We had speakers from across the political spectrum: Bim Afolami, Conservative MP for Hitchin and Harpenden; Chi Onwurah, Labour MP for Newcastle Upon Tyne and Shadow Minister for Science, Research & Digital; Neasa Hourigan, TD for Dublin Central and Chair of Ireland’s Committee on Budgetary Oversight; Alan Brown, SNP MP for Kilmarnock and Loudoun and the SNP’s Westminster spokesperson on Transport, Energy and Infrastructure; Clive Lewis, Labour MP for Norwich South; and Tom Sasse, Associate Director at the Institute for Government.

Bim kicked things off outlining both the government and the Conservative party’s general position on green Covid-19 economic recovery. He pointed out that 2030, while it seems a long way away by some measures, is in fact very close at hand in terms of even the things the government wants to achieve by that date. Supporting nuclear energy is a big deal to this government; comforting to Project Cygnus as we are building one of our major policy announcements around this topic, it was recognised that retrofitting of existing housing stock is absolutely vital to green recovery.

Chi Onwurah starkly laid out the terrain: climate change is an existential crisis – and we are facing the biggest economic downturn in 300 years. She outlined Labour’s Green Recovery plan, which calls on the government to spend £300 billion and create 400,000 green jobs. Neasa Hourigan made the immediate point that one of the key ways that Ireland’s green Covid-19 response will be different from the UK’s is that Ireland is still part of the EU; the European Union is laying out a €750 billion Covid-19 recovery fund.

Alan Brown spoke to the local side of things, pointing out that in order for communities to be able to activate their own green Covid plans, the appropriate competencies need to be devolved to them. He also talked about the importance of Carbon Capture, particularly its role in NE Scotland. Clive Lewis said that a 2050 net zero target lacked ambition and needed to be brought forward. If democratic governments not markets led the way, we could even try for 2030.

Tom Sasse gave a non-partisan view. He said the new 10-point Tory plan gives some renewed hope of the government taking green Covid recovery seriously. In particular, the 2030 ban on petrol car sales was seen as suitably ambitious. Also, the link between the levelling up agenda and green recovery was applauded – it shows that the Tories are thinking about the green agenda in a jobs and business light as opposed to seeing it as something strictly to be costed.

It was a great event that highlighted the fact that Project Cygnus is on the right track. Retrofitting of homes and sustainable transportation, two flagship Cygnus polices, were brought up by the speakers repeatedly. It was a fitting final event for this phase of Project Cygnus. A recording of the event is available here.

If you’re interested in gaining access to our exclusive Project Cygnus data, insights, tools and apply it to your Covid-19 recovery planning, please join our workshop on 20 January 2021. It will help you understand the impact of remote working, benchmark your organisation and leverage our data-sets to help you make more informed decisions. Sign up here.

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Judging by the UK government’s first announcement on how to make the economic recovery from Covid as green as possible, we may have to scale down our immediate expectations. On July 22nd, a joint announcement between Number 10, the Department for Transport and the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy was made, laying out the government’s £350 million plan to “cut emissions in heavy industry and drive economic recovery from coronavirus” (GOV.UK). Upon investigation, there are several things wrong with the plan.

The first one is obvious and doesn’t require any further digging: £350 million is absolutely nothing. The Lib Dems have laid out a £150 billion green Covid recovery package, and while it is light on specific details, the overall figure is a lot closer to what it will take to get this moving in the right direction. A £350 million pound plan might as well be a zero pound plan in the grand scheme of things.

Worse than that, some of the specific items in the £350 million plan have a very Dominic Cummings vibe about them. For instance, £15 million of the project is dedicated to a “New National Space Innovation Programme” which will “monitor climate change across the globe” and will look to protect local areas from the impacts of extreme weather by identifying changes in the environment. Often the government’s green Covid recovery package has the feel of something played around with in Number 10 and then hastily chucked out; a Special Advisor’s toy to have fun with as opposed to a serious plan for reaching difficult emissions targets.

