On energy and buildings. we've got some fairly hard net zero ambitions at the council for our buildings, and we're aiming to be operationally net zero by 2030. So obviously this means we need to drive down our greenhouse gas emissions and all the buildings that the council looks after. Um, you may know, think I'm going to be very specific here, but 38% of greenhouse gas emissions in Stockport come from residential properties and other buildings. So in this session, what we're hoping to do, we've got a really great range of speakers, um, we've got on these particular topics here. We want to there's James who's going to be talking in this first bit, making the case for solar and what the council is doing in terms of decarbonisation. We're going to hear from Stockport Homes Group, who obviously look after all the social housing that the council council's responsible for, and we're going to be looking at the NDC and to see how that can be a catalyst for climate action within the borough, because there's a huge amount of development going on there. We're going to hear about the Greater Manchester vision as well. Um, obviously we're part of that bigger picture and we want that sort of high level sort of collaboration in that respect and then hopefully learn a little bit more about home improvement support that's available. Um, and we're going to do another ideas forum at the end of this one to think about how collectively we can engage and spread the word about this particular topic, who we need to be talking to, how we communicate to people. So I'd really like to tap into your brain power again, working with a facilitator at your table to think about how we can get this further up the agenda and get more climate action on on that. Anyway, without further ado, our first speaker is James Kington. He's the head of estates at Stockport Council. Thank you. Morning everybody. So I'm going to talk to you a little bit about the council's decarbonisation of, um, of the buildings and how we're looking at our own estate. Um, the estate we run, and I'm sure you're aware that runs from schools to offices to depots to leisure centres. Um, so we've got lots of variety in this state and a lot of energy being used. Um, as you've sort of heard, we've got a lot of grant funding over the last couple of years, and that's delivered some really great improvements on the estate. And whenever we come to do work that is required, whether that's a reroof new heating system, whatever that is, we we within the realms of what is possible both technically and financially, we do our absolute best to keep the agenda right at the top of of that place. We've got a appointed er decarbonisation lead for our estates teams that we've got a real laser focus on making sure we drive that efficiency in this state, reduce carbon and where we can reduce cost as well. Um, we've got some projects that we're really proud of. We've got time to go into all of those today. Um, as Councillor Jullian mentioned, we're looking at our first, um, decarbonised school, which is that first step towards net zero at Dyer Park. So the first stage in that is making sure we decarbonise it. Take the gas out the building, take the gas out of the kitchen and move to an electric solution. And then you step forward from there with, with the other stages. So. Um, first thing to understand is the council's energy uses 70% of that are from the buildings. So this graph illustrates for you where that sort of comes in and which of the areas of the buildings we are. So you can see we've got school estate, leisure centres. There's a huge amount to go up there in terms of the energy that's being used. Heating, lighting buildings in the north west of England is expensive, both in terms of carbon and obviously at the moment, very particularly. We're all focussed on the the sheer cost of that. Um, the one advantage of that utility cost crisis is the payback periods on the, on decarbonisation look much better when electric expenses. Yes. So the top line is our maintained primary schools. Then we've got our leisure centres, then we've got street lighting and then we've got our secondary schools, and then we we go from there into some smaller. So our biggest user, just because of the sheer volume of them and the amount we've got across the estate and with the economy process, we've kept a lot of primary schools at the moment. A lot of the secondary schools have already sort of academies. So depending on what your ownership split is, that could be a different number. So how do you decarbonise a building? Um, the first stage is to is to measure. So if you know the energy we're using, if we know, um, when it's being used, how it's being used, you can start to address it. So. We've seen all sorts of things in the first. When you've got an estate like ours, the first thing we do is look at all the buildings, look how much is using, look at how big they are, and find the odd ones. You know, you've got odd buildings where you go, well, that primary school is using twice as much as that primary school. So what's going on there. And that's the first stage, that low hanging fruit you can look at in your estate and go, that's weird. Why are we using so much overnight? And you can start to look at those operational things that you can do. And it is that classic thing that, you know, we all got bored of saying to our children, turn the light off when you leave a room, all those kind of things. And it's how those behavioural changes and those operational changes and that can do sort of 10% straight away. Now a lot of that is happening, I'm sure, in loads of organisations, but we have to keep reinforcing it, keep driving it forward and keep looking because things occur. You know, some new person manages a building, they perhaps don't understand the controls, the heating. Suddenly heating bills start going up, so that constant monitoring of what's going on is really important. Then you start to look at those investment pieces. So improving the insulation, adding LED lighting, adding lighting controls. Some of you'll be aware we've recently refurbished Stockland House which is our main office building. Lots of personnel sensors in there. The lights go off if people aren't moving around automatically, so you can start to take away that behavioural control from people. It's a real balance. You've got to do it, you know, keep people happy and keep it a good working environment. Absolutely. But you can make those changes that stop those forgot to turn the light off all night. And we can control the lighting. We can control the heating and try and be as efficient and detailed as possible. So a key plank in all that work was the decarbonisation of that building. And that was a key part of the business case. The next thing you'd be looking at as we move towards decarbonising is to eliminate the gas. So if we can move over to an electric installation, it's not always possible, but where it can, we have done. And even if that's taking part of the load. So again Stopford House, an example has solar panels on the roof. It has a biomass boiler. It has a gas boiler and it has air source heat pumps. So that collection of stuff allows us to manage our load as best as possible and have that order so that we're using our gas as the last resort. Given the nature of that building, we can't eliminate gas entirely at the moment, just technical technological restrictions. But we've certainly diminished it massively from where we are and that efficiency. Now it's a difficult calculation because gas is cheaper than electric, but the heat pump will be about three times as efficient. And she gas boiler. So it's really hard