delayism and delayism is, in fact, the modern-day form of denialism which we actually had in the 19080s.

Female speaker:  I think if corporations and countries didn’t already know how damaging and devastating these net-zero greenwash and offsets are, well, this is just the beginning.

Female speaker:  I would encourage any lawyer in this room, who is an environmental lawyer or a human rights lawyer, this is the time to really take the risk and pursue a legal action.

Matt:  So I’m just out of the first side event that I’ve attended in the Blue Zone. I have to say I’m really, really impressed. I mean the quality of the line-up was just something else. We had representatives from Action Aid, Global Witness, Greenpeace and many others and the whole discussion was around... well, it was titled ‘Net Zero: Smoke and Mirrors’ and looking at carbon offsetting and trying to understand to what extent this is a sham or something that can actually contribute to a carbon-free future.

Female speaker:  The ‘net’ in net zero is this accounting trick that means that you can pollute as much as you like as long as you find a way to remove or offset the same amount of emissions that year. You are, theoretically, net zero.

Matt:  Many of the net-zero strategies and goals from both government and companies will likely demand more land than we actually have on planet Earth.

Female speaker:  If you consider the thousands of governments and corporations out there that have made net-zero targets, it’s clear that there is not enough land on the planet to offset all this continued pollution. There really is no alternative to systemic change to bring emissions down to real zero.

Matt:  A really good example was that Shell alone would need land three times the size of the Netherlands to deliver upon its own net-zero strategy. So where are you going to capture that land? Actually, in this push for land... obviously, land unlocks the ability to offset, whether it’s through forestation or different forms of carbon capture and whether that is the restoration of peatlands or other forms of carbon sequestration, and this requires land. We’re seeing in the developing world, particularly, concerns from Amnesty International about illegal land seizures that make good on these carbon offsets and in that regard, that actually if you drop the net and just go for real zero, you could help avoid many of these violations of human rights.

Female speaker:  With a net-zero target for 2050 rather than targets for real zero much earlier than that, wealthy countries and other high-emitting countries are violating the human rights of millions of people and condemning them to premature death, hunger, disease and displacement.

Matt:  There was also a really interesting discussion from a representative of the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy (IATP). She was pointing to how this drive towards carbon offsetting is seeing coalitions form between some of the dirtiest companies that are likely to really struggle to shake off their carbon emissions. A good example would be the dairy and meat industries coupling up with fossil-fuel companies to produce gas for vehicles would be one example.

Female speaker:  In the last year, several global meat and dairy companies have declared net-zero targets. IATP has examined several of them and none of them plans on reducing the number of animals in their supply chain and this is where 90% of livestock-related emissions come from. Their model of mass production and processing will not change in spite of their target.

Matt:  And a broader question from the IATP was about the integrity of these net-zero pledges. On the one hand, there are questions about the viability of these net-zero strategies. Can they be done? Integrity is more about whether they will they do it. They pointed to many of these companies’ past history in the fossil-fuel industry but also the meat and dairy industries were mentioned about whether they were really going to make good on those net-zero plans. It’s about looking at the history of that company and understanding whether they have that track record to deliver.

Female speaker:  So we really need to be careful because there’s such a rush to create these carbon credits and to create net zero that we’re coming out with all these credits and we’re actually lacking the evidence that any of this is going to work.

Matt:  The conversation, I guess, finished more on what we do. How do we ensure that companies and governments, if they are offsetting, are doing this correctly and in a way that doesn’t disenfranchise or undermine the human rights of other sectors of society? What really shone through, I think, was the role of courts in terms of climate litigation.

Female speaker:  One is in Germany which I think is a very important one with a groundbreaking decision of the highest court, the Federal Constitutional Court. They found that the German Government’s failure to come up with a clear climate and carbon reduction plan from 2030 to net zero was ‘unlawful.’ I think what they found, which is very important, is that the inadequate plans to meet these net-zero targets that they had put forward would result in an unconstitutional shift of the burden of emissions reductions on young people and future generations who would face the task of reducing emissions at just impossible speeds.

Matt:  So the role of courts, the role of climate litigation and the role of environmental lawyers and law firms is very much at the forefront of this fight and I expect to hear much, much more of it calling both the public and private sector to account. I really enjoyed that. I’m looking forward to going to some more side events, so credit to the organisers there. I’m hopping off now to have a look at some of the pavilions and to snaffle some kind of food to keep me going. Okay, so we’ll catch up later.

[Music flourish]

Female speaker:  This is where the action is at because people are winning and it’s really time for governments and corporations to implement these net-zero pledges to go to real zero and I think it’s more than just commitments. It’s actually an obligation.

[Music flourish]

Matt:  So we’re standing outside a plenary where Barak Obama was giving an address to the COP26 delegations. It was a ticketed-only event and so we couldn’t get access. Understood but I used the time usefully to get around the pavilions which was just a complete sensory overload really. There are all sorts going on there. Imagine every country wanting a stall and then you’ve got confederations and different interest groups holding their own stalls. To walk around is just absolutely breathtaking really and it’s quite difficult to know exactly what to dip into. Each pavilion is holding its own set of events. I was able to dip into one from the SDG7 (Sustainable Development Goal 7). We were hearing about their Fair Cooling Fund and what they were doing to try and reduce the temperature of households in countries like India, Egypt and countries within the continent of Africa. One particular project was of great interest which was a recent award-winner called the Mahila Housing Trust. This was an initiative set up in India to help specifically women tackle heat stress. Those women are those who spend most of their time at home in this particular area of India. These homes are dark with poor access to energy and poor access to water and also the house tends to double as the workplace. They’ve trained 27,000 households, which I think was up to about 100,000 women, to take active intervention to reduce the temperature indoors between 2-60C. This involved a whole host of things from actually helping them build and design these houses so they had the right aspect and they had the right shading built in but also taking retrofit interventions like improving ventilation, painting their roofs white and changing out the materials so they didn’t absorb so much heat. It was really, really fascinating to see this example of energy equality but also gender equality and trying to help these homes lead more comfortable lives. This wasn’t just for their personal lives, their families and their households but also for their work because many of these women were having to stop work because of heat stress which causes a whole host of health issues. So really fascinating. I am currently outside one of the other plenary rooms and hoping to gain access to a high-level ministerial debate on climate finance. So if I’m successful, I’ll give a bit of a summary later.

[Music flourish]

Yeah, we’re still waiting out here and that’s fine because I’m meeting all sorts of really interesting people.

Annabel:  I am Annabel Rice and I’m here with Care About Climate. We are a youth and women NGO. We’re based in the States but it’s an international organisation. We want to empower women, particularly in the Global South, to take action on climate change.

Matt:  Fantastic. I’ve just been sitting through a talk, which I’ve just explained to the listeners, about some of the fantastic projects in terms of energy access. I just wanted you to maybe outline some of the key projects you’re involved with and how they’re helping you deliver on your mission statement.

Annabel:  I think the key thing for us is that women are so often disproportionately affected by climate change, whether that’s through their role in taking care of children. So in floods, women are much more likely to die in floods because of care capacities and things like that. We want to make sure that women are involved in decision-making projects so that they are not just seen as victims but as empowered changemakers. There is evidence that when women are in leadership positions, there are more sustainable policies in place both at the government level and also in businesses. Our mission is to get women into these positions of power where they can really have the voice that they need and desire in order to make change.

Matt:  So in terms of positions of power, are we talking within business, even within the household but also politically? What would be a position of power in your mind that would help empower women to make these choices?

Annabel:  I think you’re so right. There are these different levels of power and it does depend on the situation that you’re in but I think what we want to do is amplify women’s voices so that wherever they want to seek power, they can have power. It’s about making sure that their voices are heard in whatever situation. We work on a community level but also on a national level. We work on nationally determined contributions (NDCs). We did a gender enhancement tracker to see how NDCs take account of women and how often they’re referenced. We found that more often than not, they’re referenced as victims but not as leaders. That’s what we’re trying to do really.

Matt:  Exactly. Change the narrative from victim to agent of positive change.

Annabel:  Exactly, yeah.

Matt:  What are your hopes for COP26? Are you hoping that this becomes a real agenda item and that we see some commitments later this week on this front?

Annabel:  I think at this COP26, I’m hoping for some hope [laughter] to come out and feel a bit more optimistic but it remains to be seen. I mean women are not being accurately represented at this COP even and particularly women from the Global South, this COP is not very diverse and there’s a huge problem with access. Even when women are on the panels at this COP, they speak for less than half the time even though they make up more than half of the delegations. I’m hoping at this COP that we see some real action rather than just words which we’ve seen for a long old time.

Matt:  Brilliant. Well, hear, hear and all the best and enjoy COP. I hope you get what you’re after.

Annabel:  Thank you.

[Music flourish]

Female speaker:  So heat is on the rise but now the urgency is very apparent because it’s affecting how we live.

[Music flourish]

Matt:  So the COP26 wagon rolls on. We’ve just come out of a plenary where we had Alok Sharma, the host of the UK Presidency and chief negotiator, was hosting a high-level ministerial plenary looking at climate finance and trying to understand what needs to be unlocked to ensure that we reach our $100 billion target which we should have already met. They’re now targeting for 2023 but for climate finance in developing countries. There were just a couple of high-level points that came out of that. I think there’s an emphasis now on ensuring that finance is forthcoming from the private sector and not just the public sector. Two, there is a mix of finance not just for mitigation but climate adaptation. That’s to accept that we need to invest in adaptation measures to reduce the impacts of climate change on our communities and our economics and actually just building our way out of some of the pain rather than actually preventing climate change in the first place. So there we have, I guess, a new emphasis as we push higher and higher above 1.50C to 20C, 30C or 40C. You’re going to need the investment to protect these communities from the ravages of climate change. I think there were some really interesting points there from the minister of the Canadian Government who said that instead of bilateral flows of finance from one country in the developed world to the developing world, there are multilateral organisations such as the World Bank where often, investment is taken from the developed world into this organisation which then redistributes that into the developing world and the intermediary there needs to be aligned with the goals of these developed and developing countries. So it’s important that everybody is on song. Some really interesting points and fascinating to be in the plenary room but I think that’s almost all the time I have in the Blue Zone today.

[Music flourish]

So I am joined by the one and only Fraser Stewart. Fraser.

