Manchester Green Summit 2024: Turning ambition into delivery on city decarbonisation
In a blog following the 2024 Greater Manchester Green Summit, Nikki Flanders, Managing Director at SSE Energy Solutions, reflects on the challenges facing the city region as it pursues its ambitious environmental goals.
I was delighted to head up SSE Energy Solutions’ involvement at this year’s Green Summit at the Lowry Theatre.
While SSE has supported GMCA’s running of the event in recent years, it was my first opportunity to attend and see for myself the level of ambition among the public and private sector to forge a cleaner, greener and cheaper energy system for Greater Manchester.
At SSE, we are committed to helping government deliver our collective clean power mission by 2030. Government ambition, matched by a supportive policy framework, gives private sector partners like us the confidence to invest, which is exactly what we’re doing.
We’re halfway through a £20bn investment programme out to 2027 and have committed £1.3bn to projects over the last six months alone. This equates to £50m per week.
But ambition at a national level should inspire enterprise at a local level too. Clean power by 2030 and Net Zero by 2050 won’t be achieved by central government alone.
Nikki Flanders
Investing power in combined authorities
GMCA recognised this long ago and it’s no coincidence that a company like ours is often in the same room, eager to work with a public sector partner whose ambition to move at pace matches our resources.
The new 5-year environment plan is the latest in a series of positive signals that indicates high levels of ambition.
It reinforces the first environment plan from 2019, when the authority originally outlined its objective to be carbon neutral by 2038 and builds on the development of the authority’s comprehensive Local Area Energy Plan, the first to be developed by any local or combined authority and held up as an exemplar.
Targets matter
Why do targets and ambition matter to companies like ours? They give us visibility of a clear path and pipeline that enable us to align our investment plans.
Targets laid out in GMCA’s environment plan for new renewable energy generation, energy storage capacity and low-carbon heat networks are critical.
Equally significant are the clear targets for decarbonising homes and buildings, such as retrofitting 60,000 homes, 650 public sector buildings, 11,000 commercial buildings and installing 64,000 low-carbon heating systems across Greater Manchester.
These give us the necessary signals to mobilise our capital base and workforce, with more than 1,000 employees across SSE Energy Solutions ready to work with public and private sector partners to activate this plan.
A template for ambition on this scale is evident across the water in the Republic of Ireland where the government has an objective to upgrade one third of the country’s housing stock by 2030, aided by a national €8bn fund.
This has helped stimulate the market for SSE and other suppliers to provide a ‘one-stop-shop’ retrofit suite of solutions to homeowners, driving our target to reach 40,000 homes by 2030.
It has also positioned the Irish Government as a leader, providing a benchmark of ambition that others can learn from. That’s the leadership that combined authorities like GMCA can provide.
Ambition, targets and sound policy frameworks will drive the private sector towards action.
Building on our presence in Greater Manchester
We are no stranger to this region, attempting to push off from a standing start. We are ready to build on an existing presence and help a range of heat network and EV charging projects reach fruition, from Salford and Trafford to Bolton and Stockport.
The 2038 carbon neutral target is bold, requiring £64 billion in low-carbon investments through a mix of public and private partnerships and innovative financing models to scale up efforts.
But this is a region that has signalled it is ready to be done and we’re geared up to help.
