3: Glasgow’s challenge — a net zero city by 2030
What is required to bring one of Britain's biggest cities down to net zero? In this episode, we focus on Glasgow as a case study for ambitious, city-level climate action, and set out the vital roles to be played by local authorities, communities and other key actors.
Contributors:
Anna Richardson - Glasgow City Council Convener for Sustainability and Carbon Reduction
Lucy Gillie - general manager of Govanhill-based community environmental organisation South Seeds
Roddy Yarr - leads on developing and implementing climate change policy and solutions for the University of Strathclyde
Episode transcript
[Music flourish]
Matthew: Hello, I’m Dr Matt Hannon.
Rebecca: And I’m Dr Rebecca Ford and welcome to Local Zero. This is a podcast that gives you a guide to taking climate action at a local level.
Matthew: This is episode three. We’re going to focus on where we all live, Glasgow, as an example of work that’s ongoing to bring about the net zero transition by 2030 which is 20 years ahead of the UK’s 2050 target and 15 ahead of Scotland’s.
Rebecca: We’ve got a fantastic line-up of guests today including Councillor Anna Richardson, who is Glasgow City Council’s Lead for Sustainability and Carbon Reduction.
‘What keeps me awake at night is just how on earth we’re going to do it as quickly as we need to do it. Every year matters and, indeed, every month matters when it comes to decarbonising. In terms of transport, in terms of heat and in terms of our buildings, we need to do it on a vast scale.’
[Music flourish]
Rebecca: But before we get into that, I think Fraser might want to rub our noses in it, Matt.
Matthew: I know. Do you?
Fraser: Tell me, tell me, Matt and Becky, did any of you see the news this week from the UK government about a specific new solar energy technology that they’re considering investing in in the future? Did you see it?
Matthew: Is this your tech?
Fraser: This is my tech [laughter], although it’s not my tech. It’s now our tech because, yes, it came out this week that the UK government has commissioned research into space-based solar power as a genuinely potentially viable source of energy. Thank you very much.
Matthew: Well, I am surprised, Fraser, [laughter] but happy I guess for you.
Rebecca: If you go back and listen to our very first episode to a particular segment of the show that the three of us love, Future or Fiction? which would be right at the end of the episode, you’ll hear us talking about space-based solar where Matt and I conclude that it is complete fiction, a whole load of tosh and completely in Fraser’s imagination.
Fraser: Although, as we’ve now realised, it is absolutely not and I feel like someone owes me a) an apology and b) maybe some kind of royalties for this new development [laughter]. Someone is listening to this podcast in the right places.
Matthew: They’re in the post, Fraser [laughter]. So since the last episode, we’ve had some pretty big news on the energy policy front. Most of you or some of you will have heard about the UK government’s 10-point plan for a Green Industrial Revolution. So guys, what were your thoughts?
Rebecca: Well, I actually think, on the positive side, it’s great to have something out there. It’s great to have something that addresses a number of issues rather than just focusing, say, solely on the electricity side of things where we’ve been doing so well in the past. So they’re the positives. I do feel like possibly some of it might not be as joined up as we might have liked. Whilst there are some really great technological solutions that are proposed, we really need to see what the follow-through is going to be around how some of the supply chains are going to be created that can help deliver on those and how some of these solutions might be able to be joined up with wider initiatives. So I think it’s a start but it’s not the whole story.
Fraser: Yeah, I would agree with that. It was very light on detail. It was extremely light on funding in terms of some of the other promises made elsewhere, so I’ll hold back on any overexcitement about it just now. It’s certainly a step in the right direction in terms of the discourse and having the conversation but I’m cautious about it at this stage.
Matthew: It’s a small step in the right direction.
Fraser: Absolutely.
Matthew: If we look at some of the analysis from Carbon Brief and Dr Simon Evans - and if you haven’t followed him, you really ought to on Twitter – basically said that ‘the new measures outlined in the 10-point plan would only decrease the 350m tonne shortfall in carbon emissions between where we are now and where we need to be for the fourth and fifth carbon budget.’ We’d only reduce that by about 55%, so about half. So we’re only halfway there with this 10-point plan which is the point and so there’s a lot more work to do.