Fraser:  Matt, how is it going?

Matt:  Very well. We are camping out in a little – I don’t know what you’d call this – bar or tapas bar? It’s nice.

Fraser:  It’s a nice little place.

Matt:  It’s far nicer than where we probably should be [laughter]. We’re on our way to the Carbon Brief climate quiz. Fraser has joined our team. We’ve got 12 and tonight we’ll be called Strathamatics and we are a motley crew of researchers. We’ve got a few other folk on board. Are you looking forward to it?

Fraser:  I am. I’m really looking forward to it. I’ve heard it’s a legendary event at every COP. Carbon Brief put on a quiz and everyone who’s anyone in this kind of space goes along to it and also friends of the show, right?

Matt:  Absolutely.

Fraser:  Leo was on the show just before COP telling us what it’s all about. I think it will be good fun. I don’t know how much recording we’re going to do tonight and how much of it will be shareable [laughter].

Matt:  Yes, but I guess it’s a good opportunity. We haven’t bumped into each other before now. Obviously, I saw you on stage on Friday at the end of the climate march. I really enjoyed that but beyond that, how has COP been for you? What’s been keeping you busy?

Fraser:  It’s been good. It has been busy. It’s been very busy. I’ve had a couple of Green Zone days and things that I’m speaking at rather than visiting. Quite a lot of social stuff as well which has been nice catching up with people that wouldn’t normally be in town which, to be honest, apart from the marches and the events has actually probably been the highlight of it just seeing people that you don’t often get a chance to see and catch up for a wee pint here and there and a coffee. It’s been really, really good. What has been keeping you busy because you’re in the Blue Zone now?

Matt:  Yeah, kind of overwhelming really. I feel exhausted after it. Yesterday, I was at the New York Times climate hub. We spoke about what the legacy of COP26 might be for Scotland which is an interesting question because I think there’s a big detachment for many locals here about connecting COP to anything that they personally relate to.

Fraser:  What was the vibe out of that conversation? I’ve got some thoughts on this too. What came out of that conversation that you had?

Matt:  I think there’s a sense of keeping our foot on the accelerator in Glasgow and Scotland. My perspective was that I think we should almost use this as a recurring point in time and every mid-November, we meet, we pause, we discuss and we have something of a summit again. A lot of the themes besides that that came out was what the legacy means for education. We had various questions from school teachers who were really keen to understand how they can ingrain the spirit of COP26 into what they’re teaching with their students. I thought that was really important and obviously, it carries over into the university teaching that we do too.

Fraser:  Yeah, absolutely. I think legacy is a big thing that we’ve been talking about in the run-up to this as well. One of the really frustrating things about this COP... they’re calling it the most exclusive COP ever, largely in reference to the most affected people who can’t get here, whether it’s vaccines, visas, rent prices or whatever it is and they haven’t been able to get here. It’s a huge, huge issue but for the City of Glasgow as well, it’s very much been that thing where it felt like it had been done to the City of Glasgow by the relevant organisers. My worry was that because they were shutting down the city, because they weren’t given the same transport privileges that delegates were given, etcetera, rather than this big green legacy, there was going to be a bit of resentment there or even worse, apathy. What gave me a lot of heart was Friday and Saturday at the two marches. Friday, I gave a speech effectively speaking to people in Glasgow and saying, ‘Look, this is for us.’ People were there in their thousands and screaming for it. On the Saturday, I marched with the Glasgow Communities block and we were one of the biggest blocks and in the whole march of 100,000 people, there had to have been a couple of thousand.

Matt:  On a rainy day. I mean a Glasgwegian wet day.

Fraser:  A real rainy day [laughter] but people were there in their hundreds and thousands from the city. I was shoulder to shoulder with folk that I know from deprived communities in Glasgow next to indigenous people from West Papua, with trade unionists, with school kids and people from all over.

Matt:  It’s the great leveller or should be the great leveller.

Fraser:  It should be. My worry was that there was going to be resentment or apathy in Glasgow because of the way that COP has been done but people are here, people are screaming about this and people are on this. We need to do what we can from now. Maybe we’ve been too exclusive already but I think there’s still absolutely enormous power there to be harnessed in the city and in every corner of the world.

Matt:  Yeah, and it’s funny seeing that energy but in different contexts. For me, COP has all been about seeing different people get really excited and engaged about climate but in different subjects. Obviously, climate breaks down into a whole range of different singular issues. They’re all tied together but they’re discreet problems in different settings. So I’ve seen it in the Green Zone and the Blue Zone. I’ve seen it on the march. I’ve seen it in these more VIP events. I’ve seen it even in my home chatting to my wife and family. So I’ve seen that and it comes in all shapes and sizes. As you say, it does give you hope when you see that spectrum of humanity kind of tackling it within one city because it’s all here right now. Everybody is here but it’s all happening and, as you say, when you lose heart and you see that, it does give you reason to kind of keep cracking on. I’ve thoroughly enjoyed it and, as I say, it would be good to see some more folk tonight and hear their perspectives because everybody has had a different COP. Everybody has a different tale. Everybody has had a unique experience which is really quite weird [laughter] because we’re all in the same city dealing with the same issues. Anyway, we’ll let you know how we get on with the quiz. Fraser has got all the answers written on the back of his hands [laughter]. He doesn’t know the questions yet but... maybe he does know the questions. Right, we’ll let you know how we get on and until then... and, of course, wish us luck.

Becky’s Bicycle Diaries

[Music flourish]

Rebecca:  Hello and welcome to a very special edition of Local Zero on wheels. It’s 7am on Saturday, 6th November. It’s dark outside. In fact, rain and horrible howling wind is promised and yet I am Lycra-clad and ready to join a whole host of fabulous folk as I get ready to spend four days cycling on the Moving For Climate Now bike ride. The initiative has been going since 2015. We’ll spend the next four days cycling and making our way into Glasgow. On the last day, we will ride into COP to deliver our manifesto which is where we’re really asking government to step up, take more action and start to support the joining and multiplying of forces that we need to mobilise society in the upcoming decade of climate action. Over the coming four days, I’m going to be chatting with all the folk on the bike ride and hearing how it’s going, what this bike ride is all about, where it came from and more importantly, what they’re really hoping it can achieve and how we can really start to make a difference by working together. So stay tuned for a little bit more.

[Music flourish]

So at lunchtime on Day One, I’m in the pub which is the best place to be. There is only 25k to go, I’m sure a pint of beer won’t be too bad. I’m here with seven other very brave team members [laughter]. How has your ride been?

Male cyclist:  Wet and windy [laughter].

Rebecca:  Hang on, let’s try someone else. 

Female cyclist:  Let me see. The icy feeling on the face was quite harsh over the top [laughter].

Rebecca:  Okay, one more.

Male cyclist:  Absolutely fabulous!

Rebecca:  Yay! [Laughter]

[Music flourish]

Hazel:  Hello, I’m Hazel Gulliver and I am Director of Engagement for Scottish Power.

Rebecca:  And Hazel, the bike ride is not new to you. You’ve done this before, right?

Hazel:  Yes, the last time I did it was in Spain and I have to say though, it was just as rainy in Spain as it was in Scotland.

Rebecca:  A bit warmer?

Hazel:  Yes [laughter]. Yeah, definitely warmer.

Rebecca:  This is obviously something that you are passionate about and deeply involved in. Tell us a little bit more about the journey that we’re going to be embarking on across the four days really and why this route has been chosen.

Hazel:  It’s a really interesting one because Scotland is the perfect place to do a story of the energy transition. We can start in Edinburgh, go over the bridges, past Longannet, closed down, coal-fired power station, transition to HALO renewable energy development in Kilmarnock and to Whitelee Windfarm where the renewables for such developments come from. It’s a perfect beginning-to-end energy transition story.

Rebecca:  Amazing! Absolutely. Scotland has got it all, doesn’t it? Does this energy transition story represent what the bike ride is about? What are you hoping to get out of the bike ride?

Hazel:  The bike ride is about delivering a manifesto for change to COP and it is what it’s all about. It is all about the energy transition and how we manage that and how we take the action to deliver that. We’re just trying to raise awareness, get the messages to the right people and show that we’re all committed to taking action.

Rebecca:  Four days and how many kilometres?

Hazel:  About 280 or something really insane [laughter].

Rebecca:  And how are you feeling? Excited? Nervous? Apprehensive?

Hazel:  All of that but mostly excited because it’s a fantastic initiative. I keep telling people it’s the best thing I’ve ever done. The last time I did it, I couldn’t believe how amazing it was and I hope everyone has the same experience this time.

Rebecca:  Thanks, Hazel.

[Music flourish]

The manifesto is really asking – more than asking – we’re stating that we need five key actions if we are serious about combating climate change. With these five actions, the first ask is for medium and long-term pathways aligned with reaching net-zero emissions by 2050. The second action area is around consistent and enabling policy frameworks and these are absolutely fundamental if we want to be able to implement the pathway set out by government. The third area is a call for a massive expansion of green investment around energy efficiency, sustainable mobility and clean heating. Many of these technologies are already available, so we need to support the innovation and we need to support them being brought to market. The fourth ask is about nature-based solutions. We need to see more action around conserving and restoring both marine and terrestrial ecosystems if we really are serious about delivering on the sustainable development goals. The fifth ask, and I think this is one of the most important action areas, is about the need for alliances. No one can do this alone. We need to bring together people from all walks of life as individuals and citizens as well as institutions, industries and governments. We have to work together through these partnerships and alliances to create change now.

[Music flourish]

So it’s the morning of Day Two of the bike ride. It’s not raining yet. It was a beautiful sunrise this morning actually and I’m standing here with Gerry who has a very interesting story about how he came to be involved in the bike ride.

Gerry:  I’d like to say it was bad luck but really it was good luck. Our office ran a draw and I was the lucky guy. It’s been absolutely exhilarating and fascinating so far. There are so many people who have wiser heads than me working on climate change and that’s really reassuring to hear.

Rebecca:  What are you hoping that we can achieve together on this bike ride? Is there something that you would like to see come out of it?

Gerry:  I’d like to make sure that the vulnerable aren’t left behind as we transition to net zero. They’re often not thought about. I know Sam Gardner from Scottish Power really has that at the top of his list as well.