to quantify as a saving. But in terms of a saving of carbon it's really significant. And then you step on to some of the renewables you can then start to use. So installing a renewable technology like solar, like wind onto your building can obviously then start to take that load. And if you've switched to electric, obviously you're offsetting that load by doing it. And we're finding that the sweet spot for this is trying to get at least 20% of your building load picked up by a solar installation. That's where it starts to work really well on a payback. It's really hard to get beyond that. But, you know, things like building load that will come onto and wait and size of solar that you can fit on or build into that. But if you can get to about 20% of your total usage, it starts to stack up really well. Um, so as we've sort of spoken about, we've done a lot of installations over the last year. Um, the we've done a lot. We've been quite opportunity led. So that opportunity might be major capital works on a building anyway. We might be replacing the heating system because it's got to end of life. And that's how we're working through the school estate. When a roof fails or when a roof gets to end of life and get to that point in the programme when it's renewed, that's when we look at doing some of this stuff. That's when we look at the insulation and the loads, whether we can put solar panels on those kind of things. But there's been some central government funding, some funding the tail and some European funding, and we're grabbing as much of that as we possibly can. We've managed to work really hard this year, and we've actually managed to spend money that other councils were handing back and saying, we cannot get this decarbonisation money out the door. They wanted it spend. So we put our hand up and said, well, we'll do it. We'll get it out the door, we'll get it on more buildings. And that's that's real testament to the to the team that's delivering that. They're doing a fantastic job. We've managed to work fast, think fast and think. It highlights that absolute commitment from the council to deliver these projects, that we are delivering them with money other people are handing back. It's not an easy space to be in in terms of getting these done, but we're getting sicker and sicker at it. Um, so this this is a sort of broad brush of what we've done in the last year. But just to give you that sense of numbers. Um, this year, solar installations accounts for about 1% of our total emissions. We managed to reduce our total emissions by around 1%. If you look at scope one and two, which is electricity and gas, we've reduced that by 3%. And if we just look at the electricity across our total estate, these installations have saved 5.5%, 5.6% of our total emissions. And we've managed to do that in one year with some solar installation. So it really starts to mount up when you start to get lots and lots of of installations and it's little, little things, all those micro improvements really start to build up. And then if you can balance that and add to that by those behavioural changes and those operational changes. I talked about at the start, you can really start to sort of drive that improvement, um, and work through. So just to give you a quantification of that, because I know everyone likes their, you know, how many, how many buses is it or, or whatever, whatever metric we're using. But it's the equivalent energy of about 303 households, um, a single flight from Manchester to Spain, you can do that 281 times the amount of carbon we saved. Or you could take 63, um, petrol cars off the road if they were doing 10,000 miles a year. So it's a lot of carbon. And you've got to be really clear that there are two things we're we're looking at here, the big thing and the leading thing. And it's the harder one to do is we are looking to save carbon. Sometimes that also saves us money and builds a building. It builds the business case and helps fund the investment and all the rest of it. And that's amazing. But it doesn't always, you know, sometimes it might be cost neutral, but you've got to. We are saving a huge amount of carbon by doing so. So the focus absolutely has to be on the saving of carbon and where we can. We're making those financial benefits as well. Um, so this is, um, looking at one of those projects that was on the last slide in detail. So those of you familiar with it, Grand Central Pool is a large 50 metre pool in the centre of the borough. Um, we used funding to deliver solar panels on that roof. It's quite a large roof. We managed to get a really decent size array on there. So we've installed that. And this June it's a 2000 metre square roof and we've got 325kW on there. That's 804 panels and three inverters. And that cost us £350,000 to get that installation in. As you saw right at the start, leisure centres are really high up in Watts using energy. That's a hell of a lot of water to heat in a in a 50 metre pool. It's a big volumetric space. There's a lot of people going through there, but there's also a lot of electric use. By the time you look at your gym equipment, your lighting and all the rest of it. So. We can't. You can't run a full swimming pool off just solar panels. You know, you've still got the gas heating the water and whatever, but it's balancing off as much carbon as we possibly can where we can. And so this gets us gives you a bit more of the sort of detail of, of Grand Central projects. And this isn't particularly easy to read, but you can see on that central kilowatt hours per month how it drops off when we put in the installation, obviously those you remember, we had a really sunny June, so we had a really good impact right at the start. So our four month saving to date at our kilowatt hour rates. And obviously that's the other thing to bear in mind in this. What you're paying for your electric bill vary. Some people are paying a lot more than that at the moment and that we've saved £30,000. We think the annual saving will be 60 to 70,000 350 capital costs. So you're looking at six seven year payback, weather dependent slightly, but that's a really good payback on something that will generate, you know, you've then got another 14 years to get electricity out of that installation after you've paid back the capital. So that's really, really good. And we've got continuous monitoring on there. And obviously it's generating more at different times of the day and different times of the year. But where we had that heatwave in June, we've had at least one day where from 9 to 6 we took no electricity out of the grid whatsoever. So when we're saying that 20% is the benchmark that you want to get to, is that minimum? We managed to do a day where 100% of the electricity for that building was purely taken from solar, which just shows the potential for the technology. It shows the potential of what we can achieve and we can do really well with that. So this is just very quickly some of the bits that you need to consider when you're looking at solar. And obviously, you know, you'll get experts involved, but what's the suitability of the building. How big is the roof. Where is it. What's the orientation. Are there any trees? It's not to say it has to be a south facing roofs and east west installations that work really well. Each building is very individual, and if it's over a 50 kilowatt power installation or it's in a conservation area listed buildings, you need to look at the planning and you may need to look at the electricity supply again, depending on what infrastructure you got and the size of the installation. Um, and as I've said, we're trying to get to 20%. That's your sweet