Rebecca: So we need to go a lot further and a lot faster.
Matthew: Yeah, but some very good news in there I guess like the banning of internal combustion engines and diesel/petrol cars by 2030. What I was sad to see was that some people thought there might be a gas boiler ban for new houses by 2023 which did appear on one of the earlier press releases from government and which mysteriously disappeared, so we’ll have to wait to hear more about that with the Futures Home Standard but for the moment, gas boilers are safe.
Fraser: Something else you mentioned on social media, Matt, that is also a glaring hole in this plan is that there is not a single mention of fuel poverty or of social equity.
Rebecca: Yeah, and for me, that’s a particular worry because when we talk about some of these technologies - like the ban on ICEs is great, but right now you can’t get access to an electric vehicle in anywhere near the same amount of finance as you can for a traditional petrol car. It’s the same with heating technologies. To switch out your boiler, what are you switching to? Where is the funding coming from? How are people across all walks of life going to be supported in making this transition?
Matthew: Yeah, and I think finally, the only other observation I’d make, particularly relevant to this show, is the lack of focus on local or community action. There was very little in there beyond actions that would help individual decision-makers like homeowners or, as you say, vehicle owners or big companies. What do councils do? What do community groups do? So for me, homework on that front too.
Rebecca: Yeah, absolutely. That’s actually going to be key, I think, in terms of joining the dots and seeing how this plan could be delivered and even exceeded; so really focusing in on what cities and regions can do and how local authorities can work with other organisations to deliver against this plan. That’s going to be the key.
[Music flourish]
Matthew: So if you want to follow the debate on social media, please use the hashtag #LocalZero and you can follow us @EnergyREV_UK to send us any questions you want answered and we’ll get to them later in the series but before then, we want to talk a little bit about Glasgow and its net zero ambitions.
Net zero for Glasgow will come about, hopefully, fingers crossed, in 2030 following a decision of the council’s City Administration Committee.
Rebecca: That’s going to be challenging to reach, right? 2030 is great and it’s great to have such an ambitious target but the speed at which different things need to happen... that’s going to be the challenge. So thinking very practically, how are we going to switch out people’s cars? How are we going to get all those electric vehicles in and not just into people’s homes but also the charge points that are going to be needed? Glasgow is quite population-dense. There are a lot of flats. There is a lot of on-road parking. So there are going to be huge numbers of people that simply can’t charge their car at home, so we need that infrastructure in place.
Matthew: A recent piece of work undertaken by Capital Economics on behalf of Scottish Power looks at what 2030 might actually mean in practice. This report which looked at how Glasgow has to transform within ten years has identified 175,000 electric vehicle charging points and 244,000 heat pumps. For each of these, you can be thinking of a particular home and also the point that 17,000 of these charging points can’t just be on somebody’s drive but they’re actually going to have to be at supermarkets, on the street and council parking bays. Obviously, Becky, this all comes at a big cost, right?
Rebecca: Yeah, huge investment needed and presumably then, a lot of the big players need to be involved, so that has huge implications for the electricity network providers. They’re going to have to be making, I expect, significant infrastructure upgrades. It’s the same again with the shift away from gas and to heat pumps which is a very practical way to do that in the first instance.
Matthew: So a lot of people are going to have to be led forward on this, like households, businesses and obviously, the council is going to be critical to this.
[Music flourish]
Hence, why we’re wanting to talk today to Anna Richardson.
Anna: Hi, I’m Anna Richardson. I’m a councillor here in Glasgow and I’m City Convenor for Sustainability and Carbon Reduction.
Rebecca: Welcome to the show, Anna. It’s absolutely brilliant to have you here and really exciting to be looking at Glasgow with their ambitious targets of going net zero by 2030 but really, set the context for us. What’s that going to look like?
Anna: It’s a huge target we’ve set ourselves. We got a cross-party agreement across the council that we needed to have a really ambitious target for carbon neutrality and we agreed that that would be 2030. On top of that, we’ve also committed to being net zero greenhouse gases by 2045 so that we’re in line with the Scottish Government targets as well. What’s become clear to us now is that we just have to move very, very fast. Everything that we’re doing is going in the right direction but it’s just not going to get us there unless we really pick up the pace. I think that’s the biggest challenge we’ve got ahead of us.