Rebecca:  Brilliant. Tell us a little bit more about what you’re doing because you’re based at Scottish Power in the distribution business I believe. Tell me a little bit more about your role there.

Gerry:  My role is to make sure that the vulnerable are supported whenever they have an interruption to their electricity supply. I promote the Priority Service Register which tells us who our vulnerable customers are. We’ll try to reach out to them during a power cut and provide appropriate support. I also work to make sure that the vulnerable have better options to live their lives. I work to try and make their homes energy efficient, try and maximise their income and try to make their homes safe. I’ve said this before but to me, it’s the most satisfying job in SP Energy Networks.

Rebecca:  Amazing. I can imagine it would be. Looking forward to the rest of the day. I think we’ve got 80km ahead of us. How are you feeling? Are you excited? Are you nervous?

Gerry:  I think, truth be told, I’m probably a little sore at the moment but I’m looking forward to it. The sun is trying to peek through. I’ve become very weather conscious this trip. As long as the rain stays off, I think we’ll cope admirably.

Rebecca:  Absolutely. Catch you on the other side.

[Music flourish]

It’s 11pm and it’s the end of Day Two. It’s been a very eventful day with lots of fantastic countryside. We cycled starting in New Lanark all the way out to Troon. There was lots of wind – 30mph winds in our face at some points during the day. Thankfully, we had electric bikes. A lot of wind farms passed on the way and it was good to see those blades turning. We stopped off at the HALO initiative in Kilmarnock which was absolutely brilliant. I’d heard about it briefly in previous conversations but it was great to see it for the first time. It just is a really interesting example of where a range of different organisations, including Scottish Power who are supporting the initiative and very, very deeply involved in it, are working with the council, the local college and a range of other organisations to try and create something in the local community that can really start to reinvigorate the economy but in a way that promotes sustainable development and net zero. It’s an innovation centre and they’re looking to build houses in the area as well and really bring together a diversity of different opportunities to support new jobs, new training and new skills but very sustainably. I think what struck me most was simply the collaborations and the partnerships that it’s taken to create this. It’s been a real inspiration seeing how these very different organisations have come together and are working together and finding those common goals to do some action right now. We’ve got these national-level policies. We’ve got COP bringing the international negotiations to the fore but all around that is this inspirational action that’s not waiting for policy. It’s not waiting for governments to tell them what to do. It’s just getting on and doing the action right now. For me, that kind of epitomises what net zero and 1.50C is all about. It’s about working together to deliver something and to deliver it in our communities where we can engage support and create something that’s really better for everyone involved. As you can probably tell, I am very inspired. What you probably can’t tell is that I’m absolutely exhausted [laughter]. My ankles and my knees are really, really aching and so I’m off to bed to get myself ready for Day Three of the ride and what looks to be another wet one.

[Music flourish]

Luca:  Hello, my name is Luca Lo Re. I work for the International Energy Agency.

Rebecca:  So Luca and I are sat in the bar with some lovely gin and tonics after a very hard day on the road. How has the bike ride been going for you so far, Luca?

Luca:  It’s fantastic. Today, especially, there was no rain, the landscape is fantastic and the company is fantastic, so I couldn’t ask for more.

Rebecca:  For me, especially, coming over the hill as we saw the sea and it was all downhill [laughter] after about 70km of uphill was amazing. Of course, we’re doing this for a purpose and it’s all aligned with COP. You’ve been at COP this last week until you joined the cycle ride. What are you really hoping can be achieved through the next week?

Luca:  Yeah, as for every COP I’ve been to, I’m very glad that I have the opportunity to be here. At the same time, I think there have been a few challenges and so my experience so far has been a little bit mixed with the challenges being a little bit logistical. I think many people have heard about the long queues that we had at the beginning and even negotiators couldn’t get in, so the negotiations started late. I work mostly in international climate negotiations and so I think the main hope is to try to finalise the Paris Agreement rulebook this year. We are halfway. So let’s see what is going to happen next week.

Rebecca:  Very, very exciting. On Twitter, I’ve heard some criticisms that this COP feels quite exclusive. There are all these negotiations going on but it’s very high level. Our pod is all about local climate action and people can often think, ‘What can I do? I can’t get into the negotiations. I don’t have a seat at the table and I’m just being told to recycle or travel differently.’ But really, are these two worlds so far apart or are there opportunities for people to get involved in different ways?

Luca:  Absolutely. First of all, the negotiations are generally quite technical and so for people who don’t follow that so closely, it’s quite difficult to get involved. However, there are some channels where you can actually get your voice heard. For instance, there are many constituencies that represent different interests in the negotiations and generally, they participate as observers and they have a part at the table. For instance, the youth are represented through an NGO which is called YOUNGO. As just another example, the farmers are represented and they have a constituency that is called Farmers or for the researchers, there is one NGO called RINGO. I think there are ways for local citizens, if there is interest, to be involved in the negotiations. There are different channels that you can get involved with.

Rebecca:  So very exciting stuff. Ways to participate and ways to get your voice heard. Hopefully, we can start to see more combined and collaborative action that will not only set those targets at the international level and get the agreements that we so desperately need but can start to focus on delivery as well.

Luca:  Absolutely because this challenge of climate change is so big that we cannot make it if everyone works alone. We definitely need collaboration with all different parts of society and all different sectors. Everyone needs to work together to globally get to net zero.

Rebecca:  Thank you so much for joining me, Luca.

Luca:  Thank you.

[Music flourish]

Rebecca:  We’re now at the end of Day Three and I’m just getting ready to go to bed and honestly, I cannot believe that the bike ride is almost over. It’s been a really eventful day today. We started out this morning in Troon with beautiful weather; not quite blue skies but it certainly wasn’t raining. Through the course of the morning, we cycled 46km to Whitelee Windfarm and it was absolutely phenomenal. Lindsay McQuade, the CEO of Scottish Power Renewables, explained to us how, if you look at the size of Whitelee Windfarm and lifted up the area and put it over Glasgow, it would take up that much space. This one wind farm is equivalent to the size of the whole city. It’s producing a huge amount of energy and they’ve got so many exciting aspirations to take that further; shifting away from just thinking about wind, solar and storage as separate entities and focusing much more on integrated energy provision on the same site. So a really amazing experience to be able to get up to Whitelee Windfarm and see those turbines close up.

The rest of the day was supposed to be a bike ride from Whitelee to Motherwell. Unfortunately, we had to do a slight detour via Glasgow to get some PCR tests as one of the members of the group had had a positive lateral flow test earlier in the journey. So we didn’t manage to do the last little bit of cycling but we’re certainly all very geared up for the ride tomorrow from Motherwell all the way into the COP venue where we’ll be delivering the manifesto. So a lot of excitement, a lot of nerves and some real kind of team spirit and coming together. It’s really all about this team spirit. I know the bike ride is just a four-day event but over the course of the four days, we’ll have had so many wonderful conversations between people who wouldn’t usually get together in their everyday walks of life. I’ve had opportunities to chat with folk from the IEA (International Energy Agency), the UNFCCC, industry and from policy. We’ve had folk from the Scottish Government Cabinet Office here. It’s given me a real insight into the very, very different ways that different people are approaching COP and this huge challenge that we’ve got to address around decarbonisation and, of course, not just decarbonisation but doing this in a way that creates that better, fairer future for everyone and really pushing forward the just transition element of this all. It’s now coming up to 11.30pm and we’re heading out very early tomorrow morning, so I’m off to bed with excitement for the day ahead.

[Music flourish]

[Applause]

So after a gruelling 36km cycle ride this morning, we arrived into COP amongst the huge number of police and security officers. Finally, after many times checking our badges and our negative lateral flow test results, we were allowed to cycle into the venue.

[More applause]

As a team, we cycled up to a stage and handed over the manifesto.

[Music flourish]

I’ve just got home and it has been absolutely nuts. We’ve cycled somewhere in the region of 250km and I am not a cyclist and so this was, in and of itself, a huge achievement for me. But really, it’s been all about bringing a team together and creating new forms of collaborations, partnerships and conversations that will go on and live on beyond COP and that will help us deliver action over the coming years. It was about delivering our manifesto into COP which we did today. We rode in from Motherwell this morning and, I’ll tell you, the first part of the journey was absolutely terrifying. We were cycling along the main road and it was rush hour and it really brought home to me actually how poor the cycling infrastructure is in some parts of the city. I was pretty much shaking with fear the entire time until we got onto the cycle lanes which was absolutely brilliant. They were away from the cars and we were cycling alongside the river, so it was absolutely brilliant but it certainly isn’t prevalent enough throughout the city to enable people to be making those greener choices even if they wanted to.

[Music flourish]

A very powerful manifesto that was handed over. It left me with a feeling of excitement and hope... the way that I’ve seen, over the past four days, the diversity of organisations and the way that people are talking and focusing on net zero. For me, the conversation is starting to change and it is starting to focus more on action. It feels like a very different time than it did even a year ago or two years ago when we were still talking about 1.50C or timelines. There seems to have been a huge amount of movement in that space and now it’s about how we go about delivering this, moving away from the targets and into the implementation and doing this in very innovative and exciting new ways. Perhaps this is the rush of endorphins talking after a lot of exercise [laughter] which has been quite strenuous for me but I am very hopeful. For me, that’s great going into the next week of COP: going into the Blue Zone really for the first time tomorrow, getting to have an exploration and see if some of the spirit that I’ve seen on the bike ride is manifested through the rest of the event. It’s late at night and I’m off to bed. That’s all from me today but I will be back tomorrow in the Blue Zone with a lot more excitement to come.

Sustainability in Glasgow with Gavin Slater

[Music flourish]

Matt:  Okay, we are in Glasgow City Chambers. We are with Gavin Slater who has kindly made the time available. So, Gavin, if you could possibly just let the listeners know exactly what your title is and role with Glasgow City Council and we’re going to talk a little bit more about Glasgow’s net-zero plans.

Gavin:  I am the Head of Sustainability at Glasgow City Council. That makes me responsible for just about everything and anything related to sustainability now. It’s a role that’s grown significantly in the last two years but ultimately, what it’s about is taking Glasgow from where we are now towards our target of being net-zero carbon by 2030. That also involves me running the Sustainable Glasgow Partnership as well as being responsible for a major European project called RUGGEDISED.