spot. If you can get 20% of what you're using generated on site, it will absolutely stack up for you. Make sure you notify your insurance company. It's an expensive thing you're putting on the roof, and there are impacts around fire and then keeping on top of it, maintaining it. And we've got a 25 year lifespan on the panels. The inverters might need replacing up to ten. But as I said, ideally you're getting to that payback in six seven years and rolling on through, maybe replacing the inverters. But you can see straight away on the 25 year long product, you're getting some really good savings delivered and it's about a 1% degradation per year. But it is noticeable if you keep them clean, go there once a year and clean them off. Um, makes a big difference. We had a few installations where we had staff, what they're going to do in the middle of Covid and set them up on roofs, wiping clean panels. Where are you finding that busy work? And you could see on the little monitor. At that peak in power as you as you'd wiped all the muck off. And obviously it depends where the installation is. Okay. Thank you very much. -Thanks very much, James. -No, I can vouch for the estates team. They're really fantastic and what they've done this year in terms of grabbing that extra funding. See, Chris, I'm lucky enough to work with Chris on a lot of the work there. So it really is doing some sterling work. Right. Next up we've got Nicholas Wilson, as it says here from Stockport Homes Group. So I'll hand over to you guys. Thank you. Good morning everybody. I'm Nicholas -Wilson, I'm a project leader. -From Stockport Homes. And we're going to cover today a bit about what Stockport Homes has done relating to climate change, what the investments we've done recently and historically, what we're looking to do to go forward. Um, we're quite a progressive organisation in terms of what we've done related to this subject. When we do our benchmarking against other similar organisations, we're always quite ahead of the curve. We've done a lot more than other similar organisations, so we feel like we've progressed really well over the past 15 years or so. So we'll have a look at this in a briefly, um, in this presentation. So Si previously. Talked about PV installations at Stockport Homes. We've done a massive amount of PVC. It was linked historically to the original feeding tariff, which was available a number of years ago, which as well as obviously saving CO2 and saving customers money, will also bring an income into the organisation, which can then be reinvested into the borough. So we've got over 2300 solar PV systems across our portfolio. Um, over the last ten years that's generated. Think that's 37,000,000,000kW. There's a there's 1,000,000kW over the last ten years. That's enough to make almost 1.8 billion. So it's a massive amount of electricity. It's produced. Uh, it's. Avoided 19,000, nearly 20,000 tons of CO2, and that's the equivalent to planting over almost a million trees. The fifth generation, as mentioned before, that's getting up to 18 million, and that's going to be up to 25 years. That's still continuing. So that income's always coming in as well. The average benefit to customers is getting up to around £400 a year now on on these systems. Obviously the cost of electricity has gone up massively. So that is increasing in line with that. Um, we are currently looking at installing new panels on all suitable reroofing projects as well going forward. So that's something else we're we're trying to implement. So it's not just that we've done done a number of other things. Like said, we're quite a progressive organisation in this field. So we have 100% renewable electricity. So the one those supply are electricity has been 100% renewable since 2019. Nearly 40% of the 12,500 properties that we manage our service by at least one form of renewable energy that might be biomass solar PV, heat pumps. Um, we do have seven biomass heat networks that service over 2000 properties. Uh, this runs on about nearly 3000 tonnes of biomass per year. Historically, we've installed loft insulation or topped up loft insulation. So over 8000 properties. We've installed cavity wall to over 4000 properties as well. We've started installing EV charging points across the borough to support with the electrification of our internal fleets. Uh, we're at currently around 97% of our properties are EPC or above. So it's obviously that's quite a high percentage. Um, we've also have a flexible procurement approach to our energy. So this helps protect us and the customers in terms of what they pay for the landlord supply and energy and also linked to the biomass and heat networks. So they don't have, uh, as much effect on these massive variations in market prices that we've seen recently. We also have a dedicated energy advice service for our tenants. Uh, Caroline's at the back there representing us today. If you want to go and speak to her. But they do a really good, good job. And it's. It's obviously obvious how important it is. In recent years, where we've seen the effects that the increase in energy costs have had on everybody in society, particularly our tenants. So they covered over 6000 energy buys within the past five years. 1800 alone, 2223 this is a team of two people. Bear in mind they'll go from energy tariffs with people, help people understand the bills, get the best option out there. Look at helping reducing energy consumption. How heating systems work, particularly the controls, is particularly important when we're looking at new systems installing. So where we've installed heat pumps, obviously it's a lot different historically to how a gas combi boiler will work or storage heaters. It's really important to have that support with customers to help them through the behavioural change. They also now do assessments and they've helped customers get grants, discounts and challenges. So in 2022 three alone, that amounted to £137,000. It's obviously a massive help to all those customers out there. And in recently, in the last month alone, they've given out 17,000 to 120 households to help them with their energy costs. -So external. -Funding. So we've luckily all through hard work, we've managed to access a massive amount of external funding, which has meant that we can do all these projects or fund part of these projects. So since 2010, we've had about over 70 million in various funding incentives and grants. So the biomass installs that I've talked about at seven sites, we receive £30 million, which was through an ICO funding back in 2013. We've done insulation measures, as mentioned, the loft insulation, the cavity wall insulation, external wall insulation. This is the funding we received, but that's about £3.5 million. We've just recently completed a programme which is European Regional Development Fund Programme, which their contribution was 1.9 million. And within this we installed 27 source heat pumps, 110 ground source heat pumps, 55 and batteries tuned in. 16 external wall insulation measures were installed and we did one deep retrofit property. So it's obviously makes a massive change to everybody who lives in those houses and also to our carbon emissions. We've recently started working on the Haz funding, which is the heat Network efficiency scheme, which is part of the government grants towards that. So far, we've received 2.3 million on that. This helps us improve the efficiencies of these networks, which obviously helps the customers in the end reduce their costs, but also massively helps the efficiency of those networks. A lot of them are from the 60s, so obviously there's a lot of work that needs to go in there to keep the