Matthew: You know, for me, living in Glasgow, it doesn’t take me long to walk around and wonder about just the scale of the 2030 challenge and how, fundamentally, Glasgow and the surrounding area have to change within the next ten years. So for you, what are the big challenges? What are the things that maybe keep you awake at night?
Anna: What keeps me awake at night is just how on earth we’re going to do it as quickly as we need to do it. Every year matters and, indeed, every month matters when it comes to decarbonising. In terms of transport, in terms of heat and in terms of our buildings, we need to do it on a vast scale. What we need to do is relatively straightforward and we’ve got plenty of examples. We’ve got pilot projects. We know that the technology works. We know that we’re able to do this. It’s simply getting it on the ground at the pace that we need do it and, of course, at a time like this where we’ve got plenty of other challenges on our hands, especially around the pandemic.
Rebecca: So what do you think the biggest challenge is going to be? Is it simply that? Is it simply the pace or do you see other real big roadblocks that you need to overcome in getting there?
Anna: I think something that’s really important and that’s at the heart of the approach we want to take in Glasgow is not to just get there but to take everybody with us along the way. All of us know that the climate crisis affects some more than others and that’s deeply unfair. So what we need to do is not just to bring in the solutions and decarbonise the city but also lift people’s living standards at the same time as reducing their carbon. We don’t want people to have low-carbon footprints because they can’t heat their homes, because they can’t feed their children or because they can’t afford a car or a bus fare across the city. So what we need to do is to be bringing in the right solutions that mean that people have better lives at the end of this and not just greener ones.
Matthew: On that, it doesn’t take long for me to be in the car with the kids and we go past one or another old mill or a big old crane from a shipyard and I have to explain what they used to be for. These used to be huge employers for Glasgow and, of course, jobs are a big part of what you’re talking about and not leaving anybody behind. So is one of the big drivers for you around net zero about job creation and almost creating a greener and a new identity for Glasgow?
Anna: Certainly, when we talk about just transition, it’s so important that we are creating those opportunities. We want Glaswegians to want to stay here, to build a life here and to be able to do that and we have such a proud heritage in terms of industry and in terms of engineering that it just makes absolute sense for our city’s identity that we build on those things and we show that we can decarbonise ourselves, that we can really bring people’s living standards up and we can get them better jobs along the way.
Matthew: What kinds of jobs? I mean in the context of Scottish Power and Capital Economic’s report that pointed out that the two big things that are going to have to change in Glasgow are electric vehicles and heat pumps. Does this translate into local jobs? I’m just trying to envisage what kinds of jobs and for whom.
Anna: Absolutely. We already have great jobs in renewables across the city. It’s about enabling those businesses that are already here to build and expand. We have to move away from pilots and from example projects and into large-scale delivery of these things and we do have that local knowledge and skill base already. It’s just about building on that. It’s about ensuring that they can expand and that there is business here locally for them.
Rebecca: What role do you see the council playing in joining these dots in moving from the demonstration projects that you talked about to something that is a joined-up future for all Glaswegians?
Anna: I think, as a council, we need to lead from the front. We need to set a vision and an ambition for the city and by doing the 2030 climate neutrality target, I think we’ve done just that. We’ve shown everybody across the city, whether they live here, work here or run a business here that we have a big, big ambition and a big target and it’s a target that we know that we can’t reach on our own. So by setting that, we’ve really put that challenge at everybody’s door and said, ‘You’re going to have to be part of this solution with us.’
Matthew: On that, one of the real interesting and, for me, one of the real positive things about having moved to Glasgow a few years back was the number of not-for-profit organisations, often community-led. These kinds of organisations are not council and they’re not companies but they’re this third sector that is in between. How important are these to delivering a net zero Glasgow and if I may ask you the question, how do these couple and partner with the council to deliver this?