Rebecca:  What excites you most? With COP being here and Glasgow being right at the forefront of everything going on, how is the buzz? Are you enjoying it? Are you finding that people are engaging and getting excited about it? Are you excited about all the action that’s happening?

Gavin:  Yeah, it can’t help but be exciting. I’ve been working in Glasgow for the last decade or the last 11 years on this, so it’s wonderful to see this turnaround where not only are we getting it as an organisation but the people of Glasgow are firmly getting behind this. We’ve done a lot of work over the last couple of years. We’ve launched our Glasgow Climate Plan. We’ve done a huge amount of consultation on that which has involved various internet-based ways but also we actually undertook a citizens' assembly where we spoke to many of the citizens in the city with a broad cross-section of citizens. It was very interesting to hear how interested they were but equally, how little they knew about what we were doing. It made it quite clear that we need to get better at communicating that and that’s something we’ve been very active in over the last year. We’ve relaunched Sustainable Glasgow. We’ve launched the Sustainable Glasgow website to try and get as much of that information out to the public to let them see what’s happening in the city because quite often, when you look at some of the very effective measures around carbon and, in particular, around energy, they’re often invisible. You can see a solar array but if you put something in that’s really managing the efficiency of a building, quite often, that’s invisible and so it’s important that we communicate that. So actually having that civilian interest is really energising and it really helps. COP26 has been a very welcome change from all this sitting at home and working. It’s given us the chance to get back out and engage not only within our own team and our own organisation but also with the public, not just in Glasgow but across the world. It’s been tremendously exciting.

Matt:  So let me ask, arguably, the most important question here for Glasgow. What are Glasgow’s net-zero targets and ambitions? Obviously, the target is kind of in the question but what’s the pathway there? What targets and benchmarks are we hoping to reach?

Gavin:  As you say, the target is there. It’s net-zero carbon by 2030 and that’s an evolved ambition from where we’ve been in the past and where very much our efforts have been concentrated on mitigation. Now as much as we’re still concentrated on that mitigation, we’re also very, very focused on adaptation as well. Our climate plan is probably the most broad spectrum of our plans but within that, there’s still a lot of work to be done on that level of detail. With the various actions that we’ve got in the plan, one of them is to develop a detailed net-zero route map, as you say, and that’s a technical study. We’ve already done Phase 1 of that in terms of the scoping study to see where we are currently and where we need to get to. Phase 2 of that is really what we’re planning to do in the next year to 18 months which is to get that out and get the technical detail behind that; so the technologies that are going to be in the mix to get us to that net-zero target. Very interestingly, it’s not about just technology. It’s about people as well. The big challenges in Glasgow are really around heat and transport. That’s where the majority of our emissions are still high. We’ve done incredibly well in reducing our emissions. We started recording our emissions from 2006 as our baseline and by 2019, we had reduced those by 41% but the majority of that is related to electricity consumption and generation.

Rebecca:  It’s no surprise to hear you say that transport and heating are the biggest challenges for Glasgow. I think probably most cities around the UK would have the same sort of thing to say. What are you hoping to really push forward in those areas over the next decade where that’s where we need to see a lot of key action? Have you got some clear visions in place for what they could look like? What gets you out of bed in the morning in terms of the excitement of getting going in that space?

Gavin:  We have a lot of ambition and maybe we’ll start with heating, for example. We are in the process of developing our local heating and energy efficiency strategy which is very highly likely to become a statutory function of the Scottish Government. That is looking at key target areas in the city where we can deploy technologies. We have come some distance down the road with regard to district heating in the city. For the most part to date, that’s been around gas but we are now starting to see air-source heat pumps as the source. We’re doing a lot of work in relation to the river, so the potential to extract heat from the river as well as to extract heat from the ground. We’re actually now starting to look at the potential for hydrogen and hydrogen heat networks as well. 

Rebecca:  Wow!

Gavin:  So there’s a huge amount of excitement around that and if you actually look at the Glasgow Greenprint that we’ve just recently produced, there are a number of projects, including our Climate Neutral Innovation District and our Glasgow Recycling and Renewable Energy Centre which is taking 90% of our waste and turning that into renewable electricity but there’s also a huge amount of heat in there. How do we take that heat and distribute that amongst the city? For me, it’s very geeky but district heating does excite me. I think it’s a huge opportunity for Glasgow. We look to our Scandinavian friends who are so far along this road for various different reasons and different pressures that they’ve had, both politically and geopolitically. Glasgow can do that as well. We’ve seen that district heating works. It’s not quite there and there are still some challenges and so the Scottish Government is working on that in terms of regulation but I think that’s one of the things that excites me. That’s only helping with the provision of heat. There’s still a lot of work to be done on Glasgow’s built environment in terms of its ability to retain that heat and use it efficiently. There’s a lot of work there. We’re just launching the Energy Retrofit at a regional level and that’s going to be looking at the built environment in Glasgow as well and asking how we retrofit those buildings in a way that makes them efficient and use heat efficiently at a low-carbon source of heat. That’s going to be a challenge because a lot of that is social housing which we have, through our partnerships, a degree of control over. A lot of that is privately owned and that’s another thing altogether. How do we get private owners to engage in this as well? I think you’re going to want to come in there.

Matt:  Well, I just wanted to pick up on the retrofit part and the question around what, as Becky was saying, gets you up in the morning. I’m wondering what keeps you awake at night. With the retrofit in Glasgow, I was sitting through an interesting presentation last night which pointed out that in Glasgow, one in five homes are tenement homes which are well over 100 years old and very hard to retrofit. Is this something that you’re going to be wrangling with as a particularly difficult issue? There are obviously some exemplary schemes like Niddrie Road in the Southside. They’ve taken eight flats and done some fantastic things but what’s the plan on that front?

Gavin:  Yeah, Niddrie Road is a good one. It’s a great example and there’s some really interesting work going on there but it’s also coming at a significant cost. It isn’t a cheap solution. The retrofit programme that we’re about to undertake and the feasibility work that’s going to look at that is going to have a lot of work to do. Your listeners can’t see but there isn’t a single hair on my head and there are a lot of things that keep me up at night. That built environment really is a problem that we don’t have the answer to yet and we need to get there fairly quickly. With regard to the tenement stock, I live in a tenement and so I know what it’s like. It’s a wonderful and beautiful building but it does have those issues and try as we might, we don’t quite have that answer yet. If we want to deploy heat pumps, for example, there are a lot of planning issues that there that we need to get passed. Obviously, the insulation is very difficult to retrofit as well in terms of encroaching on people’s space. It would be disingenuous to say that we have the answer but what we do have is the momentum and the purpose to find those answers. So by working with colleagues at the University of Strathclyde, the University of Glasgow and various other different organisations in the region, I’m sure that we’ll get to that point.

Rebecca:  I want to pick up on a word you used earlier which was ‘partnerships.’ You talked about the Sustainable Glasgow initiative and, for me, one of the things that really excites me about that is just the partnerships that are developing and seeing the council working with industry, universities, businesses, communities, social enterprises and so on. You also talked about the work with citizens. Is this level of collaboration and partnership work something that is new? Do you see this as being critical to underpinning the ability to transition at the pace and scale that we need to?

Gavin:  No, it’s not new. We’ve been doing this for ten years with varying degrees of success but, yes, it’s absolutely critical. I think if you look at the Sustainable Glasgow Partnership as it is now, it’s probably in the best shape that it’s been for a while. We’re actually seeing outputs from the partnership. What we did in the last couple of years is reprofiled how the partnership looks and underneath the board, which is predominantly public sector with the only private sector partner being the Scottish Power Energy Networks due to them having the majority of the energy network in the city, we have four thematic hubs with the themes of heating and housing, green infrastructure and transport, greening the city and the green economy in the private sector. Those are chaired by different organisations. Two of them are chaired by my colleagues in the council but the other two are chaired by the University of Strathclyde and Scottish Power Energy Networks. We’ve seen some really interesting things there because what those hubs have managed to do is they basically have the autonomy to bring on whichever partners they think can add value to that hub. If you look at the green economy and private sector hub, they’ve been hugely successful in creating our Sustainable Glasgow Charter. We have the power to create policy but then it’s very difficult to get people to buy into that and come along with us on the journey. One of the big things that we need to do is work with SMEs and with big business in the city. The Sustainable Glasgow Charter is a way for those SMEs and businesses to sign up and join us on that journey to trying to get to net-zero carbon but also to get more support from us through the various partners in the partnership. That’s led by our partners at Scottish Power. We’ve got already many signatories signing up to it and we’re going to follow that up through the green infrastructure and transport hub with the Corporate Mobility Pact. We’re starting to produce these partnership agreements which not only put in place some commitment but also a monitoring and measurement package to make sure that those are actually taking action.

Matt:  So if there was one other sector that I would say gave heat a run for its money in terms of difficulty, it would be transport and you’ve just mentioned it there. Often, in Glasgow, we hear big questions about what’s going to happen to the M8 in terms of it being an arterial road. We’ve got a fantastic and exciting new cycling strategy from Glasgow City Council but ultimately, and living here for the last five years which I have, it is a city very much like any other city in the UK but very much a city which is addicted to the car. I wanted to just get your view on how we can unlock net zero through transportation in Glasgow and what the future might look like in ten or so years.

Gavin:  Yes, you’re absolutely right. We’re working very hard at the moment to produce our Glasgow transport strategy and within that, there is a commitment to reduce the amount of transport coming into the city by 30% and that’s private vehicle transport. We’re obviously working as well through our Bus Improvement Partnership to look at the public transport offering as well and we can do as a city to help improve that. If you’ve been walking about the city lately, you will have seen a number of electric buses running in support of COP. They’re really quick and clean, obviously. There will be more of them in the city being delivered and, again, through the Sustainable Glasgow Partnership, Scottish Power has been funding some of the infrastructure to support that by putting considerable chargers in place that need to do that. We’ve also been putting in an electric vehicle charging network in the city and we now have over 200 chargers and rapidly approaching 300 chargers. Actually, just before COP, we finished a new station just under the M8, under the Kingston Bridge, which we’ll make much more of a noise about after COP. I think it would be lost in some of the noise at the moment. In there, you’ve got a number of 50kw chargers and the first 150kw charger in the city. The purpose of that is, hopefully, to start getting taxes onto electric vehicles as well so that they can charge very, very quickly and be back out on the road and they don’t have any of that range anxiety. That, in some ways, is taking care of some of the emissions related to vehicles but I think there’s still a lot in terms of people’s behaviour and the choices that they make...