efficiencies as high as possible, but in the end, the cost of the customers, but also massively the CO2 that we're producing on that. We've also just completed the wave one, which is a social housing decarbonisation fund. We've got a grant of 286,000 and think we did about 60 properties on this. So this is targeting properties where they are a deal below rating. So obviously higher cost to customers and higher CO2 emissions in these properties and then bringing them up as high as possible. So we've installed measures such as new heating systems, solar PV, cavity wall insulation, lots of insulation as well. So what's next for us? So as with everybody, we are looking at our climate change targets. We're working how we can achieve that. We're working on the steps that we need to do to achieve that. We're also looking at further funding initiatives. There's lots of funding out there. It's obviously being mobile enough and being agile enough to to access that funding and the appropriate funding at the appropriate time. We're looking at more Hanes funding, which, again, would be another massive boost to the district that we're looking at improving the efficiencies on that and obviously massively improving the experience of the customer in terms of their costs and what they get from the heating network. We've to we're currently working on that to another 76,076 properties. It's about £500,000 of funding that will include again upgrading people's heating systems, loft insulation, cavity, more PV and way 2.2 I think is due to be announced or bid for in November this year. So we'll be looking at that closely as well. And obviously we're looking to continue to support our customers. So through the Energy Advice service, through all of these initiatives that I've run through today, a lot of that all goes back to obviously the customers improves their lives, and it helps us obviously reduce the carbon emissions going forward as well. So if anybody wants to have a a chat with the energy advice team at the back or myself, I'll be here for most of the day. And my colleague Joe Keaton is over there with his hands up. If you want to have a head of assets because he's been involved in a lot of this stuff, so he's very knowledgeable. Anybody wants to run through any of this in more detail, we can do. -Thank you. -Yeah that's great. Really, really, really positive stuff there and really great to see how Stockport Homes Group are kind of leading the way on all the decarbonising - 1.8 billion brooms. Think that's as many as we've had out there. Wonder how many pastries that is. Anyways, um, anyway, moving on. We've got Fran Jones, who is head of policy and strategy at the the Mayoral Development Corporation. So that's all the regeneration happening down in town centre west. So I'll hand over to to Fran next for. Everybody - who has heard of Stockport MDC? Okay. Great. All right. So you can hopefully I'll teach something. Tell you something new today. Um, I'm going to just start by doing a little bit. Those of you who don't know about the just a quick overview of what we are. So the Merrell Development Corporation was created as a regeneration vehicle to create a model of a neighbourhood to the west of the A6 and build 4000 homes over 10 to 15 years. Um, it was established in 2019 with collaboration between the council and the mayor, Andy Burnham. And the the opportunity is absolutely enormous. And we're going to talk a little bit today about what that means in terms of sustainability and how we're trying to wrap our heads around that and some of the help that we need. I'm trying to do to do that. Um, just in terms of where we're talking about. So those of you who have your hands up already know this, but the so that yellow sludge is Stockport town centre. Um, the red dotted area is the area, but broadly it goes from the river across to the west of the A6 round in that that bump and then down as far as the college. So that's the area that we're talking about. We're talking about turning that area, which if you know, it is, is a sort of mixture of uses, but light industrial use, it's fairly low density and pretty small amounts of residential around the edges to turning that into a residential neighbourhood in a relatively short period of time. So it's it's big, it's got scale. And that gives us one of the kind of key opportunities in terms of sustainability. The is led by a board which includes all the leaders of all the groups on Stockport Council political leadership, cross-party there. And it's also got private sector board representation. And really important again, in terms of what we're trying to create there in terms of collaboration between public and private sector and also key public sector organisations like Homes England. And so we're we're we're very well led and our guiding principles are sustainability, community and innovation. And I'm going to talk to all three of those in the in the room say. So think the really important thing to say about Stockport. And one of the reasons that I decided to come and work here is that there's loads of really big, lofty and brilliant regeneration ideas out there, and Stockport is one of those ones that's actually turning into reality. So I think this has nothing to do with me because I've only been here 12 months. It's all to do with the the work of the team that have been doing this for for many, many years. But they but four years on from being established, we've already got on site or really close to being on site, a thousand of the homes that we need to create in this area. So we're well on there. We've got some really incredible pipeline of of homes for the next 1000 plus. So we're, you know, we're kind of well on with, with building and planning for half of the homes that we're going to create. And we're not just looking at homes, we're thinking about the infrastructure that needs to go with them. So that's transport infrastructure, active travel, what we do around highways. How do we change this from being an area which is not somewhere you might think of living, to being an area that we you can't, you can't wait to live in. So that absolutely spans beautiful places to live. So some of the developments around where you might be familiar with. So conversion of an old mill on the Mersey right down there on the bottom right, the amazing work that's been going on around the interchange, the bus interchange of the homes that are going to be built on the top of that, the park. So this is about creating really beautiful and attractive places for people to come and live sustainable urban lives. And I think that's that's the kind of the thing that keeps us going from day to day. So, so how do we in the MDC think about the opportunity of what we're doing on that scale in the area? What does that mean for sustainability? So think our way of thinking about it at the moment boils down to three things. So the first thing and obviously the most sort of immediate one is well, there's the real world opportunity isn't that we are creating a new town centre neighbourhood. We're which will enable people to live low, zero carbon carbon lives. And that's that's like a massive statement, isn't it? We've got this opportunity to not have to try and retrofit things, not try and turn homes that were already existing into into net zero homes. We're talking about being able to do something from scratch. So that involves absolutely those buildings. And we'll talk about that in a moment. But also thinking about transport. You know, you're landing in the middle of one of the best connected places in the country, right there next to the mainline train station. You've got the bus interchange on your