Trying to be positive about some aspects of the green recovery plan, there is a large chunk set aside for Carbon Capture and Storage that could lead to something positive in the coming years. There is also part of the £350 million set aside for construction tech, which given retrofitting houses to make them more energy efficient needs to be part of any UK green recovery plan, is welcome. The money in there for R&D around electric cars is comforting. Yet again, one has to come back to the paltry amounts we’re talking about here: £10 million for the construction tech and £10 million for electric cars R&D are simply not serious amounts of investment in either important area.

One can try and be as forgiving as possible here and say that the £350 million plan announced in July is simply the government’s starter for ten, and much more will be coming down the pipeline. They will do more thinking and put more resource towards this once the UK-EU trade negotiations are no longer in the way, surely. I can only hope that this is the case.

Given the range of guests, it was interesting to see how much agreement there was on key points. One item of consensus was around entrepreneurialism and how important it will be to a green Covid recovery; that the private sector will have to do a lot of the heavy lifting. More to the point, that SMEs will be of central importance – worrying when small and medium enterprises have been hardest by the crisis thus far. This partly fed from a suspicion that Whitehall wouldn’t be as helpful as it could be in this regard. In fact, the distrust of central government was a running theme, with the feeling from local government being that Westminster was both doing too little and not allowing local government to pick up the pieces either.

Looking at the local level, it was clear from the discussion that a lot of hard decisions will have to be made. An example was given around heaters outside of cafes as winter approaches – bad for the environment, but possibly necessary for businesses that can only hold so many customers inside. It will be decisions around things like this – the fine details – that may become vital, which is why making green Covid recovery as local as possible is so important.

So much is going on in the private sector on green Covid recovery. Procurement businesses are able to look at the carbon footprint of tenders. New Green banks were discussed. Yet there are concerns. We have no idea, for instance, if the changes to the way people are working since the start of the crisis are permanent or whether there will be more of a “return to normal” than we expect from the perspective of where we are at the moment. How people respond to the Covid crisis will have a lot to do with how successful any green Covid recovery can be – and at this stage, it is still difficult to know in any detail.

What is clear is that there is a lot going on in this space beyond Project Cygnus. Green Covid recovery is a subject many are seriously considering as the crisis looks to be going into its next phase.

We are looking for more good ideas about how to make the economic recovery from Covid as green and sustainable as possible. If you have thoughts to share, please contact us.

ODI Leeds joins the Icebreaker One journey towards a net-zero Covid-19 recovery

Icebreaker One has welcomed ODI Leeds as a partner on its Covid-19 economic recovery/net-zero programme, Project Cygnus.

Funded by EIT Climate-KIC, this project convenes partners from Global Open Finance Centre of Excellence at the University of Edinburgh, University College Dublin (UCD) and the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) to support regions and countries in their economic recovery from Covid-19 whilst accelerating their net-zero carbon emission goals. 

At the end of the first phase of the project, Icebreaker One will develop tools, data infrastructure and policy recommendations, and suggest the economic modelling that’s needed to support a transition to net-zero investments.

Commenting on the partnership, Gavin Starks, Icebreaker One Founder & CEO, said:

“Collaboration is key to the success of Project Cygnus. The Icebreaker One team is delighted to welcome ODI Leeds to the  Project as a partner. They bring robust data expertise to the table to help us identify the use cases and data sources that will inform Covid-19 economic recovery.”

Paul Connell, Founder & Head of Innovation, ODI Leeds, said:

“ODI Leeds is very pleased to embark on the Project Cygnus adventure with Icebreaker One and help support the Covid-19 economic recovery. It is such an ambitious programme of work and fits so well with our mission and our #planetdata work, we are looking forward to mapping out the data infrastructure that will inform investment in a green recovery.”

ODI Leeds will support Icebreaker One with:

1. Identifying what data infrastructure already exist to support the economy with a Covid-19 green investment recovery;
2. Cataloguing data and building tools on the web, to help organisations contribute to and understand the data infrastructure and support decisions for investment in a green recovery; and
3. Finding friends and partners to join in, collaborate and rapidly identify the use cases and data sources that support the work.

The Icebreaker One team is keen to hear from asset managers and investors in nations, regions and cities that are committed to net-zero. Please get in touch to discuss or get involved. For more information about the project, our events and our wider work, sign up to our newsletter.