Matt:  Absolutely.

Gavin:  ...in personal transport. If you look at the Spaces For People programme that we did through the pandemic and the Nextbikes that we’ve got in the city and we now have the electric Nextbikes as well (and given that Glasgow is a fairly hilly city, that’s a big help to a lot of us), we’re seeing more and more people getting engaged in active travel. Obviously, we have challenges with the weather in Glasgow but we’re not unique in that. There are many cities across the world that still cycle and still travel that way. We have to look at personal travel choices as well and I think that Corporate Mobility Pact that we’re working on will also look at people’s choices but also how businesses support those choices and what they do in terms of their commuting and their business travel as well.

Matt:  We’re opposite our employer, the University of Strathclyde. I cycled here the other day and I would say the two things that made the difference between me doing it or not doing it was, one, a segregated cycle line through Victoria Road across the Southside cycleway and the second was that we have secure cycle storage here, the ability to get changed and all the rest. Is this the kind of thing you’re talking about like public infrastructure plus organisational infrastructure or support?

Gavin:  Yes, absolutely. I live in the South of the city and I cycle in and out every day. I’m very fortunate that Glasgow City Council made the decision to put the infrastructure in place to support us. We have secure storage and we have showers to get changed. It makes it very easy to make that choice to cycle in and out. So there is the need to have the right infrastructure, as you say, and to have that segregated cycleway. You see it more and more across the city. There’s still work to be done, obviously, but that network is growing and there’s a strategy to grow that network out from the city centre but also for businesses to provide the facilities that people need. That’s not just with bikes as well. If people are going to start using electric vehicles, businesses can’t rely entirely on public sector infrastructure to do that. There are many ways that businesses can put chargers into their own premises to make sure that the people travelling, if they need to, can stop there and charge their vehicles as well.

Rebecca:  Looking forward ten years, if this is all successful, if we get everything right and it all works out brilliantly, how do you see Glasgow being different? What will Glasgow look like in ten years’ time for us coming in and working in the city and for tourists coming in? How will it be different to today if we get where we want to be?

Gavin:  That’s a really interesting question because I think Glasgow is a city with such tremendous character. There are many things about it you wouldn’t want to change but I think where there are challenges with congestion and where there are challenges with people moving about, I think a lot of that will be alleviated. I think we’ll have buildings that are warm when they need to be and cool when they need to be. We’ll be able to move about freely and make good choices to move about. People will generally be happier. I think there will be more people living in the city centre. We’ll see buildings repurposed and we’ll have much more community hub-type buildings. Maybe you’ve got markets or shops on the bottom and then residential above it which used to be offices. I think there will be more people here but it will feel more open, more green and a much more pleasurable and safer space to be in. I think Glasgow of the future will be much like Glasgow of today; still a warm, friendly and wonderful place to be.

Matt:  I think, before we end, I just wanted to ask one final question which was how Glasgow City Council is looking to tackle the dual issues of a net-zero transition but also a just transition. Is this something that you’re having to tackle simultaneously and how are you doing it?

Gavin:  Yeah, it’s an absolute miracle that we’ve gone this far in the conversation without mentioning the just transition. The just transition sits at the core of everything we do. We’re working very hard, obviously, on our net-zero carbon targets but we also have targets to be a circular city as well. All of that is about making sure that we do that in a just way and that we take our citizens with us. Part of the citizens’ assembly was we were trying to make that very clear that we’re not making decisions from the top down but also that we’re making those decisions with consideration from the ground up as well. It’s really important that those people who are the most affected, most disenfranchised and the most hit by climate change are not further disenfranchised by the actions that we take and that those people that have maybe the least options to do stuff get the most support to do those things. Yeah, it’s absolutely core to Glasgow City Council that whatever we do has to be just, it has to be inclusive and it has to make sure that no one is left behind and that when we get to 2030, everybody is on board, everybody benefits and everybody gets to enjoy it.

Rebecca:  I have to say that because we are a podcast and no one can see that right behind you is the big banner with the sign ‘People Make Glasgow’ and every time I see that, it brings that focus on the social and on the humanity right to the forefront. It’s a great banner to be working alongside I guess.

Gavin:  Yeah, it’s something that’s been commented on time and time again at COP26. So many people have come to the city and they love ‘People Make Glasgow.’ They love it because... they do. People make Glasgow. You can’t find a more friendly city. If you look lost, people will tell you how to get where you’re going and it’s great. We’ve had lots of really positive, wonderful comments just at our stand in the Blue Zone about how great a time people are having just by visiting the city. Yeah, people do make Glasgow.

Rebecca:  I can’t think of anything better to end on [laughter] than that. That’s absolutely brilliant. Thank you so much for your time today. It’s been a real pleasure to chat with you and I’m very excited to work alongside the council and really help get this change that we all want to see.

Matt:  Thank you, Gavin. Good luck and enjoy COP.

Gavin:  Thank you.

[Music flourish]

Matt in the Blue Zone

[Music flourish]

Matt:  So queuing up for Day Two in the Blue Zone. We’ve had quite a nice last night. We were at the Carbon Brief quiz with the Strathamatics Team which I was repeatedly reminded wasn’t the most imaginative team name but we did our university proud. We came a respectable middle of the bottom half of the table, so not relegation but we weren’t exactly bringing home the silverware. But we had a really good time and we had some fantastic colleagues there. It was great just to get together. Many of them, I haven’t even seen before and if I had, it was before the pandemic. It was just great to get together and hear about their experiences of COP. It sounds like everybody has had a really good time... a few bags under the eyes [laughter] as the negotiations start to draw out and also become far, far, far more serious. Yeah, a balance. I think people were letting off a bit of steam last night but also aware that they’ve got three or four really hard days ahead. So back into the Blue Zone, back through security and back to trying to enjoy a few more events. I’ll be reporting back more later.

[Music flourish]

Female speaker:  Right now today, electric vehicles are less than 5% of sales globally in 2021. We need to get to 100% by 2035, essentially. That is not going to happen just with market forces alone.

Male speaker:  But there are also questions about these batteries once those vehicles have come to the end of their lives.

Male speaker:  Especially in Namibia, we have so many challenges and those challenges are also similar to some other parts of the planet. We need to address collectively the reduction of our carbon emissions.

Matt:  Okay, so we’ve sat through a really fascinating plenary on the electrification of transport with a very strong global focus. I think most listeners have possibly thought, particularly if they’re UK-based, that electrification of transportation is about purchasing an EV, whether you’re in a block of flats or a suburban semi, but this really took a global focus and trying to put that transition into context for the entire planet.

Male speaker:  I think the big challenge that we have is that between now and 2050, we’re going to add about a billion vehicles to the global fleet and actually, 99% of those billion vehicles are going to be added in low emitter income countries.

Matt:  Some really shocking statistics first; another billion new vehicles on the road and the bulk of these, unless we do something about it, will be internal combustion engines. Crucially, two out of three of these vehicles – and when we say vehicles, we’re talking light-duty vehicles like cars, small vans and the like – will be in developing countries or other countries we may refer to as BRIC countries or countries like India and China. We’re seeing these markets explode in terms of vehicle use as they become richer, as there is more disposable income and there is a larger middle class. Vehicle ownership is something which is rocketing.

Male speaker:  The question is how the Kenyas, the Vietnams and Perus of this world going to join this global shift to zero emissions electric mobility?

Matt:  But these markets represent, potentially, huge opportunities for the growth of EVs and they have the potential to leapfrog where we were at the equivalent point of economic development. They’re able to leapfrog because they can import the vehicles which are being produced in other countries. There’s a real emphasis here on ensuring that the cars that they buy today and tomorrow can be as low emission as possible. Today, only 5% of vehicle sales are EVs. There was a real emphasis here that to meet our net-zero goals that 80% of surface transport emissions need to be cut by 2050 and that requires us to increase that 5% share of new vehicle sales as EVs from 5% today to 100% by 2035.

Female speaker:  Electric vehicles powered by renewable energy is pretty much the only way you can do it with cars. That is really what we have to focus on and if we have to get the entire fleet there by 2050 in order to have enough time to turn the fleet over, we need to have 100% sales by 2035. That’s why these kinds of short-term targets to get electric vehicles into the fleet by 2035 are so critical.

Matt:  Some countries are much better placed. We have countries like Norway where, according to this talk, the percentage of new vehicle sales is around the 90% mark but in the UK, we’re nudging up to 10%. There are some countries that are positioned as primed and ready to move very, very quickly indeed.

Male speaker:  One thing I wanted to mention is that a key trend in the global car market is the fact that there are more and more SUVs, so larger cars. The market share of these types of vehicles increased from 20% in 2005 to 44% in 2019. That is a huge increase. These cars consume about 30% more than medium-sized vehicles and they’re making it harder for decarbonisation and for the efficiency of the fleet to go ahead.

Matt:  So how do we get there? How do we ensure that the bulk of sales or 100% of vehicle sales are EVs by 2035? Some really interesting points in terms of policies. Firstly, stop subsidising fossil fuels. Secondly, tax fossil fuels instead with carbon pricing and cap and trade. We also need technical standards to ensure that the vehicles we are producing are as low emissions as possible and as efficient as possible. We also need to keep decarbonising power to ensure that the power that is feeding into these vehicles is clean. One thing that was positioned as a real possible solution by a chap called Lewis Fulton from UCU Davis alongside those other policies was that we need to mandate a minimum share of EVs sold in countries.

Male speaker:  First of all, foundationally, we think they have to stop subsidising fossil fuels and then they need to be taxing fossil fuels and probably carbon pricing is the way to go. I think we can target zero-emission vehicle requirements that many countries may find that basically, over time, just require that a certain number of zero-emission vehicles are sold. In a sense, technology forces them into the marketplace.

Matt:  There are real opportunities and I think this kind of feeds into the decision-making that we, as individuals and as communities, make... that localised decision-making. Do I opt for an EV? Well, the price needs to be right and it’s no good making fossil fuel vehicles and the fuel that they run on cheap. So another fascinating talk. I’m about to run into other events now and I’ll reflect on those later but they’re coming thick and fast. I really enjoyed that one.