doorstep. But also, how can we tie in to the active travel networks and enablers that we know exist around Stockport and make Town Centre West the area covered by the NDC, a place that that makes sustainable transport the absolute go to option for people who live there. We're also thinking about energy and think this is really we've got a real opportunity in town centre west to think about this place as a system and an energy system. And so we're working closely with colleagues around the room looking at Chris and and others here on a district heat network, renewable energy powered district heat network, which would serve the homes, but also the other buildings in this area in the wider town centre. And that, again, you know, those things don't get get kind of planned and built overnight where we've been years and years of work already to get to a point where we're in detailed feasibility now and looking at the really exciting opportunity to be starting to build that in the in the coming years. So, so think first and foremost, you know, this is a real world. Let's actually try and create a place and think about it as an energy system that really delivers on those ambitions around net zero. The second thing think we do is so buildings are crucial to all of this, aren't we? People are going to have to live in something. So so buildings is our absolute bread and butter and and how can we use the opportunity of building at the scale that we're going to be building up to pioneer net zero construction. And I'm going to talk about a particularly particular piece of work on this, which is Stockport eight. So this is the scheme that we to build 1200 new homes on the sort of next bit out of where we've been developing. So the other side of the viaduct, um, from, from where the bus station is at the moment, and very significant site that the council has been assembling over a number of years to build at scale. So it'll be the biggest single development site probably that comes through in the MDC. We run a procurement process over the last 18 well, took about nine months and concluded in the spring to find the right partner to form a joint venture company to develop this site for homes and the English City Fund, who who were successful in that process and that we're now partnering with to create that that venture company. A very significant part of what made them our top pick in that process was their sustainability credentials. They are they are themselves a partnership of Homes England, Legal In General and Muse and Muse places, and they're working on some of the most forward thinking schemes in the country. So these pictures here are from schemes over in Salford. The one at the top is greenhouse, which is a in construction at the moment and is a passive house social housing project that they're doing with Salix Homes. So a few of us have been around to have a look at that scheme. It's sort of eye watering. What they're what they're pulling off. They're really, really at the forefront of what and what's possible in terms of net zero construction. So in English Cities Fund, we've got a partner who is pushing us and teaching us about what we can do around innovation in, in construction and, and think that that is it brings us back to the role of the is a pioneer because the scale that we work at the creates a level of opportunity which attracts people who are really doing some interesting work in this space. So think how we can harness that to make sure that that isn't just a one off project that has some great credentials, and the rest of our work kind of carries on in a more conventional mould, is a is a really key challenge for us. So I think the third thing that we think about when we think about sustainability in the MDC is how can we make this a powerful driver of local social and economic benefit? And think what I mean by that is we've estimated in the MDC that we're going to have somewhere between 600 and 650 construction jobs in Stockport created by the development that we're doing every year. Now, if we can channel those jobs and opportunities to become not just construction opportunities, but construction opportunities for people in Stockport and people who might be struggling to get opportunities otherwise, and then layer in opportunities to develop careers and sustainable construction that are going to have a long future and opportunities for exponential growth and progression. Well, that's that's a real, real sort of prize for us. So we've been setting off and Nick and others have been working really closely on this, on a what's still an emerging piece of work around creating a hub for both business and employment and skills opportunities for people in green construction, stimulated by some of the pipeline that's coming through for the MDC, so that real opportunities in green tech and green construction can be harnessed for local businesses and local people. So I think those are the the three ways that we're thinking about this. Wanted to just close by saying a couple of things. One is that would absolutely not want to give the impression that we think we've got this all sorted. You know, this is a massively fast changing field. We none of us are experts in all of the areas that we're working in. And there's many friends around the room that we're working with on particular projects and bringing expertise in to help us do this, but think we're we're really conscious that we're clear on the why. We know why we need to do this, and we know that we need to do it best. We know some of what we need to do, but how we do it, how do we do it when we're facing a world that's changing quite quickly in terms of market solutions to some of this, but also how in terms of finance and how do you how do you make some of these things stack up? You know, third, great things about solar and other things, but for the more the things that they're they're pioneering edge around construction technologies. It's still expensive. And if you're trying to think about affordable homes and ones that are zero, you know, you're really we're really, um, we're out on really trying to make things stack up in a, in quite a tricky situation. So, um, we are really, really keen and increasingly working with people to think about how can we bring that expertise together to help us really work at that power? Because think that's the that's the kind of the crucial question for us. Um, but I think this is ends with an invitation, really, to those of you who've got and know there's many ideas around this and, and the desire to collaborate, we're really open to to all of that. And we want to make this something which, which really does accelerate and amplify some of the brilliant work that's happening in Stockport and lend some of the scale and heft that we've got to some of that work. -Thank you. -Right? -I mean, it really is exciting stuff that's going on down there and the opportunity that presents itself from from all that development. Um, so without further ado, next up on stage is Sarah Holland. She's from the Greater Manchester Combined Authority and is their Program and Policy Lead on energy. And is going to just talk really about the decarbonising the public estate. Think that's what you're here to do. So anyway, over to Sarah. Good afternoon everyone. So as Nick said I work for the Greater Manchester Combined Authority. As an organisation, we are made up of ten districts across GM and also the Metro mayor, Andy Burnham. So our role is to really work with the likes of Chris and other leaders across the districts to help deliver impact against our targets and accelerate action and support others. So what I'm talking about today