Futurenoughts
Oldham Green New Deal Delivery Partnership
Andrew Hunt, Green Energy and Sustainability Manager and Oldham’s Green New Deal Strategy Programme Manager, Oldham Council
A dive into Oldham’s climate change mitigation programme, learnings from the LAEP, and embedding the community voice in strategic decarbonisation delivery.
Oldham’s Green New Deal Strategy is our climate change mitigation programme focusing on co-benefits of reducing greenhouse gas emissions, in particular the opportunity to build capacity in and upskill the growing Green Technology and Services (GTS) sector.
Oldham currently has around 100 companies in the GTS sector, employing over 2,000 people. We believe there is a huge opportunity to grow this further still, by securing large-scale inward investment in low carbon infrastructure and other community priorities, and involving our local GTS supply chain in delivery.
Oldham’s Green New Deal programme is part of the Council’s wider Creating a Better Place programme, which focuses on the complete regeneration of Oldham Town Centre. This includes an ambition for “best in class” green and low carbon infrastructure – from a Net Zero compliant shopping centre, to sustainable drainage systems, a new town centre park, a green tech business centre and a low carbon district heat network.
Our Future Ready project is to establish an Oldham Green New Deal Delivery Partnership. A replicable delivery model for the local authority area, which brings together commercial scale investment and delivery capacity, with a community-led approach to energy planning. This will enable the full-spectrum decarbonisation of the borough through an inclusive, cross-sector governance arrangement which facilitates the co-production of the long-term low carbon energy project pipeline.
What’s the main driver for the project?
Oldham has one of the first Local Area Energy Plans developed in the UK, established through the Innovate UK Prospering From the Energy Revolution (PFER) funded Local Energy Market project for Greater Manchester Combined Authority (GMCA). Developed by Energy Systems Catapult, the LAEP shows that Oldham Borough needs up to £5.6b of investment in low carbon infrastructure to reach net zero. Oldham’s LAEP is a valuable piece of evidence, that constitutes a high-level business case for inward commercial investment.
However, the LAEP currently adopts a ‘top-down’ approach to net zero (based on physical and technical considerations), and will be become outdated as the programme progresses. Working with Carbon Co-op, we are developing a Community Led Energy Planning (CLEP) strategy as part of the Oldham Energy Futures project. This will address the needs and priorities of local communities and invites citizens to collaborate and speak on issues surrounding energy in their own neighbourhoods.
We are lucky in Oldham in that we have a good working relationship with Carbon Co-op, a Manchester based community energy organisation specialising in domestic retrofit and energy systems.”
We realised that to decarbonise the borough, it is essential to establish a commercial partnership with a large energy infrastructure company. The Council already has a portfolio of projects that can contribute to decarbonisation, in particular, a £27m town centre low carbon district heat network. However, to generate the longer-term project pipeline, entering a commercial Joint Venture with a partnership-focused governance arrangement is required. This partnership will work with communities, businesses and land and asset owners across the borough.
What work inspires you or has influenced this project?
Teaming our own work on engaging the commercial sector with inspiration from other strategic decarbonisation, Coventry Strategic Energy Partnership and Bristol City LAEP, we created the Oldham Green New Deal Delivery Partnership. This is the model we plan to mobilise and test through our Pathfinder project.
This is a pioneering model, bringing the commercial and community sector together to co-produce the strategic decarbonisation project pipeline for the borough.
Figure 1 - Oldham Green New Deal Delivery Partnership Governance
What is your strategy for bridging the gap between public, private, and third sectors?
As Oldham is not an affluent area demographically, there is limited capacity within our communities to instigate and deliver projects. With the CLEP process we aim to drive forward further energy infrastructure projects, giving ownership to the community through a strategic planning process and therefore significantly de-risking the investment pipeline. The success of this process enhances CLEPs’ eligibility to be included as supplementary planning documents in the Oldham Local Plan, granting a degree of democratic legitimacy and currency that the LAEP alone does not.
We hope that a commercial partner will play a role in funding the rollout of the CLEP approach and maintaining the delivery partnership relationship. With this strengthened community already in place, any remaining budget will ideally fund further community engagement opportunities.
What synergies have you found with other projects within Future Ready, and what might be applicable to other places as well?
The Future Ready programme has connected us with other places such as Essex County Council, who are facing similar challenges. After meeting with Essex peers, we found similarities around de-risking projects and lack of buy-in from investors. While Essex are tackling this challenge through creating a project feasibility and development fund, here, we are hopeful that the Oldham Green New Deal Delivery Partnership model will successfully secure a commercial partner and bring us closer to net zero delivery. We are relishing our participation in the Future Ready programme and are keen to share our experiences, learn from our peers, and ultimately achieve our net zero ambitions - delivering sustained, positive growth for our businesses, residents and communities across Oldham.