[Music flourish]

Asli:  I’m Asli. I’m a PhD researcher at the Science Policy Research Unit. I investigate the role of data and data policies in electric mobility development.

Yau:  I’m Yau Shi and I’m from the same institution. I’m currently looking at the carbon emissions if people work from home in the UK.

Matt:  Oh, wow, okay.

Yau:  I’m also looking at the energy efficiency of companies in the UK.

Matt:  Okay, so two big topics: electric mobility, energy consumption and energy efficiency, particularly working from home. In that regard, over the last 18 months, many of us have been having to work from home because of Covid. How is your PhD research exploring the potential for working from home to reduce energy consumption and help save the planet?

Yau:  Well, the answer might be a bit disappointing because we’ve found out that teleworkers may consume more energy because they have more commuting trips. They do more shopping, pick up school kids and they live also further away from their workplaces. These factors make teleworkers actually consume more but what we do find is it all depends on the individuals. If we all change our behaviours, then it’s going to be a very positive change. It’s a very significant change if we can all take actions such as turning the heating off if we’re not using it and by living closer to our workplace and using green transportation.

Matt:  Is it because everybody is running their own boiler at the same time? How are we consuming more energy per person through working from home?

Yau:  Because if you think about the space you have at home, you have your own office which can take the entire bedroom but if you are in the office, it’s only a desk. In that sense, it saves energy if you work from the office. Also, if you work from home, a lot of previous researchers have found that people travel further and so even if you work from home, you still travel to work once a month or once a week. For this once a week, you travel much, much further than the five times a week you do if you work from the office. This makes the total effect not very positive.

Matt:  That’s headline-grabbing. Before we move on to the next set of events, which are surely happening somewhere around here, how have you found COP? Has it been what you expected?

Asli:  I did not have many expectations. I can say that there is a huge diversity which I really like and then also what I find exciting is that in most of the sessions that I attended, I always see an equal number of speakers that are female. I feel like there’s a highlight of gender.

Matt:  And today, of course, it’s co-badged... gender equality... I’m not saying innovation but, yeah, I would agree with you. I think we’ve seen a strong representation. Yau, just from your perspective, do you think COP, as you’ve experienced it, is the right format to get what we need which is global climate action?

Yau:  For me, it’s better than I expected. The good things are very obvious. We can concentrate on all these experts’ views but what I would find better would be to include the general public. We know all these institutions or organisations are having protests and public awareness is being raised in this way. If we could include them and make it more combined, it would be much better.

Matt:  They are quite literally walled out, so I would completely agree with that. Well, listen, I won’t keep you from the next event. Thank you. It’s getting cold out here now the sun has gone in. We shall run off in opposite directions for the next event but thank you and enjoy the rest of COP.

Asli:  Thanks.

Yau:  Thank you.

[Music flourish]

Matt:  So running from event to event. We’ve just been locked out, sadly, of a fascinating talk which was in response to the IPCC’s report and trying to understand how we can keep 1.50C alive. We’re locked out but that’s okay because I’ve just met somebody fascinating. Shrina, if you could maybe introduce yourself, your background and what you’re undertaking at the moment?

Shrina:  Yeah, of course. Thank you so much. Thank you, Matthew. It was great meeting you in line. My name is Shrina Kurani and I’m running for Congress in Southern California in an area that’s within a county called Riverside County. For those of you from the UK, you might be familiar with Orange County and we’re just East of OC. My area is called the Inland Empire and it’s one of those areas that is very much hit by climate change. We’re seeing increased wildfire risk. We have one of the worst air qualities in the nation. California is in a drought at the moment and there are so many things that we’re facing. With climate change, you always think of it as this big global risk but really, we’re seeing it at home. I’m an engineer. My background is actually in mechanical engineering. I worked in energy efficiency and I was helping companies transition from fossil fuels into clean energy. I started a couple of companies in the sustainability space and I’m now helping under-represented entrepreneurs get access to capital. I’ve realised that there is just so much that needs to be done in fighting climate change and making sure that we have what we need to make sure that we can take care of our futures. I think one of the biggest issues that we’re seeing is that we’re not hitting these commitments. We’re seeing countries make all of these bold proclamations and making announcements saying what they’re going to do but we’re still here, after the Paris Agreement years later, saying, ‘Let’s keep those goals alive.’ The language that we’ve heard today is ‘Let’s keep 1.50C alive’ and the fact that we haven’t hit it, I think is a really big problem.

Matt:  On that, obviously, the US has been ravaged by extreme weather. We, in the UK, are acutely aware of the forest fires and the bush fires that have been raging across the States. To what extent is that translating at a local level with your average communities and households? When you’re speaking to citizens, is the penny starting to drop? Are people starting to appreciate the scale of this and starting to mobilise or are people still sticking their heads in the sand and hoping this goes away?

Shrina:  It’s one of those things that you realise from the very beginning. When I was young, I remember seeing ash fall from the sky when I was at school. I remember being on the blacktop once you got out of school and it was too hot to be out there, so we had to be called back in. That’s only getting worse and so as climate change continues to get worse, a lot of those things hit home more than ever. The same masks that we were wearing for Covid, those N95s, we’re wearing something very similar for fire season. 

Matt:  Wow!

Shrina:  It’s one of those things where you are starting to see those effects. California is in a drought. We’ve always had issues with water. We’ve always had issues with air quality, especially in our region because it is such a major transportation hub as well. People are seeing the effects of climate change here at home, definitely.

Matt:  But it also costs a tremendous amount. I was watching the Netflix documentary which I think was recorded a few years ago. I forget the name of it but it followed CAL FIRE and explored how that fire season had grown from maybe three months of the year now to six months and even longer. The cost was amazing to me and the size of the outfit. Are local citizens also looking at this and saying, ‘This isn’t just an existential threat. This climate adaptation is also expensive’?

Shrina:  A hundred per cent. I think one of the biggest arguments that we have is that we’re insuring against our futures. We know this is something that’s happening. It’s something that we’ve been experiencing and it’s only getting worse. So us making sure that we’re not only mitigating but also finding these adaptation plans for climate change is securing our futures. This isn’t just about what we’ve experienced in the past and what we’re experiencing now. It’s knowing that it is getting worse and by adhering to these commitments, we actually have a chance at having a cleaner and more sustainable future that we actually want to live in.

Matt:  So let me bring that then to the hot topic in US politics at the moment, the Infrastructure Bill. As I understand it, I think as we speak right now, it hasn’t been passed, although it’s being revised and edited in terms of pressure within the Democratic Party and, of course, outside. What are your hopes for this? Firstly, what do you see passing and do you think it’s enough to get the US and get Southern California to where we need to be to avoid catastrophic climate change?

Shrina:  I mean I think we’re always going to need more and more aggressive climate agendas. I think that’s a big part of why I’m running in the first place because we know there are certain compromises that you may have to make just to get things across the line and that’s the first step but you’re always going to need more. It’s going to need to be more fact-based and more evidence-based as the facts and the evidence continue to evolve with all the new science that’s coming out. The report that we’re missing right now, especially as we’re talking about some of the latest changes that are coming out, is saying that we’re in a better position to actually hit our climate goals if we just find the path to get there than we were when the agreement was signed. I think there is more evidence coming out that we’re going to be able to get there but we’re going to need really, really aggressive pathways.

Matt:  I wish you all the very best and I hope you have an enjoyable COP and a safe trip home if and when it ever ends [laughter].

Shrina:  Thanks so much for having me.

[Music flourish]

Matt:  Another day of COP in the can. We’re out of the Blue Zone now and heading home. Yeah, really starting to feel the strain of it now [laughter]. This is Wednesday... no sorry, Tuesday. I don’t even know the day, so it gives you some sense. It’s Tuesday of Week 2. I’m kind of grazing on stuff and enjoying what I can. I think the longer you probably spend in the Blue Zone, the more you probably become frustrated about the things that you’re missing and all the things you’re not allowed into. I think there’s been a real issue this year of space for the delegates and that ratio. I think I’ve heard estimates of about 40,000 delegates for COP. Once you put in social distancing, you’re just simply unable to enjoy some of the events that you’re wanting to observe. But that’s okay. There’s plenty going on there and I’m bumping into lots of interesting folk. Often, COP is framed as a conference within a conference and I think that division has become even more severe this year because of Covid. With the wider themes that I’m picking up, one is the balance between net and real zero; so with net zero, how much we’re netting off and we’re relying on offsetting and carbon storage and the number of pledges you hear from countries and companies that include a significant amount of offsetting. The question is who is totting up all these offsets together and understanding whether it’s realistic. I think I made the point earlier that for some of these countries and companies, you’d need multiple planets to do it. For me, the potentially wicked word in all of this is ‘net’ and it remains to be seen how much countries and companies can rely on the net of net zero to get them through. I’ve enjoyed the pavilion events. We’ve seen some fascinating stuff there. The Global Wind Energy Council at WWF held some really excellent events but it’s another day done for me. I’m pooped and heading off. What is cool actually is I’m using a transport card, a smart card, which has been provided to all delegates for COP and this gives me access to all forms of public transport across Scotland and across all modes of public transport which is not something that is easily available today. I think there’s a lot of Glasgow and Scotland to learn. If I could buy this card for a week during busy times, I’d do it in a flash... absolutely. As I say this, I just hear another electric bus roll by almost silently. This is the future: easy access, affordable and clean public transport. We’re doing it for COP. One of the great legacies of COP26 would be to do this forever. Okay, right, that’s me off on the train. Catch you soon.

[Music flourish]

Becky and Matt’s Long Overdue Catch Up

[Music flourish]

Matt:  This morning, I am off to an event run by Bright Blue. They are a think tank which prides itself on analysis for liberal conservatism. They cover a whole wide range of different issues. Today, we’ll be talking about community ownership of energy and the role it has to play in net zero. I’m going to be speaking alongside some real experts on the topic who have been delivering and financing projects right across the UK alongside representatives from Scottish Parliament but also civil servants from BEIS, the Department for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy. So wish me luck and I’ll let you know how we get on and another day of COP awaits.