Anna: We’re really lucky in Glasgow. You’re absolutely right. We have a fantastic series of community organisations and we have a lot of them on the ground that are doing this climate action work very directly and very tangibly. I think that the key role that they play is that by being embedded in our communities, they’re showing people every day the difference that they can make to people’s lives through this climate work. So we’ve got organisations across the city that are doing, for example, community meals which mean that they’re reducing food miles, they’re growing food and then showing people how to cook it. They’re using supermarket food waste. We’ve got tool libraries and so you’re not having to buy those tools that you might need to improve the energy efficiency of your home. We’ve got organisations that are upskilling people so they can not only learn to ride a bike but also look after that bike themselves and suddenly, they’ve got free transport across the city. So all of these organisations are absolutely crucial because they’re bringing that climate action to people and resolving the problems that those people have rather than just talking about climate in a theoretical way. I think that’s something that’s really exciting and it’s something that I don’t think a council can do in the same way as organisations that are part of the communities can do.
Matthew: So on that, Anna, how can councils help local businesses?
Anna: Sure. I think one of the things we need to do is set the right policies in place. What business needs is to be really clear about what framework they’re working within. So for example, when we brought our Low Emission Zone in, we worked really closely with as many stakeholders as we could and set timescales that meant that businesses were able to adapt to that. We know, for example, that the Low Emission Zone is good for businesses because they will have a nicer city centre in which to trade. We know that it’s good for bus passengers and, therefore, it’s going to be good for the bus industry as well to have those good quality buses on the road.
Rebecca: So Glasgow is doing something really exciting and setting this very ambitious target. Glasgow has certain unique elements to it, not just in terms of the structure of the city, whether we’re talking about physical or institutional infrastructure, but also the fact that we’re hosting COP26 next year. So there are some really unique aspects but at the same time, other cities around the UK are also trying to deliver against net zero. Has Glasgow been able to learn from other cities or to share learnings with other cities? How are you working across the UK with colleagues?
Anna: Absolutely. When you talk to people who are working in other cities, we all have very similar challenges and we all have very similar problems but we also have similar solutions. We don’t need to all reinvent different solutions to these problems. We can be inspired by cities across Europe and even further afield in the way that they are managing their climate ambitions. Certainly, we work closely with other cities in Scotland and we talk to cities across the UK and within Europe, as I said. I think it’s really important that we do that, not only so that we can share solutions but so we can be inspired and see some of those solutions in the flesh when we’re allowed to go other places again. Certainly, I think it’s really important to be able to have that image in your head and that vision of what a carbon-neutral city can look like. When you can see that, then you can enthuse your own people and your own residents with why it’s so important and why we deserve to do the same thing.
Rebecca: It’s nice to hear stories around working together, co-creation of knowledge and shared learnings. One of the things that was picked up on again in a previous episode is around the way in which local government is interacting with national government. In fact, Jim Watson, in our episode looking at COVID, reflected on that being, in some instances, quite an unhealthy relationship. How have you found it working with the Scottish government? Are you finding that it’s quite useful that everybody is on the same page and driving forward the same things or have you found some challenges there?
Anna: I feel there’s a lot of synergy there. I think there’s an understanding from the Scottish government that we’re the largest city in Scotland and so we are the ones that are creating a lot of the carbon emissions and we’re the place where a lot of the solutions can be found. If we do what we need to do here in Glasgow, then that is certainly really good news for all of Scotland. We can’t do this on our own. The level of investment that we need to put in across the city is massive. Certainly, a lot of what we’re delivering already is done thanks to Scottish government funding like for all of our electric vehicle charging, a lot of our bike hire, a lot of the Affordable Warmth work that we do so that we retrofit people’s homes and improve energy efficiency and, of course, the Active Travel Network is funded predominantly by Scottish government funding and, of course, some City Deal money as well. So we know that while we can deliver hugely ambitious on the ground, we do need that external funding to enable that to happen.
Matthew: Anna, just looking forward all the way to November 2021 and Glasgow welcomes COP26 and it will be the first UK city to ever welcome one of these particular summits, I just wanted to ask you how important is COP26 to Glasgow. Can it leave an important legacy? Often, people hark back to the Commonwealth Games in 2014 and people’s health and sports.
