A post-industrial Britain has stark lessons for net zero
LAST week our cities were hotter than they have ever been, and many people suffered. On average they were 3-4 degrees hotter than the surrounding countryside. Had more people commuted into workplaces, it would have been worse.
But why are London and cities across the UK so hot? There are three connected explanations. First, they are concentrations of activities that produce heat: cars, transport, deliveries, buildings, homes, and increasingly data centres and digital hubs. Second, cities are designed in ways which do not absorb and dilute heat, but rather they reflect and magnify it. Third, the atmosphere above cities adjusts to the heat emitted to reconcentrate it back into the city rather than to disperse it.
All of this has additional impacts on air quality, which, unmitigated, will only get worse.
Cities need to start preparing themselves for extreme temperatures: shading improvements, reducing reflection, reintroduce nature into the city with green roofs, walls, water and gardens, reduce vehicle use on certain days and times, switch to cooler engines, encourage active travel, and use the planning system to reduce the heat emitted by buildings. They can also carefully consider where data centres and other digital hubs are located.
But all of this only makes sense in the context of a rapid decarbonisation of our cities. The core reason that our cities are hot, is that the world is heating up due to human induced increases in green-house gases.
The switch to a zero-carbon economy is the biggest change in our world since the industrial revolution. This requires both an energy switch and an urban transition. We now face a decade of reforms, reconfigurations, and retrofits to our urban environments, requiring investment on an unparalleled scale.
Decarbonisation must not be mismanaged in the way deindustrialisation was, falling heavily upon certain sectors, regions, and communities, destroying jobs and livelihoods. The failure to invest in that deindustrialisation process left the UK with extreme inequalities, low productivity, and wasted opportunities.
The biggest change to our landscape and economy in 200 years must be tailored to the needs of local areas with the buy-in and support of communities, and the resources of the private sector. This includes the retrofit of homes and commercial properties, integration of renewable energy, shifts to sustainable transport networks, circular waste management, and the enhancement of green spaces and waterways.
An effective net zero transition will only be achieved through an unprecedented public-private investment agenda. The Cities Commission for Climate Investment (3Ci), founded this month, aims to forge new financial partnerships to enable fund managers and banks to invest in locally-led projects. By making green investment simpler and more finely in tune with the needs of different communities, these efforts can be scaled up to a national level. For investors, this will create substantial portfolios of green opportunities that deliver commercial rates of return for finance and substantial benefits for communities and the environment.
In the current labour market and economy, we’re still seeing the scars of a deindustrialisation strategy which was top-heavy. The reason the “levelling up” agenda struck such a chord was because of how many places across the UK felt left behind by the decisions made by Whitehall, politically and economically. Our future labour market will be shaped by the decision we’re making now, and how well we can spread the opportunity across the country.