Steve Dunkerley

Breaking news on low carbon and the Labour Manifesto …… Key strategies include: - Introducing a carbon border adjustment mechanism to protect British industries and meet climate objectives. - Ensuring the institutional framework supports reaching net zero and meeting carbon budgets. - Mandating UK-regulated financial institutions to implement credible transition plans aligning with the 1.5°C goal of the Paris Agreement. ### Heat Pumps and Low Carbon Heating Support the widespread adoption of low-carbon heating solutions, including heat pumps, through: - Offering grants and low-interest loans under the Warm Homes Plan to support the installation of heat pumps and other low-carbon heating systems. - Ensuring private rented sector homes meet minimum energy efficiency standards by 2030. ### Solar PV To expand solar power usage, Labour intends to: - Triple solar power capacity by 2030 as part of the mission to deliver clean power. - Provide support through the Warm Homes Plan for solar panel installations. - Deploy more distributed production capacity through the Local Power Plan, partnering with local authorities and cooperatives for community-based solar projects. ### Insulating Homes Labour's manifesto highlights a significant focus on improving energy efficiency in homes through: - Investing an extra £6.6 billion over the next parliament to upgrade five million homes, aiming to reduce bills and fuel poverty. - Providing grants and low-interest loans for insulation and other improvements. - Working with combined authorities, local, and devolved governments to roll out the Warm Homes Plan. - Ensuring that no one will be forced to replace their boiler as a result of these plans. ### Details on the Warm Homes Plan The Warm Homes Plan is a cornerstone of Labour's strategy to improve energy efficiency in homes. Key elements include: - Offering grants and low-interest loans to support investment in insulation, solar panels, batteries, and low-carbon heating solutions. - Partnering with combined authorities, local and devolved governments for a comprehensive rollout. - Collaborating with the private sector, including banks and building societies, to provide additional private finance to accelerate home upgrades and low-carbon heating. - Ensuring homes in the private rented sector meet minimum energy efficiency standards by 2030, which will save renters hundreds of pounds per year. - Guaranteeing that no one will be forced to remove their boiler as part of these improvements. ### Training on Low Carbon Technologies To support the transition to a green economy, Labour plans to: - Establish Skills England to bring together businesses, training providers, and unions with national and local government to ensure a highly trained workforce for the Industrial Strategy. - Devolve adult skills funding to Combined Authorities - Reform the Apprenticeships Levy to create a flexible Growth and Skills Levy. GTEC Training

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#GreenNudge: One-time boiler adjustment = Long-term energy savings Today's nudge is brought to you by Katy King and Oliver Berry at Nesta, a UK-based innovation agency for social good. The agency designs, tests, and scales new solutions to society’s biggest challenges, improving millions of lives. 👉 What unsustainable behaviour needs to change:   The average UK gas boiler emits more CO2-equivalent emissions in a year than taking seven transatlantic flights. That’s why we investigated how to make it easier for households to increase the efficiency of their boilers. In 2005, the UK mandated the use of #condensingboilers, which are more efficient as they capture and reuse energy. However, for these savings to materialise, the boiler settings must be correct – regrettably, most were found to be inefficiently set. Additionally, many homeowners were unaware that adjusting boiler settings could lead to cost savings. Thus, informing the public became essential, alongside overcoming behavioural barriers. The intervention focused on a crucial "one-off" action, eliminating the need for continuous effort from homeowners and recognizing the challenges associated with maintaining repetitive actions. 👉 The Green Nudge:  The Nesta team applied the The Behavioural Insights Team’s EAST framework to the problem: 💡 Make it Easy: We developed a simple online tool that helped people follow the steps to change their boiler settings, based on the type of boiler controls they had. 💡 Make it Attractive: We quantified the yearly savings that taking action would have on a typical household gas bill; which in 2022 could save people around £100. 💡 Make it Social: Our website campaign had a tracker, showing the number of people who had already taken action. 💡 Make it Timely: We aimed to create a tool that would enable people to adjust their boiler settings easily and immediately. A lasting, one-time change which they wouldn’t have to worry about. We also made sure to promote the change during winter, when people are most aware of their gas usage. ➡ The result: In early October 2022, 21% of respondents reported to have previously lowered their boiler flow temperature. By March 2023, this figure increased to 32% after the survey was re-conducted. It is estimated that approximately 3.1 million households adjusted their boiler flow temperatures during the campaign. This adjustment resulted in an estimated reduction of 500,000 tonnes of CO2 and nearly saved households £300 million. Additionally, it saved HM Treasury approximately £157 million by reducing expenditure on the Energy Price Guarantee. Are you aware of any other nudges that help to save energy? Feel free to comment or get in touch: hello@green-nudges.com