Anna: I hope so. I think the most exciting thing for me about COP is that it will put climate action on everybody’s mind and not just those of us that perhaps work in it or deal with it regularly. If that leaves a legacy for the people of Glasgow to be proud of and to know that we have been the city where something really important has happened, and clearly, it is a very, very important COP for the world, I think that’s something that can leave a legacy that changes how people feel about our city and that changes how we feel about climate action within our city but it’s also put it on the radar of everybody that is wanting to be involved in climate change work that are wanting to show that their organisation is making a difference because it now gives us a bit of a deadline. Seeing how much we can actually all achieve within a year that perhaps would have taken a bit longer without the focus of COP, I think that’s going to be one of the most exciting things as well.
Matthew: Absolutely. Thank you, Anna. I really appreciate your time.
Rebecca: Thanks, Anna.
Anna: Talk to you soon. Bye.
Matthew: Bye bye.
[Music flourish]
Rebecca: So big thanks to Anna Richardson there, Glasgow City Council’s Lead on Sustainability and Carbon Reduction. Just to recap, this third episode of Local Zero is all about using our home city, Glasgow, as a case study for how cities can make headway on the transition to net zero.
Matthew: One thing that was very clear, hearing from Anna, is that it’s not just councils and elected officials with a part to play. If Glasgow is going to hit net zero by 2030, which I think we’re all agreed is a very ambitious target, everyone across society is going to need to come on board. Fraser has been speaking with two people from different parts of Glasgow with different outlooks but who both share that net zero goal.
[Music flourish]
Roddy: I’m Roddy Yarr and I work at the University of Strathclyde. I’m the Operational Lead for Sustainability and our net zero transition trajectory and target delivery.
Fraser: A big title and a big job as well [laughter].
Roddy: Yeah, an interesting job and an interesting role.
Lucy: I’m Lucy Gillie and I’m the Manager at South Seeds. South Seeds enables residents in the Southside of Glasgow to live more sustainable lives. When it comes to energy, we are working with many, many people that we have as the area is very densely populated and people have all sorts of energy problems that we are helping people with. We hope that also, in the future, we can work with some kind of community energy project that involves people perhaps on grid balancing services, electric cars or other kinds of energy projects that involve people more than natural resources.
Roddy: Our net zero targets were approved as part of the Vision 2025 strategic plan. It’s KPI 16 if you want to know the detail [laughter]. It’s an ambitious trajectory to be net zero by 2040 or sooner with milestones along the way. There are really ambitious milestones to get to 70% net zero by 2025 and 80% by 2030.
Fraser: It’s a big ask.
Roddy: It is a big ask. Having worked in sustainability delivery for most of my career, it’s a big ask. There’s been a switch flicked over the past year and I think there’s a realisation that we need to act now at scale and at speed.
Fraser: While Roddy’s focus is high level working on strategies and workflows, Lucy’s role at South Seeds is much more at the grassroots. She’s helping Glasgow residents as individuals by solving their energy problems piece by piece, one household at a time.
Lucy: What we want to do is we want to get into people’s homes because it’s not until we get into people’s homes that we can really find out what the energy issues are; what the windows are like, what the heating system is like and how they use energy in the home. Because we’re on the high street and we’re a 20-minutes walk away from 25,000 people, it’s very easy for us to work with people face-to-face, gain trust and support people to reduce their gas and electricity bills so that it’s all much more manageable.
Fraser: I feel like there’s an obvious advantage for localising this kind of support, this kind of advice and this kind of activism as opposed to national action or even sometimes city-level action. There’s a clear need for action within communities themselves.