[Music flourish]

Male speaker:  For those of you who don’t know us, Bright Blue is an independent think tank for liberal conservatism. Our mission is to defend and improve liberal society. So really the questions around community energy, which we want to ask, are what role can community energy play in the transition to a low-carbon, smart energy system? Why should the future of energy be local? What policies and interventions are needed from government to support the scaling up of community projects across the UK? How can community energy be feasible without financial support from government?

[Music flourish]

Matt:  Right folks, another set of events done. We’re back from Bright Blue. A really interesting talk and I spoke to some real experts on the topic. One particular organisation I thought was fascinating. They’re essentially buying up private energy projects. With solar, they’ve bought up about 30 megawatts and spent millions of pounds on getting this funding together. The idea was to then repackage these to communities and get them sold but sold in a way that the communities could then do something with them. They would govern them. They would benefit from them. A really fascinating organisation.

[Music flourish]

Female speaker:  It’s very clear from all the research, particularly over the last couple of weeks, that there is real public concern now across generations and across income groups around the climate and nature crisis but it’s also really clear that the public needs support to translate that concern into concerted action. We’ve heard that in various different ways. Community energy businesses and community businesses, more broadly, I think are superbly well-placed, as Matthew has already said, to do that and to support people to make that transition. I think they have a real competitive advantage in terms of being locally rooted which means they tend to understand really deeply the communities that they’re working with; how to engage them and how to motivate them.

Matt:  That was an organisation called Power to Change. I also heard from another organisation called Repowering London which is delivering these projects itself.

[Music flourish]

Female speaker:  We’re not only about generation. We’re also about tackling fuel poverty. As I mentioned, we’re working with the most vulnerable in the community. The income from some of these projects has actually helped those most vulnerable. Lastly, I wanted to share our Brixton Energy Co-ops that have been generating for the last ten years. They’ve put money aside to fund fuel emergency vouchers for local residents. They identified what the need was in their community and they quickly shifted and mobilised that money to enable that to happen. We have a locally-rooted, champion-based model. We’ve got paid champions in the community who live locally, are connected locally and are really able to make sure that our services reach those who are generally not heard or communicated with. Most importantly, what we do is also involve our young in the community. This is an intergenerational aspect. We’ve delivered training programmes for young people so that we are able to recruit and identify that diverse talent pool which is so needed as we know the green sector is not diverse at all [laughter]. So there is a lot of value that we provide as community energy.

Matt:  Yeah, really, really interesting. I heard also from a Member of the Scottish Parliament, Brian Whittle, and Shadow Minister for Environment, Biodiversity and Land Reform for the Scottish Conservatives.

Brian:  For me, it’s the government’s responsibility to create an environment that allows industry, communities and individuals to make choices. It gives them a route into that. They should be much more able to seed fund projects. Planning needs to be simplified with the speeding up of the planning application process. I was hearing the other day that to do offshore wind, it can take up to a decade. That is just too long.

Matt:  Probably a slightly different view about the role that community energy might play and the ownership of land but what was really heartening was to hear from right across the political divide and from parties that maybe haven’t traditionally been seen to be in great support of community energy. We can see that from the current Conservative Government in the UK and certainly Brian’s view is that it has an important role to play in net zero and a just transition. I feel really happy to hear that. After that, I rushed off to Govan. For those of you who don’t know Glasgow, this is West of the centre just on the Clyde there. It used to be known very much for shipbuilding. I was lucky enough to be invited to speak on a community radio station called Sunny Govan which was brilliant. I was invited by Martin Avila, so thank you, Martin. I really enjoyed that.

Martin:  Did you grow up in Glasgow, Matt? Are you a recent arrival? How long have you been here?

Matt:  You might be able to decipher from my accent that I’m not from Scotland or not from Glasgow. We’ve been here for the last five years. I’m from the Northwest of England and not too far from Manchester. I often have the conversation that there are a lot of good parallels between Manchester and Glasgow.

Martin:  Yeah, for sure.

Matt:  A lot of friendly folk and really good, fun cities.

Martin:  Two fine football teams as well.

Matt:  Oh year.

Martin:  That’s not the Green Zone/Blue Zone debate that we’ll be having today [laughter]. I said on Friday night, if anybody was listening, I’m not sure if the goodies are in the Green Zone or the Blue Zone but we’ll just leave that. At Sunny Govan, we want to bring everybody on board with us.

Matt:  We got to speak a little bit more about what COP might mean for Glasgow and what the legacy might be, particularly around community energy ownership. We were joined by a representative from German Zero which is an advocacy group which pushes for net zero in Germany. It was really interesting to hear about their perspectives on how they’re trying to achieve net zero. Actually, what was quite interesting was they’re tackling many of the same issues like retrofit of homes and difficulties in terms of regulation to try and get community and local energy projects through.

Julian:  The complicated thing is it all needs to happen at the same time. You can’t succeed in total in terms of impact but also in terms of having fair policies if you only do one thing at the same time. What you need to do is introduce a clear, CO2 pricing scheme and the best case at the European level. At the same time, you need clear forms of social compensation where it’s getting too expensive.

Matt:  I was kind of expecting to hear a very different perspective. It’s another post-industrial and wealthy nation with a rich history and tackling the same issues.

Martin:  In the end, I think the power is with the people.

Matt:  Martin is saying make some noise [laughter].

Martin:  Thanks very much for making some noise. Thanks very much for your time, Julian.

Julian:  Thank you so much.

Martin:  Thank you very much for joining us, Matt.

Matt:  Any time.

Martin:  See you all soon Sunny Govan! It’s been great. Thank you very much.

[Music flourish]

Matt:  Right, so I have finally found Becky in the Blue Zone [laughter]. She’s here. She is real. We’re sat together just having a cup of tea and a cup of coffee and recharging our phones. So, Becky, how are you?

Rebecca:  I’m good. I’m so excited to finally see you. I can’t believe it’s taken us this long. I’m actually enjoying today, I think, the most out of the days that I’ve been in either the Blue or Green Zone. I think, for me, that’s because it’s actually all about local action and action in cities, so far more the sort of stuff that I am deeply passionate about.

Matt:  So it’s built environment and cities day, essentially. We’ve sat through all sorts and maybe before we get stuck into that, was it yesterday or the day before that you finished your ride?

Rebecca:  Yes, it was Tuesday when we finished the ride. Ah, absolutely amazing and obviously, an entire episode of the pod about that and you can listen to my painful journey from Edinburgh to Glasgow via lots of other places.

Matt:  Yeah, I’ve already listened to it. It’s fantastic. Hopefully, the weather got a little bit better. I was thinking of you the first day [laughter] which was torrential.

Rebecca:  Yeah, and we had beautiful blue skies when we actually arrived at COP and so I’ll trade the hideous rain on the previous days for those blue skies because coming into the venue with water streaming down my face, as it had been on the previous days, would definitely not have been a good look. This was much, much nicer.

Matt:  And congrats because it was some ride and obviously, you’ve got a poorly ankle as well, so it’s pretty amazing you managed to even do it at all.

Rebecca:  Yeah, and not being a cyclist as well [laughter].

Matt:  And that as well, yeah. You had most things against you [laughter] and yet you triumphed. I think this is possibly our last day in the Blue Zone and so we’re trying to make the most of it. We’ve been sitting through a few different events this morning. You were in the science pavilion. Is that the Met Office pavilion?

Rebecca:  It is, yeah. I was at a fantastic event which launched the summary report for urban policymakers of the IPCC Sixth Assessment Report. The IPCC is the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Matt is going to correct me if I got that wrong.

Matt:  Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Is that what you said?

Rebecca:  That is what I said [laughter]. Five stars for me [laughter]. Fundamentally, this was about bringing together different aspects of that IPCC report but recognising that cities and regions are absolutely fundamental to delivering some of the actions that need to be addressed like mitigation and adaption solutions; so looking at how you can translate the science into something meaningful for local leaders. So absolutely brilliant.

Matt:  So this was a cross-work package. For those who aren’t quite sure what the IPCC do, they essentially collate and also critique the evidence base on climate change across three streams. The first is around climate science, the second is around mitigation and the third is around adaptation. They were dealing with these three themes: the climate science around how climate change is potentially going to affect cities or the built environment and then also questions about how we mitigate climate change in the cities and how we also make changes to live with that.

Rebecca:  Yeah, absolutely and I mean the discussions were fabulous but I’ll summarise them. I think, for me, there were three key areas of discussion that are absolutely critical. The first was on the need for systems change and I think getting at this cross-work package aspect really pulls that in. They were saying that we need to see these kinds of simultaneous changes in our energy systems, industrial systems, land and ocean ecosystems and urban and infrastructure systems. We can’t do these separately. We’ve got to do them altogether because they’re all interconnected. We need to be implementing this across the sector and across different scales from very local to national to international. What that means is that we need to engage a diverse set of stakeholders and we need to bring together adaptation and mitigation measures which are often considered separate.

Matt:  I want to pick that up because I’ve sat through various talks over the last few days and the last couple of weeks and I find that fascinating. There are certain measures which can do two things at once. I’ll maybe bring in two examples. One would be the planting of trees in cities where they can offer shade and soak up water in case of flooding but also they can sequester carbon. The other that I hear a lot of is solar panels which can generate low-carbon electricity but also offer shade, particularly relevant in sub-Saharan Africa and other countries along that equatorial belt. Any others that you picked up or how else should we be thinking?

Rebecca:  Yeah, they didn’t give specific examples of bringing mitigation and adaptation together. It was more focused on looking at how urban centres are not only the origin of lots of different emissions but there are lots of different opportunities for action with a huge risk of blocking if we get it wrong because urban centres are growing so fast. There’s a real urgency to act but what we need to do is think about the mitigation and adaptation potentials and consequences of actions that can be taken across those different areas. For me, that concept actually just set up the rest of the discussion. The other two points that came out of the session are what excited me even more. The second point, I guess, then was around partnerships and laying out that actually, we have a real challenge if we’re trying to upscale ambition across 200 countries in over 5,000 places and into the tens, hundreds and thousands of organisations that are going to be working on this. That requires new forms of partnership. We need to go beyond just private and public partnerships. One example that was given was looking at something called P4 or the four Ps: people, planet, place and performance. It’s really focusing on those four areas to create partnerships amongst a diversity of stakeholders that work across these things which are underpinned by trust because you need the trust when you’re bringing that many different partners together to deliver on people, planet, place and performance.