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Check out this excellent video where Piers Forster and team explain the latest Climate Change Committee progress report findings just released - spoiler alert it is not all positive! The 10 priority actions for the remainder of this year needed to make up lost ground: ▶ Make electricity cheaper. Removing policy costs from electricity prices will support industrial electrification and ensure the lower running costs of heat pumps compared to fossil-fuel boilers are reflected in household bills. ▶ Reverse recent policy rollbacks. Remove the exemption of 20% of households from the 2035 fossil-fuel boiler installation phase-out, address the gap left by removing obligations on landlords to improve the energy efficiency of rented homes and reinstate the 2030 phase-out of new fossil-fuel car and van sales. The damage of these rollbacks can be limited by quickly reinstating these policies. ▶ Remove planning barriers for heat pumps, electric vehicle charge points and onshore wind. ▶ Introduce a comprehensive programme for decarbonisation of public sector buildings. ▶ Effectively design and implement the upcoming renewable energy CfD auctions. Ensure funding and auction design for the Sixth and Seventh Allocation Rounds are appropriate to deliver at least 50 GW of offshore wind by 2030. ▶ Accelerate electrification of industrial heat. Strengthen the UK Emissions Trading Scheme to ensure that its price is sufficient to incentivise decarbonisation and that support is available for a rapid transition to electric heat across much of industry. ▶ Ramp up tree planting and peatland restoration. Tree planting must be scaled up in the 2020s for abatement to be sufficient for later carbon budgets and Net Zero. There must be no more delays to addressing the barriers to delivery. ▶ Finalise business models for large-scale deployment of engineered removals. Finalise and open to the market the business models for engineered removals. ▶ Publish a strategy to support skills. Support workers in sectors which need to grow or transition and in communities that may be adversely impacted. ▶ Strengthen NAP3 with a vision that sets clear objectives and targets and reorganise government adaptation policy. Adaptation must become a fundamental aspect of policymaking across all departments and be integrated into other national policy objectives. https://lnkd.in/ezjTs3BD #climatechange #netzero #climateaction

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To maximise the positive impact of AI, sustainability and other mega-trends on your business, promote the younger generations to positions of influence: https://lnkd.in/ekFjAHWq

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GREEN TECH AND AI The Green Tech Revolution and AI are rapidly transforming the way we live and work. However, a lack of strategic vision on reducing carbon footprint and the impact of AI on over 60% of jobs in the near future means that the UK is trailing behind other countries in meeting industry needs. CEME is working with public and private sector leaders to build a skilled workforce that can meet future demands as technology evolves. Check out CEME's latest publication, which features contributions from industry experts, to learn more about the key issues and what you can do to prepare for the future. Don't be left out of the conversation – tap the image below to access the publication. More about CEME's work in this area https://lnkd.in/dRyHMZRT With contributions from Sandhya Sabapathy,Thames Freeport,Helena Anderson,IKIGAI, Graham Hasting-Evans, NOCN, Sarah Murray Local London and Justin Bazalgette CEnv CMgr MBA BEng Stuart Rimmer MBE #GreenTech #STEM #WorkforceDevelopment