Lucy: Definitely because a lot of the messages that come out at a policy level or at an agency level that are trying to support people don’t really fit into people’s homes or people’s lives. So here in the Southside of Glasgow where we’ve got sandstone tenements that are pre-1919, hard to treat and with all different kinds of windows but all the windows are big, draftproofing is really best put on by a joiner here because most of the windows are wooden. So we have developed all the different solutions that people need to save energy at home, whether it’s insulating the basement of a tenement block, or the loft, or draftproofing around windows and doors, or using a clothes pully to get the benefit from the air at the top of a high tenement ceiling. Here, on the Southside of Glasgow, there are three key tenures. Some people own their own properties, some people rent properties and some properties are rented by registered social landlords. The energy efficiency of all those three groups is completely different and yet you can get those different tenures within a single tenement block. So when people have energy problems, it’s really important to understand what people’s tenure is to understand what they can do. So, for example, you can’t put a clothes pully in a socially-rented property because social registered landlords won’t allow it but in a privately-rented property, there are only things that you can do if you have the consent of a landlord. People who own their properties only have so much capital to invest in their property as well. So when you’re working in a community setting, you can understand some of these complexities and you can understand that these are problems that people are thinking about on a day-to-day basis but policymakers don’t seem to be thinking about this.
Fraser: Within the university itself, what would you say are some of the main actions that are being taken towards that ambition just now?
Roddy: Putting the plan together to deliver the targets is an important action. A lot of our focus is on really how we’re going to deliver this. Let’s get in place the pathways for us to achieve net zero and to bring our community with us, be that university community but also our city and region’s collaborative partners and our local community is really important as well.
Lucy: The wider ambition was to contribute to what we now call net zero, although we didn’t call it that ten years ago when South Seeds started, and to demonstrate how low-carbon initiatives can work within a community setting and show how they might need to be tweaked a bit to actually work in a community setting.
Fraser: What I think is interesting is the context of Glasgow. You already mentioned the challenges of tenement buildings and of the kind of place that Glasgow is historically but Glasgow, as we’ve found in the last few years, also now considers itself to be a big climate leader. We have a council with an ambitious net zero by 2030 target and we’ll be, of course, hosting COP26 next year. So what role do you see community groups, such as South Seeds, playing within the wider Glasgow effort towards net zero?
Lucy: We would love to have a role in the build-up to the COP next year and we are talking to lots of people about supporting initiatives towards the COP. It’s so easy to see how people could be better connected and more tuned in to low-carbon initiatives if we could work with people.
Roddy: Yeah, strong collaboration is the key to net zero transition I think – conjoined and connected solutions – and that’s really important because to get to net zero, we have to do things in a connected way. What’s in my thoughts as well is how we learn from others and how we work with others to move this agenda forward. It’s 2021 soon and time is ticking, so we need to get on with it but we also need to do it right. Ideally, I’m very mindful that we need to show how we can make this work happen, make it replicable and most importantly, communicate it really well so that our local community and our neighbours who live in the city, and work in the city and come to the city can see how Glasgow is making that step.
Fraser: Lucy, just on a final point then, would you say that community groups, such as South Seeds, are better placed to reach and understand vulnerable people and bring them along?
Lucy: If our solutions don’t work for residents, they don’t come back. People find out about us through word of mouth, they come along, we solve people’s problems, they tell their pals and more people come.
Fraser: Lucy and the rest of the South Seeds team are working to improve local people’s sometimes very difficult lives as well as cutting carbon. She says it’s a win-win.
Lucy: And that’s how South Seeds has made such a success of itself over the last ten years and also how we’ve got people who might have come to us for an energy billing problem into community gardening, or borrowing from the tool library, or how someone who’s come to us through gardening, we’ve managed to sort out their energy problem as well. We’re connecting people, we’re bringing people together and we’re connecting all these different low-carbon themes within the community setting.
[Music flourish]
Fraser: Thanks so much to Roddy Yarr, Strathclyde University’s Lead on the push to net zero and thanks also to Lucy Gillie, General Manager of Glasgow community organisation South Seeds.
[Music flourish]
Matthew: So in today’s episode, we’ve heard from a number of different people who are all at the sharp end of delivering a net zero future for Glasgow within the next decade. I think the common theme is just how challenging this is going to be but I think one of the big themes that really was drawn out from all of these discussions was just how important collaboration is going to be and that it’s not just one party or one organisation that’s going to make this future real. So Fraser, Becky, what are your thoughts?
Rebecca: What’s exciting for me is seeing the city council take such a leading role in setting that ambitious target, in working with the Scottish government and in really trying to bring different organisations across the city together to deliver it; so recognising that it needs to be done, recognising that leadership needs to be taken but also importantly, recognising that they can’t do it alone.