Matt:  Wow! Yeah, a lot to absorb and this was obviously looking way beyond the UK. I sat in on an event actually right next door. We’re probably separated by all but about three inches of plywood. I was in the UK pavilion or Great Britain and Northern Ireland pavilion. I’m not quite sure why they’ve split it up but there you go. I think it’s because they can get the word ‘great’ in at the beginning and they’ve put that in capitals. The discussion, I think, maps onto this but it had a much more kind of UK-specific focus. This was around a whole-life carbon roadmap for the built environment.

Rebecca:  Brilliant.

Matt:  A mouthful.

Rebecca:  It is a mouthful. So what did you learn about the whole-life roadmap for the built environment? It’s a massive issue and, let’s be honest, ties in with our urban centres.

Matt:  The media at the moment are covering boilers versus heat pumps and everything in between [laughter] but that’s your kind of operational emissions. There’s actually a huge amount of embodied emissions in your building; so the concrete and how it’s being constructed. Also, surprisingly, a lot of the emissions that we don’t account for, like maybe the appliances, fixtures and fitting... roughly 50% of the building sector emissions are operational, give or take.

Rebecca:  Wow!

Matt:  The rest are embodied.

Rebecca:  That is massive and I hadn’t realised that. Are we budgeting for that when we’re looking at emissions?

Matt:  Well, it’s an interesting question. I think the answer was yes but maybe we could be a bit more specific and we could disaggregate those emissions much more clearly. Let’s begin with the good news. 

Rebecca:  That’s always nice [laughter].

Matt:  They offered a picture of what emissions in the building sector look like over the last 10-20 years and over the last five or ten years, we’ve actually seen a relatively big drop in emissions but this has mostly been operation and you can probably guess why. It’s been the decarbonisation of the electricity grid. We can still go further. We’re looking at 100% renewable power in the UK on the grid by 2035 but there’s a lot more to do. How do we get those operational embodied emissions down? Some interesting examples, some of which we’ve probably covered before, are a national retrofit strategy would be a good start [laughter] which I don’t think we have. There are a couple of more specific ones and things about when we come to sell our homes. That would be EPC standards at the point of sale and so your house has to be of a particular standard and also variable stamp duty rates.

Rebecca:  Interesting.

Matt:  But the thing that I’d like to bring up more than anything else was that they said we basically don’t measure our energy consumption or measure our emissions very well. We have EPCs but these are projected. They’re estimated emissions. So when you go into your home, go to work or drop the kids off at school, you’ll see an EPC on public buildings and that’s estimated. What we need to do is measure and then be mandated to disclose this actual energy consumption.

Rebecca:  Actually, we know that there’s what is often referred to as the performance gap between projected emissions and measured emissions or often it’s framed as projected energy demand and measured energy demand. So we know it exists.

Matt:  How many of us bought a car in the last few years? If you’re lucky enough to have an EV and if you’re not, it’s petrol or diesel and it says miles per gallon or miles per kilowatt hour but how many of us actually reach that? That’s because of how we’re driving. The equivalent is true in the building.

Rebecca:  Yeah, and actually, I want to pick up on this because I think talking about retrofit is something really, really relevant and important, not just in terms of the embodied carbon emissions and the opportunities to tackle that but also about linking that through to the growth of new jobs and the development of a skills pipeline. In that session that I was in, in the science pavilion, we picked up on the topic of just transition and that in developed countries, like the UK, there is a huge opportunity for retrofit markets. In fact, Jim Skea picked up on this and reflected on the work of the Scottish Just Transition Commission. What he shared was that the skills to deliver a lot of this will not sit in big industries and those jobs will instead probably sit in SMEs (Small and Medium Enterprises). For me, when I start to think about that, first of all, if you’re in a huge industry employment which is unionised, that’s very different to, say, working in an SME where you might have less certainty about what the future looks like and what your career pathway looks like. So real challenges around thinking about labour shifts but also he noted that we have an issue with labour market mobility and a massive challenge in terms of over-specifying both person and job descriptions. Actually, what we need to start to focus on a lot more is this broader, transferable skill set, retraining and really building the industry that can start to deliver stuff to tackle these emissions reductions.

Matt:  On that, at the same talk I was at, we had Lord Callanan who is one of the ministers for BEIS. He made this exact point which was interesting to hear around retrofit and he very quickly pointed out the number of jobs which were going to potentially be created. I think, from memory, it was about 200,000 but the point is these efforts require skilled individuals and require labour. That needs to be here, it needs to be available and it needs to grow over the coming years or you cannot deliver these reductions.

Rebecca:  No, it does, absolutely. The last point I want to pick up on is accountability because you mentioned it in relation to the EPCs. We heard a fantastic example from Pittsburgh in the US around how the city was making sure that they were being held to account by their citizens in this area and I thought it was fascinating. The directors of different parts of the authority had to make sure that when they presented their budgets for the coming year, they were presented in an equitable manner – so not equal but equitable; so looking at how their spending profiles were going to improve equity across the city. More importantly, with that city budget, every dollar spent is allocated against each of the SDGs (Sustainable Development Goals) and then once you sum up the total of the budget, you can see how many of the city dollars will directly impact different goals. They also embed a voluntary review that members of the public can see. City taxpayers get a receipt. Once you pay your tax, you can type in your wages and your property value and you get a receipt that shows you, line by line, how much you pay for different services as well which sounds amazing.

Matt:  That’s cool. Are they then able to align the services to the SDGs? Is this about having transparency? Let’s say your council bill is going towards this on transport and this on waste management but are they then going to link that to how that was mapping into, say, emissions or biodiversity? Was that the link?

Rebecca:  Yeah, I don’t know if they link it at the citizen level for your own receipt. I don’t know if your own receipt would link it to the SDGs but certainly, at the city level, you can see how much of the total money across all citizens is going to the different SDGs... absolutely.

Matt:  And that’s fantastic because I think, maybe too often, citizens - I’m kind of referring to myself here [laughter] – complain about this, that or the other but maybe we don’t have the full picture. So actually, that kind of information sometimes could be to the benefit of these councils and also might not if they’re not doing enough but then you hope that it brings everybody up because there’s this competition. We often hear about this leaderboard as well, which I think has been recommended by various commentators, between cities in the UK. If you have this leaderboard of performance, it starts to breed this healthy competition between towns and cities.

Rebecca:  Yeah, absolutely. Really fascinating and it just showed the need for really good data and evidence to underpin all of this as well; so really being quite proactive.

Matt:  Of course, I bumped into you at the other event that we were at which was the Incentivising... another sort of sexy name [laughter] – Incentivising Timely Investment in Local Energy Infrastructure Priorities. It’s essentially how we get the money into the right cities at the right time to do the right thing for net zero.

Rebecca:  Yeah, and I’m not sure that the session really gave us an answer on that. The concept of time was really, really fascinating and picked up on by Keith Anderson of Scottish Power. This was obviously a very UK-centric session but when we look at what cities, local authorities and regions are doing, they’re often moving at different paces to one another and they tend to be moving at a faster pace to national government. What that means is that they actually are calling for investment over different timescales. While that might be okay for certain things, and perhaps it might even be helpful for certain things because it allows you to build up supply chains or businesses in one area and then translate them to another, for other areas where you’ve got big investments that are needed at a more national level, it can be challenging. I thought that was a really interesting point.

Matt:  Yeah, that kind of aggregating up different actions and investments to make sure we’re moving in the right direction. We had representatives like Tracy Brabin, Mayor of West Yorkshire and we also had Steve Rotherham in a similar role in Liverpool. They would, in effect, be banging the drum for this because they are with devolved governments but they made the point that actually devolved governments are uniquely placed to deliver this action on behalf of central government. They have the agility to do this but they’re integrated enough in their local area that they know what needs to be done, where and potentially by whom. It was an interesting point that Tracy was making. They didn’t want to have what she referred to as a beauty pageant to essentially win big pots of money every year. Just give us the power and we’ll do the rest. The question is will central government do that?

Rebecca:  Yeah, I have to say it made me laugh. I think she was referring to the five mayors across the North of the UK and it made me have a little chuckle thinking of them all in a beauty pageant [laughter]. What I’m still struggling with is if they are so important and if they are responsible or have influence over more than 80% of carbon emissions, why are we not devolving more powers to them? Why are we not supporting them to take those actions in a way that can actually let them act faster which is what we need?

Matt:  In one word... politics probably [laughter] but I think there’s an interesting point. If central government is to cede power and, by extension, funding to devolved administrations to do this – we’re not necessarily talking about the devolved administrations like Scotland and Wales but we’re also not not talking about them – they’re not only ceding power. This might be a good thing from central government [laughter]. They’re ceding responsibility for net zero. There may come a point in the future where central government has its back against the wall and fails to maybe deliver on this, that or the other carbon budget. Maybe it might just suit to spread that responsibility around, especially if you need to get there quicker and deeper.

Rebecca:  Yeah, and in a more context-specific manner because obviously, the challenges that different areas face are all quite different from one another. The one other point I want to make about this session around the investments, which was actually focused on zero-carbon communities, was every single panellist made reference to a just and inclusive transition. This is the first session I’ve been in where that has been mentioned by every panellist. It was really great to see that in there and to hear a focus on investment that’s not just about being green but also about being socially just, getting to know the communities and really supporting people across those communities with engaging but overcoming their specific challenges.

Matt:  Fantastic. I completely agree and as we speak, somebody has just got a ladder out and put it above our heads and fixing something or other which is not only symbolic of bad luck but also might just knock us on the head. So I think, at that point, maybe we should pause.

Rebecca:  Yeah.

Matt:  I’ve kind of got that COP Day 12 fug [laughter]. I’m not quite sure where I am or where I’m going but [laughter]...

Rebecca:  I think it’s being out of the sunlight for so long and you forget and think, ‘Is it daytime still? Is it nighttime?’ Who knows? [Laughter]

Matt:  I actually don’t know what the weather is outside. It could be doing anything. Okay, well, on that note, we better run off before we get squished.

Rebecca:  Alright, see you later, Matt.

Matt:  That’s me for today. I’m done. Bushwacked. I’m going to hop on the train and get home. COP will end shortly. I’ll be sad to see it go but on the other hand, I’m not sure I could do a third week. I haven’t got the stamina [laughter]. Alright, bye-bye.

[Music flourish]

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