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🆕 Rory O'Sullivan, Global Sustainability Lead at Sustaira, shares the 5 biggest pain points of Sustainability data reporting and why he joined Sustaira to solve them! 🌟 Challenges in Sustainability Data Reporting: 🔴 Resource Constraints: Allocating a full-time employee (FTE) to track sustainability data can be tough for small teams or organizations. Balancing this across suppliers and clients is a challenge, especially during uncertain times. 🔴 Fragmented Data: Insights are scattered across silos and entities. Gathering emissions data, for instance, involves multiple sources—lease car providers, HR systems, surveys, and more. 🔴 Legacy Systems: Data stored in old systems poses headaches. Balancing migration efforts with existing contracts can be tricky. 🔴 Manual Data Transfer: Copy-pasting data is time-consuming and error-prone. Compliance standards demand accuracy and efficient processes. 🔴 Prioritization: Long-term sustainability efforts often clash with short-term priorities. Proving worth and securing resources require strategic forecasting. “The above challenges are just a handful of the experiences I’ve heard from peers in the sustainability world or have faced myself. I came across Sustaira whilst looking for answers to them: the need to do more with less, to meet reporting timelines, to communicate to business partners why you need their people, time and investments, or to mesh with old and new IT systems. The flexibility of Sustaira's solution with an underlying low-code platform is really the incredible thing.” ~ Rory O'Sullivan ⬇ Read the complete article via the link in the comments below! Recognize these challenges and want to solve them? Reach out to Sustaira! #esg #sustainability #esgdata #esgdisclosures #sustainabilityreporting #esgsoftware #sustainabilitysoftware #siemenspartners #mendix #sustaira

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This is such an important editorial from the Guardian today which covers the role of the public and private sectors in getting the UK to Net Zero. As is typically the case, its not an 'either or' situation - both have a critical role to play; the state to create an overarching vision and direction, backed up with sufficient investment to catalyse the market, and then the private sector to step in and add the power of transformation that only the market can provide. But as has been the case for longer than I care to remember, UK governments (this one in particular) continue to prevaricate and fail to provide the political vision and the 'seed' funding to stimulate the market. I saw it at close hand from 2000 to 2020 with the electric vehicle (EV) sector. Yes there was public money (Plugged In Places, EV grants etc) which did finally get the private sector to come to the table... but it was painful to witness (and overly on the demand side) and even now the UK government is prevaricating on whether it really wants to see a fully electrified transport sector which does nothing for investor confidence. This despite it being an inevitable technological destination and potentially a huge wealth creator. We probably have one more go at this before the UK is permanently out of the global tech race. 'All' that the next administration has to do is to create a clear industrial strategy (renewables, EVs, heat pumps, net zero technology, CCUS, CDR tech, etc) and inject sufficient INVESTMENT to provide confidence for the private sector. I add the caps as focused public spending is not a cost but a multiplier which will provide a return on investment to the UK economy. As many have already said, the UK urgently needs its own Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) or European Green Deal Industrial Plan moment (that hinted £28 billion would be a good start). So come on 'next' Labour, write and publish a clear Industrial Strategy so that the UK economy can align and self-organise to generate a zero carbon future AND and a strong future economy. A firm political will is key, not only to create the vision, but to stand by it over time and create funding paths via innovative carbon taxes that are, in any case, inevitable over the longer term. Yes it will be hard and many fossil sectors will resist, but if executed well, it could unlock some of the $1 trillion that the world's 60 largest private banks continue to finance fossil fuels annually. With such a sustained and clear vision, we may still have time to attract some of that capital and create a wealth-generating Net Zero economy here in the UK. Needed to get that 'off my chest'... enjoy your Monday morning! #climatecrisis #industrialstrategy #netzero