Fraser: One thing that I found interesting that everyone picked up on is that nobody was under any illusion that it was an easy target. I thought it was genuinely exciting rather than, in any way, disparaging to hear the people taking the leadership on that. So rather than saying, ‘Maybe we should push it back by ten years,’ everyone agrees and says, ‘No, let’s try and push people to take the action that needs to be taken to get this done now,’ and not just taking leadership themselves but trying to boot everyone else up the backside to collaborate too.
Rebecca: Yeah, and for me, I think one of the really interesting points to note and where I also think we’re going to see some of the biggest challenges in the future is looking at who’s going to pay for this transition. Some of the actions that need to happen will be happening at the household level, some at the business level and some will be in the broader changes to infrastructure. Anna pointed out that a lot of the money to deliver action to date has come from larger government grants but moving forward, we can’t expect to wholly rely on that and there is going to have to be significant private investment moving forward. So for me, that’s the question we’ve got. We’ve heard from a number of different people who seem to be on board. Do we have the big money there to support this?
Matthew: You talk about costs and investment and the next question is who benefits and who gets the rewards? I think what really came out of the discussion with Anna, in particular, was trying to understand a bit more about what a net zero Glasgow might mean in terms of jobs. We’re living here in a post-industrial city where the ghosts of that past industry are still very much in the vernacular and in the built environment there. The question is what does a net zero Glasgow look like in 20 or 30 years' time? Who will benefit from the jobs? What kinds of jobs will these be? How sustainable in the long-term will they be?
Rebecca: Who will benefit from the jobs and also who will benefit from some of the other things that need to happen? We talked about the ban on petrol vehicles and the shift to electric vehicles but how is that going to happen? Is that going to be distributed evenly? There are huge parts of Glasgow where people living there may struggle to afford to have an electric vehicle. Might they be penalised for action that’s trying to drive us forward and bring everyone along but perhaps the support isn’t in place to allow everybody to come along with us? I think equally, as well as looking at jobs, we also need to look at people that have the potential to be left behind if this isn’t done in a fair way and if those mechanisms aren’t put in place or those safety nets aren’t put in place.
Fraser: This is something that everyone touched on as well is that the people who are working towards this in Glasgow, at least, are very conscious of Glasgow’s socio-economic history and the variation in its condition across the city. Everyone is very supportive of the community work that’s going on and people like South Seeds and Lucy down in the Southside are doing a lot to try and ensure that communities are brought along with them as well. It’s when we start talking about these bigger changes like you say, Becky, when we’re talking about infrastructure and when we’re talking about affording the changes that need to happen as well, the talk is very, very big but it will take a lot of work to back that up in the long-term.
Rebecca: Yeah, absolutely. On a completely unrelated note, I’ve started running recently and one thing that the app that I’m using keeps telling me is that setting the targets is a challenge but that’s the easy bit. The difficult bit is the action that needs to happen every day to help you meet them. So it’s not just the intention, yeah, it’s that everyday action on the ground.
Matthew: We’ll revisit this in January after we’ve eaten our body weight in mince pies [laughter]. The New Year’s resolution is always easier to set than the actual doing of it.
[Music flourish]
So we spoke a moment ago about Glasgow City Council taking the leadership role in terms of bringing this kind of coalition of the willing together to deliver a net zero Glasgow but in a year’s time, we’ll be hosting the world’s largest and singularly most important climate summit, arguably, ever and particularly with a Biden presidency and so is Glasgow taking the world by the hand and showing them a net zero future?
Rebecca: It certainly feels that way. It feels like there’s a huge amount of enthusiasm and a huge amount of excitement and support from across all different parts of the city and all different sectors. So good luck! It’s a really ambitious target but we’ve got to make it happen. We’ve all got to come together and make this happen and I’m certainly excited to do just that.
Fraser: Yeah, if we can see any of this desire to both demonstrate and stimulate leadership that we’ve heard in this episode from Glasgow today and if we can have any of that reflected in COP26 next year, I think that can only be a good thing for the future.