is about our ambition, carbon neutral 2038 and the activities that we've got underway to help work towards that. Um, and this is, um, I guess, a target that was set in 2019 and 12 years ahead of government national targets. Because we see this as a huge opportunity. It's a huge importance that we reduce carbon and accelerate that. But also we think we can use it to help drive the local economy as well. So we do see it as both a critical thing to do, but also as a great opportunity. Um, and when we envision 2038, what that looks like, um, well, this is the city region of Greater Manchester. We will have a sustainable transport network, multimodal, that allows everyone to integrate with that and transfer between different modes of transport with ease, connecting all the places together and with our buildings. New, new buildings will be built to zero carbon standards, and we will retrofit our existing buildings to the highest standards possible. Um, we're looking to generate renewable energy, low carbon energy, um, across the city region to help supply those buildings and the infrastructure around us. And, and I think the key here is also the innovation that will be required to get us there. And there's lots of great work underway at the moment. But you'll see on the next slide, we're still effectively a gap in terms of where we need to be, and absolutely will require innovation to drive that forward and to bring the future solutions into play. So in terms of our 2038 carbon neutral target, um, it's important that we don't just focus on the end game of 2038. When we set this target, we also set carbon budgets, which require us to reduce carbon emissions in periods of time and help make sure that we keep on track. And as you can see, well, I'll explain this curve. And the blue is the trajectory that we need to work on, but the orange is where we actually are. So the message from this is that we are far beyond where our budget and would like us to be. Um, and if we don't drastically change our emissions, we'll probably spend that budget, um, in the next two years. So I think there's definitely a call to action now that we need to rapidly accelerate the activity that we're doing and making good progress, but not good enough. Um, and where we look at how that carbon footprint is the contributing practice towards that. And the significant majority think this has picked up in, um, James Court. And the gas in our homes is a significant contributor to that, but also transport, um, however, everyone's got a part to play in this. And the area that I'm more focussed in at the combined authority is looking at public sector, decarbonising the public sector estate, because that's what we have most control over, and that's where working with government and using the subsidies support, we can help to start to drive and activity and start to see the cost reductions that we need to on some of those technologies to help make that more accessible, and certainly in the domestic and private sector. So the work that the public sector is doing is really key to catalysing that. Um, and I think a key point here as well is that it's not just one entity, it's everyone working together in the different areas and making it a more place based approach. So, um, the work that we've done over the past couple of years with the districts to look at local area energy plans and that's is taking more of a place based approach to say, well, what are the opportunities and the locality? What are the drivers and what are the needs and the opportunities, and to bring in that all together so that anyone can access this resource to identify in a particular area what the best things to do. So they are now on the Green City Region website and for anyone to look at. And it's really a starting point to help engage developers, people that are interested in doing more improvements in those areas, what we think the best opportunities might be in, and with things like the district heating network that's happening in Stockport, looking at, you know, other further opportunities to connect into that. Um. In terms of the public sector decarbonisation opportunity. Think the text too small to read, but again, similar to what James showed, we we look at public sector buildings and where the impacts are. Schools are on number one and we've got a lot of them and they are make up 61% of debt ratings of D and below. So a huge opportunity for us to target those and to to achieve carbon reductions across the estates. Um, and I'm struggling to read the text myself now so can't quite recall but think in terms of electricity and thermal consumption and is also quite a big part in that. So thinking about how we can work with the maybe on district heat and maybe in terms of supplying that to local energy generation as well. So these are all part of the collaboration that we're trying to achieve across. In terms of what we've actually done over recent years. So we tend to try and pull together consortia and public sector organisations to bid for government funding. We've been really successful on what's called the public sector Carbon scheme, and we've secured £95 million worth of grant funding over the past couple of years and leveraged a further 18 million from the districts who have also put match funding into this. And through that activity, we've got graded 10% of local authority owned buildings and and of that think Stockport managed to secure about £5 million of grant, um, and these upgrades that we're making, we're trying to do as a whole building approach as much as possible. And so looking to reduce demand in those low carbon heat and electrify the heating and to provide on site generation to help supply that. And because we've now gone through so many buildings, key part for us is learning from that, because when we design stuff, we need to make sure that it's actually achieving what we need it to and there's no adverse consequences. So that's a key area at a level now for us to look at the data and what the insights are from that. But we commissioned a number of videos and that brilliant videos really are. They really showcase what's happening across GM. That's all on the The Green City Region website or YouTube channel as well. So think if these slides are being circulated, that link will take you to those. And there's a great one with Chris did with the portfolio of schools that have had PV and a minute, but really tells a great story. Um, and in terms of the other area that I look after is on the energy generation, and we secured the funding to help bring forward a portfolio of ten megawatts of solar PV across. We've got two solar farms of five megawatt, one in Rochdale. Now there's in the process of being connected to the grid and another two to megawatts in Salford. We've got the Stockport portfolio of schools. We've got a number of solar carports as well. So this is really helping us drive that renewable energy generation across. And we're on track for hitting our five year environment target of 45MW by -next year. -Um. So our current focus at the moment, though, as I mentioned before about the impact of schools, um, last year a number of the district councils came to us say they're concerned about the impact of rising energy costs on schools budgets. And really, what can we do? And our response to that was, well, does have a part to play. And it's something that we can relatively straightforward look to implement because we don't need to think about with the heating system looking to cut insulation and other energy efficiency improvements. And first with this we're trying to move towards electrification heating. So there will always be an electricity