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Climate finance and innovation - the National Wealth Fund Among the stream of announcements and early action from the new UK Gov. this was an important one. At WOVEN we support and advocate for a more cohesive and therefore effective ecosystem, to support the acceleration of innovation in climate change. This can be from the earliest startups through to implementation of the large scale infrastructure projects. By finding and enhancing the interconnectivity that threads all the key stakeholders together, we can accelerate more effective deployment and change. As we know from market signals in the last 12-24 months, funding is always challenging for innovation, most notably for; ▶️ Early stage technology innovation ▶️ Public and Private funding balance ▶️ Bridging the Valley of Death ▶️ Large scale project finance, guarantees and debt The NWF is focused on guidance to Gov. on how to best utilise the £7.3bn of capital the Gov. has initially made available, to align goals and draw in a further £20bn of private sector investment. Initial focus areas are the big ticket items which you might expect to be on the list, whether they merit a place is for further techno-economic analysis; ⚙️ Ports ⚙️ Gigafactories ⚙️ Clean steel ⚙️ Industrial clusters ⚙️ Green hydrogen The NWF is designed to provide a new more dynamic approach and range of financial mechanisms through; guarantees, equity and debt, demand-side offtakes and CfD. These larger scale projects can have huge regional benefits, accelerating our economic recovery, skills and growth. Who are the other key organisations that are driving this initiative? Green Finance Institute - leading the NWF Taskforce UK Infrastructure Bank - closer integration with BBB British Business Bank - closer integration with UKIB Corporate Finance Members - big tickets as per image Let's hope the Gov. quickly delivers on their rhetoric around Industrial Strategy, Net Zero and economic growth ambitions. Without a clear focused plan, set out across multiple years, there is a risk we will lose focus and market confidence, wasting precious time and investment in the wrong areas. A lot to be done, little time to do it. Ensuring innovation and technology developers have alignment in their strategies, market readiness and investment readiness, is a key function WOVEN supports clients with across the cleantech sector. #innovationfinance #startupecosystem #nationalwealthfund

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With coverage in the FT, Business Green News, CIR Magazine and Energy Live News. Already sparking debate on the key research finding from the Net Zero Barometer, have you download your copy of the report yet, so that you are part of the conversation ? But perhaps more importantly are you part of the solution?   With the key takeaways for me being:- * Active Transition: UK businesses are increasingly committed to decarbonization, with a notable rise in active efforts. * Confidence in Net Zero: There’s a strong belief among businesses that they will reach net zero by 20501. * Climate-Driven Action: For the first time, climate-related risks are the main motivators for businesses to act2. * Challenges Ahead: Despite progress, businesses face hurdles in measuring progress, setting targets, and cost barriers Access the full report here:- https://lnkd.in/eiWZQZ_F https://lnkd.in/eMe-8UUz

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We need modern solutions, forward-thinking organisations and businesses to tackle challenges. Government is no different. AI and process automation can help with consideration to personal data privacy and security. #AI #processAutomation #UKPublicSector

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Unpopular opinion but I think sector experience DOES matter, especially during turbulent economic climate. 💡 Case in point: I was recently at a certain sector event with fellow CPOs/CEOs/COOs/CROs etc. It was a very high quality event with some amazing connections made. And everyone was so eager to connect each other to fellow industry leaders from their network. I personally benefited from few new connections that I would have never made if it was not for that afternoon. At senior/C-suite levels, industry specialism & connections matter more than in early or mid career. As product people, we are generally sector agnostic! I focus on 3 specific sectors (education, healthcare, media), but I know many who have worked at 10-12 different sectors which is a great variety, BUT picking a “few” that you are bloody good at will always help you grow further in your career. 🙌🏼 In the same vein, I’m also VERY impressed with this CEO Pathways report created by Eton Bridge Partners Ltd! It’s a must-read for everyone and resonates with some of my thoughts mentioned above. 🙏🏼

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Environmental Standards vs. Net Zero: A Guide for Businesses in the UK In an era of increasing environmental awareness and regulatory changes, small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in the UK are confronted with the imperative of sustainable business practices. Two common approaches to address environmental concerns are implementing recognized environmental standards, such as ISO 14001, and striving towards Net Zero carbon emissions. Each approach has its unique advantages and considerations, making it essential for SMEs to choose the right path that aligns with their goals, resources, and environmental impact. In this article, we explore the key differences between these approaches and offer insights to help SMEs make informed decisions. https://lnkd.in/eEgwJXTC #iso14001 #greenwashing #energy #energyindustry #energyefficiency #energysavings #energynews #ems #environmental #environmentalmanagement #green #greenenergy #environmentalconsulting #environnement #isostandard #isocertification #iso #iso #isocertification #isocertified #isoconsultants #isocertificationbody #ukas #isostandards #isoconsultant #isoconsultancy #iso50001 #enms #netzero