Matthew: So could we be speaking of the Glasgow Agreement?
Rebecca: [Laughter] That would be a nice thing, would it? It would be a nice legacy.
Fraser: It would be a nice change of the persona of Glasgow as well I think.
Matthew: It certainly would.
[Music flourish]
Fraser: Speaking of the future...
Matthew: From Glasgow’s energy future to Future or Fiction? In this segment, Fraser pitches an exciting and innovative energy technology idea and Becky and I have to decide if we think it is the future or if it’s all in Fraser’s head. So Fraser, what do you have for us today?
Fraser: Today, I have battery bricks. Scientists have found a way to store energy in the red bricks used to build houses. Researchers have developed a method that can turn the cheap and widely available building material into smart bricks that store energy like a battery. What do we think? Future or fiction?
Matthew: Well, the first question straight off the bat... I’m assuming you’re talking about thermal energy here. What kind of energy?
Fraser: Not specifically heat, no. This isn’t a brick that keeps the heat inside your house. This is a brick from a specific material that has qualities akin to a battery, so it can store energy. Not generate but it can store energy.
Matthew: I defer to our in-house engineer here, Becky.
Rebecca: Oh gosh! [Laughter] There are some materials that could do that, particularly phase-changing materials, so that is a way to store energy. Do I believe that that is true of red bricks? Your bog standard red brick? I don’t know that I do.
Matthew: Yeah, I mean how do you plug it in, Fraser, and also what is the point? [Laughter]
Fraser: In my mind, the point would be that you could build a house with panels without the cost of installing a battery for storage at peak times, etcetera. You could store the energy feasibly in the walls of your house and plug something straight into the wall of the house without a need for wires or through to the power network. You could be generating, in theory, on the top of your house, storing it in the brick and then receiving that power.
Matthew: A house battery, if you will?
Fraser: A house battery, yes.
Rebecca: That scares me because that makes me feel like my house is some massive conductor and I don’t know that I’d want to live in a house that would be a massive conductor [laughter] or for that matter...
Matthew: Tell your kid to stop licking the walls [laughter]. Whatever you do, do not touch the walls [laughter]. They’re high voltage.
Rebecca: More to the point... I don’t even know what it’s called... the stuff that sticks your bricks together?
Fraser: Cement.
Rebecca: The cement, thank you. What would that do? No, this is fiction.
Matthew: Yeah, it doesn’t feel very real. Yeah, fiction 100%.
Fraser: We’re both saying fiction? Locked in? The answer is... [music flourish] the future.
Rebecca: No!
Matthew: Ohh [laughter] wow! That is a surprise.
Fraser: Oh, I’m so happy about that one because, Becky, you were so sure.
Matthew: You’ve got to tell us more.
Fraser: Energy storage bricks...
Rebecca: I still don’t believe it.
Fraser: I’ll send you the link. I think I need to make the link available to listeners as well so they know that I haven’t just made all of these up [laughter]. Energy storing bricks are the future. Researchers, led by Washington University in Missouri, claimed to have Proof of Concept for bricks that can be used in buildings but also to store substantial amounts of energy. I do have the link available and Becky, you used a fancy word about some kind of material that appears within this article as well.
Rebecca: Phase-changing materials.
Fraser: Phase-changing and this pops up somewhere but anyway, I’ll send it on. The point is, allegedly, there is Proof of Concept for the battery brick.
[Music flourish]
Rebecca: Thanks, Fraser. I’m not sure that we’re going to be very good friends after all these episodes [laughter].
Matthew: I look forward to living in a battery shortly, Fraser [laughter].
Fraser: To be clear, I’m not insisting that you have to use these things. This isn’t an endorsement. Other bricks are available and if you’re uncomfortable with it, I understand [laughter].
[Music flourish]
Matthew: You’ve been listening to Local Zero. If you want to follow us on social media, use the hashtag #LocalZero and you’ll find us @EnergyREV_UK. Please log on, follow us, subscribe, listen to our back catalogue and look forward to seeing you again soon. Thank you for listening.
Rebecca: Bye.
Fraser: Bye.
[Music flourish]
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