demand at a school. So for us we're trying to look at how we can roll out paving. So there are a number of parent schools campaign. There are a number of resources on the Green City Region website. There's a guide that explains to schools about there's some great case studies there. We have also got the video of the Stockport schools, and we have launched a collective purchase scheme. So we're currently receiving expressions of interest for schools to join together to procure solar. This is something that will be managing in level. Um, but the intention is similar to what we did with the solar together for residential and a couple of years ago. This is where if we bring people together, hopefully we can see cost reductions on panels and maybe the inverters and think on the solar together scheme. We saw a 30% discount. So we're trying to bring a collective together but also then provide support, resource support around that. Um, we've also on the website, we've had a calculator designed and this is any school can log on. Anyone can log on to this tool and put the details of the school. It will take you to an aerial map. You can select a roof and it will tell you how much you can fit on that roof and give you some high level and guess business case information. And it's very high level, but it's hopefully sufficient to get a school to understand what the opportunity might be and to ask more questions about how we might take it forward so that that resource is is up and running. And you can download and a PDF report that could then be shared with headteachers, governors, um, to help get a decision as to whether it's something to take forward. So that's just some examples of what we've been doing at a gym level in terms of the programmes. And think, looking ahead, what we really want to do is to take more control about our carbon neutral pathway and how we get there. At the moment, I think that we're quite reactive to the funding opportunities. So this is where, um, number one, as I said earlier, understanding what the data is telling us and helping us to inform and prioritise where we want to focus next. So, um, looking at which buildings have the greatest carbon impacts and to use the data insights to understand, well, what if what if we were to do x, y and z, what would the outcome be? How much might that cost us? And to use that information to then more strategically plan for how we might go about decarbonising our public sector estates, and from that work to build pipelines and think about how we can collaborate together to to move that forward. And so just some concluding key messages. The important point as we saw at the start. We've got 2038 target. But what's more important is the budget that we've got to get us there. And we rapidly need to accelerate activity in terms of over the short term. And we will be launching the next five year environment plan next October. And so there is engagement that's taking place over the next year to actually review this and to say, right, this is where we got to in the first five year environment plan, where do we need to get to in the next. And everyone will have a part to play in that. So there will be opportunities to be involved in that consultation exercise. And we are behind where we need to be. We need to be open and honest about that, but more importantly, learn why that's the case and what we need to do to to rectify that and to focus on what's within our powers to do, but also not ignore the biggest opportunity areas. And so I'll I'll leave that down. And thank you very -much. -Thanks, Sarah. Yeah. Think the powering the solar schools. The solar school's programming campaign is really, really fantastic. I encourage you to go to the website and have a look at it. It's really user friendly. And if you've got any connections with any schools in Stockport, they're going to be sent an email next week highlighting this particular campaign. All they need to do is just an expression of interest. At this point in time. They don't need to commit to it. It'll be investigated sort of further on, but send them to that website because it's fantastic. It spells it all out what you need to do. So any governors in the room, anyone with kids, make sure your local school has a look at that website and gets involved in it. Um, anyway, uh, the final speaker in this in this session is Rory Matthews. IHe's just here. And also from GMCA, as it says on the screen, won't read it out, -but over to Rory. -I'm Rory Matthews. I'm in the same team as Sarah, actually, in the Low carbon team, which sort of start off before actually get into my slides. Um, can you put your hand up if you still heat your home -using a fossil fuel boiler? -Okay. And this is the issue. -It's so heartening today to. -See so many people engaged in discussing it. But there's some really critical things that we need to do in order to seek harmonise our homes. And it's tricky. It's hard, even with the best sort of win out there to go ahead. So what I'm going to do today is to take people through the support that we're trying to offer to Greater Manchester residents, and different schemes and programs that are out there. I'm not technical and from a policy and sort of innovation space. So what I'd refer you to is that Charlie Baker, back of the room, who's our technical expert that works through your home better locally. And I'll talk about that and going ahead. So. I think one of the first questions that people always ask is what support is out there initially? Can I get grant funding to improve my home's decarbonised insulate and to install low carbon heating? And that's what we're trying to answer at the moment with the Greater Manchester retrofit portal. So we have recently set this up to assess grant eligibility for insulation or low carbon heating that is on offer to Greater Manchester residents. We can receive referrals directly for eco four, and we've got a team to assess them to understand what support might be out there, and I'm going to go through the various schemes that are on offer that are contained within the retrofit portal. The one thing I would say is that it's still what I'll describe in the set up phase. We're taking people through, and people are going through the portal and being referred into the energy efficiency schemes, but we're still looking to improve it. So if you do go through the portal, please let us know any feedback that you have because we're trying to improve that service going ahead. Okay. The other thing about the portal is we're able to work with referrer users. So we've partnered with Citizens Advice, we've partnered with NHS, and we've also partnered with National Energy Action so far, who have advisers who can refer directly into the portal to take them through to understand the grant eligibility. So what I'm going to just quickly run through are the grants. They're covered at the moment as part of the retrofit portal. So the first and probably the main scheme is the energy company obligation for four, which provides billion a year across the country between 2022 and 2026. And this is for homes which are and below. The main eligibility assessment criteria for Eco four is that your household income needs to be below £31,000 a year, but also in addition, there are local flex elements that we've been able to introduce that can widen the criteria for eco for as well, that assessed as part of the portal that were recovered. So that might be things that you live in a low income area. You might have health conditions that will improve your health. If you improve the energy performance of your home, and suppliers are able to deliver up to 50% of their local obligation, of