How innovative technology solutions can help to meet net zero targets

Pre-event blog from CTW Gold Sponsor Cambridge Management Consulting

As Cambridge Tech Week approaches, we explore how innovative technological solutions can help accelerate local authorities towards their net zero targets. This year, a standout contribution comes from edenseven, an environmental consultancy with strong ties to the region.

In collaboration with Peterborough City Council and a consortium of other organisations, edenseven is developing an innovative digital platform, cero.places, designed to accurately measure emissions, report on interventions, and provide insights for the council’s decarbonisation strategy.

As we gather at Cambridge Tech Week to celebrate and explore world-class technological advancements, the work of edenseven and Peterborough City Council serves as a compelling example of how tech-driven solutions can level the barriers to a sustainable future.

The Opportunity

Local Authorities have the capacity to impact roughly one third of UK emissions, according to the Climate Change Committee’s 2020 report, being able to control significant portions of local transport, social housing, and waste, as well as influence the behaviours of local businesses and communities.

327 out of 394 (June 2024) Local Authorities have declared a climate emergency, of which 114 have a net zero target and 280 have a plan (CAPE.mysociety.org). This demonstrates both a belief in the importance of responding to climate change, and a willingness to act.

The Challenge

While there has been support from central government, including the establishment in 2022 of regional Net Zero Hubs, the assistance website – Net Zero Go – in 2023, and substantial funding, the Climate Change Committee summed up the main challenge:

‘In England and Northern Ireland, there is no overall plan on how local authorities fit into delivering net zero. The onus is on local authorities to work out their own course based on piecemeal policy and communications from Government.’

This ‘working out their own course’ is demonstrated by the 2024 Local Government Association Sustainability Survey, which showed significant variation across authorities:

92% are reporting their authority’s scope 1 and 2 emissions, but only 35% are reporting their scope 3 emissions. 52% report their local area’s scope 1 and 2 emissions, and only 15% report their area’s scope 3 emissions.

37% use their own tools to arrive at their authority’s carbon emissions, 33% use a purpose build tool, and 19% used an external consultancy. To measure area wide emissions, 52% use the BEIS inventory, 16% use an external consultancy, 16% use SCATTER, and 8% have developed their own tools.

But there is no single platform which provides both area-wide and authority accounting, and certainly not one which also combines pathway strategies and project tracking for local authorities.

The absence of a common framework and approach to report emissions is problematic, as good measurements are key to building effective emissions reduction strategies, setting measurable and ambitious emission goals, and tracking progress accurately.

Our Technology Solution

The absence of a common framework is clear, but the solution is clearer: good measurements and accurate tracking require robust and dynamic data and management, which can be found in a technological approach.

Using Peterborough as an example of a region whose environmental strategy could benefit from further structure, the holistic and objective nature of a technological solution stands to resolve the following boundaries:

Understanding of the emission totals across the authority and area.

A consistent a simple way to manage emission data across the council.

Creating standard reports quickly and easily for different audiences (eg. senior executives to local communities).

Consolidating and tracking all intervention projects across the council area.

Measuring and illustrating the impact of ongoing projects both individually and collectively.

As part of Peterborough Accelerated Net Zero (PANZ), edenseven, a sustainability consultancy based in the UK with strong connections to Cambridge, has been developing a digital platform with which to respond to these very challenges, and more, cero.places.

In affiliation with their in-house carbon accounting platform, cero.earth, this system is being designed to specifically help Peterborough City Council and Cambridgeshire County Council to successfully record and report their carbon emissions, climate strategies, and intervention projects aligned to these strategies.

With the potential to further benefit other local councils, cero.places also has the built-in capacity to identify potential intervention projects, capture stakeholders, track funding, and communicate updates to the public.

As such, leveraging the numerous positives and innovations of technology, cero.places will support councils to easily and accurately record, manage, and report on their emissions, strategies, and projects in a consistent way, providing a standardised approach to the project. Furthermore, partners, and the public, will be able to see the projects they are involved with and the impact that their interventions are having on reducing emissions and achieving targets.

What’s Next?

Although cero.places is being designed using Peterborough and Cambridgeshire councils as test cases, the underlying tech will be flexible enough that it can easily be customised to any local authority, integrating with their tools and systems. The long-term vision is to make a platform that becomes the go-to for local authorities to manage their net zero journey end-to-end.

About edenseven

edenseven is a sustainability consultancy and technology provider that uses data and market experience to enable the private and public sector, and their supply chains, to play their part in tackling climate change while achieving sustainable growth.

For more information, visit their website.

About PANZ

edenseven is delivering Peterborough Accelerated Net Zero alongside consortium partners: Peterborough City Council, Cambridgeshire County Council, Nordic Energy, Energy Systems Catapult and PECT. Innovate UK are funding £2.75m of this £3.2m project. The work described here is just one of several work packages.

For more information, read more here.