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Must-Attend Training Opportunity: Biodiversity A second event for Yorkshire Sustainability Festival fringe - the Biodiversity Collage. Learn what’s behind the word “biodiversity” and why it matters. Remember that we humans may think we’re the main character, but we’re supported by a cast of plants and animals who make our existence possible. Let’s make sure we keep them around so that we can thrive. This workshop will help you get to grips with the role humans play in the grand game of nature, and understand why giving consideration to our impact on animal and plant life is an essential component of every sustainability strategy. Best of all, it’s free and hands-on. You’re gonna have fun while learning to be a planet custodian. Will I see you there ?

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Well worth a look

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Welcome to the second volume of our special focus on #Canada and Horizon Europe, an insightful eBook exploring the dynamic and impactful collaborations between Canadian institutions and Horizon Europe. This eBook features: 🔹 International Energy Agency (IEA) IEA’s Emma Mooney shares insights from the NUDGE Project Discover key insights from Emma Mooney delves into energy efficiency strategies. 🔹 Université de Sherbrooke This article explores the university’s contributions to revolutionising organic synthesis, energy utilisation, and medicine, all aimed at preserving our planet. 🔹 BRIMM - University of British Columbia This article discusses BRIMM’s efforts to address the complex challenges facing mining innovation and its commitment to fostering significant change in the industry. 🔹 University of Manitoba This profile highlights the university’s work in advancing food systems, climate change mitigation, and reconciliation efforts. 🔹 CANTRAIN | Clinical Trials Training Programs Explore the emergence of the CANadian Consortium of Clinical Trial TRAINing Platform (CANTRAIN). 🔹 Toronto Metropolitan University This profile discusses the university’s innovative strategies to ensure that everyone can participate, learn, and succeed in an evolving global landscape. 🔹 EURAXESS North America We speak with Jackson Howard, Regional Representative for North America at EURAXESS, about Canada’s association with Horizon Europe. 🔹 York University York University’s Satinder Kaur Brar and Sapna Sharma are emerging as global changemakers. This profile examines their efforts to tackle pressing societal challenges through sustainable research partnerships, highlighting their contributions to creating a more resilient and equitable world. 🔹 McDonald Institute This article explores how the institute is answering fundamental questions about the universe’s constituents, contributing to our understanding of the cosmos. 🔹 University of Quebec This profile highlights the university’s commitment to addressing key issues through innovative research. 🔹 Montreal Health Innovations Coordinating Center (MHICC) This article discusses MHICC’s decentralised trial solutions and its role in advancing clinical research methodologies. Join us in exploring the remarkable achievements and the promising potential of these cross-border collaborations that are not only enhancing scientific knowledge but also fostering a global community committed to innovation and sustainability. Click here to read and download the complete eBook for free. #canada #europe #horizoneurope #science #research #innovation #globalscience #sciencefunding #openscience #openaccess

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This seems so obvious, yet having the support of solid science is invaluable.

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Innovation Forum insights – Have we become too carbon-focused? Raviv Turner, founding member of the Nature Tech Collective and member of the nature data working group at the Taskforce on Nature-related Financial Disclosures (TNFD), talks with me about current trends in nature-based disclosure and highlights best practices the transition from non-disclosure to disclosure. We discuss key regulation coming up such as the EU deforestation regulation and Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive, and about how business engagement on biodiversity could develop in the future.

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Are you a business making changes to reduce your carbon footprint? 👣 Are you an individal championing change? ♻️ Are you a group that cares deeply about the enviroment? 🌍 Do you know an individual or business that deserves to recognised? 🏆 Find out how to enter below👇🏼 #climate #oxford #oxfordshire

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