their overall obligation through the local flex element. And we're seeing massive success. And actually, Stockport is probably our most successful area this so far through our appointed installers could improve easy, with 175 signed declarations already since June, when the target for the financial year of 251 homes to be done. So that's eco for. Next. And this is one that's being introduced over the next few months into the portal is the Great British Insulation Scheme. So where is eco for targets? A whole house approach of multiple measures at the time trying to fit homes up a couple of vans. The Great British Insulation Scheme targets single measures. It's around insulation fabric improvements rather than heating, but it's a wider criteria for who qualifies. So there's not an income threshold for the Great British Insulation Scheme. You need to live in the home or below and council tax bands a today. Currently we're going to be assessing it through the portal and understanding who can qualify for the scheme, and then the delivery will be building up in the next few months through the same point of installers locally that we have, which in Stockport is improving as already mentioned. Okay. That brings me on to the boiler upgrade scheme, which isn't actually being delivered locally in a specific way. So national scheme that's open to anyone that has a fossil fuel boiler. So for all of you that put your hands up earlier, you can get 7500 pounds to replace your fossil fuel boiler with a heat pump. And that's the criteria. Unless you live in social housing. And what we're trying to do as much as possible across Greater Manchester is to crowding the investment from the boiler upgrade scheme. So we're trying to push into innovative, innovative offers and increase the sort of partnership and sort of knowledge locally that the boiler upgrade scheme is there and available and make it more affordable to people, because often with 7500 pounds grant, still it can still be more expensive to install than gas boiler, which is obviously a critical barrier. So we've partnered locally with Octopus Energy, who are able to offer fixed price quotes to residents after a survey, and they will provide the through offering of the installation. We're also working on with a memorandum of understanding with Daikin, who are a heat pump manufacturer looking to promote innovative and new ways of deploying heat pumps and supporting technology around that. And that brings me on to my next slide, which is to talk around the Social Housing Decarbonisation Fund. So currently in the portal, none of these grant schemes mentioned so far are on offer to social housing tenants now. Fantastic job. Earlier of running through the support on offer in Stockport and across Greater Manchester. We have funding to deliver after Social Housing Decarbonisation Fund is way too, which is up to 5500. Homes across Greater Manchester won't go into any more detail on social housing, with the level of detail we've already gone into earlier. Okay. Those are the grant schemes that are covered in that are out there. And at the moment, really the grants schemes are just scratching the surface across Greater Manchester to get to net zero by 2038, we need to decarbonise 61,000 domestic homes a year. At the moment we're in the teens, around 10,000 homes a year that we're decarbonising, so that is mainly through grant delivery. And really the critical element is that we expand this and make it available for everyone to do so. What we've done and what we're working with Charlie with, I've already mentioned today, is we have commissioned the organisation Your Home Better to offer independent energy devices, a one stop shop for residents for retrofit to take them through the retrofit journey and to the point of installation. So the the idea is that you have someone that you can trust, someone that you know, and someone that isn't sort of trying to sort of push one way or the other in terms of the retrofit journey and give you that really good technical advice or knowledge of where you need to go, depending on your on your journey and how to take things forward for decarbonising your home. So, as mentioned, the service for your home ranges from carrying out initial surveys through to technical support and advice for actually commissioning the work and project managing work if that's what you wanted to go through as well. So if you haven't already, I'd really recommend going through the retrofit portal. And if it ends up that you're not eligible for grants, which is probably most people, then going through your home better is a really good way just to even understand what you need to do to your property, but also the cost that might be associated with it to take it forward. And that's what we're hoping to get to. Is that volume level able and willing to pay market. It's not just grant funding, but there's finance offerings wrapped around it. Then there's other support that can help you to take action in the able to pay market as well. Okay. My final slide. This is a recent funding that we've won as the combined authority working across all ten districts through a local energy advice demonstrator. What this funding is, is £2 million, and it gives us a chance to innovate, test and trial and engage in different ways than we might have otherwise done before to provide that in person energy advice that is sometimes missing. So what we're focusing on residents that might not otherwise receive energy efficiency advice, and with a big focus on improving the fabric efficiency and heating measures that are installed in homes. So there's a few different ways that we're trialling to provide that advice locally. Partners are going up through different faith based groups. They're working with the NHS, your home better, commissioning their own truck to engage into the different districts, which includes Stockport, Sulphur and Trafford, to take retrofit measures into the community and provide advice to people on what they could get installed. So the idea is that we're working towards devolution in 2025, where we have a trailblazer agreement for some sort of funding. We don't know yet in Greater Manchester, but we'll be able to have a pot of funding that's allocated towards retrofit that we're in control of. As a trailblazer alongside the West Midlands Combined Authority, and what we're really looking to do with the local Energy Advice demonstrator is create a glide path in to wrap all of these different grant schemes through, to build up the portal, to understand the different eligibility and sort of provide a really clear route through for residents across all of Greater Manchester to take them through to their journey, to how they can improve their homes and decarbonise. -That's a move for me. Thank you. -Thanks very much for that. So. We've obviously heard from a range of speakers about sort of what's going on in the public sector, a little bit around what's happening in the, in the in private homes, that kind of thing. But as I alluded to at the start of this session, we want to run this next ideas forum to get your thoughts, your ideas, your brainpower, to help us work out. Kind of like the the what, the why in the hell and probably the how as well is probably really big, sort of strong emphasis on that. But I want to hand back to the facilitators on each table. We're going to spend the next probably about sort of 15 minutes doing this exercise. But if you can kind of just have a think and listen to what your facilitators, how they present this and what it is they want you to think about, hopefully we can use your brain power to to increase this engagement and harness.