91K electric cars, 1,500 solar panel fittings a day and £3.8bn in cash: The cost of turning York net zero

Decarbonising York’s energy system will require £3.8 billion of investment if the city is to hit its net zero target, councillors have been told.

York needs to “go big or go home” if it is to successfully implement its new local area energy plan, according to City of York Council’s assistant director of policy and strategy Claire Foale.

The plan, which has been drawn up over the last eight months, begins to show how York can remove carbon dioxide emissions from its energy system in the most cost effective way.

It covers all major sources of emissions within York – buildings, heating and transport – as well as energy generation and storage.

The plan identifies the need for:

• 73,000 heat pump installations;
• 20,000 new connections to a district heat network;
• 44,100 homes retrofitted with insulation, glazing and draught proofing improvements;
• 91,000 fully electric vehicles;
• 24 per cent of homes generating their own electricity with rooftop solar and 920 megawatts of large-scale renewable generation.

The council’s head of carbon reduction Shaun Gibbons said: “These are big challenges that require a big level of investment – around £3.8 billion – but there are also significant opportunities.

“Energy bills will be cheaper, our homes will be more comfortable with reduced instances of damp and mould, local air quality will be better and local communities will be able to own [energy] generation assets.”

The council’s ambition is for York to be net zero by 2030.

‘Very challenging’

Karl Sample, from Energy Systems Catapult, which produced the plan, told a meeting of the climate emergency scrutiny committee that this would require the retrofitting of 32 homes and the installation of 1,500 solar panels per working day.

He said: “Equally, 44 heat pump installations per day and 19 connections to a district heating network, which currently doesn’t exist.

“And in order to deliver those heat pump installations, that would require roughly one quarter of the entire national installer base.”

“The scale of this is very, very challenging,” he added.

It will now be up to York’s political leaders to lead on the plan and begin to implement it.

Councillors were told the plan was not just for the council but the whole area and would require investment from government and private finance.

Ms Foale said: “Our challenge is to try and capitalise on this plan and get that megabucks coming in from external investment, private sector, insurance companies, whoever, to try to accelerate some of the schemes as much as possible.”

Priority projects

The plan identifies a number of priority projects that could be carried out in the near term future, including solar panels on heritage buildings; retrofitting households in fuel poverty around Acomb and Rufforth; domestic solar panels for poorer households around Hull Road Park and a city centre heat network.

Committee chair Coun Vassie said: “When the council made the pledge to deliver a zero carbon future in March 2019, I don’t think there was really any clarity about how challenging that was.

“The challenge hasn’t gone away, but I think it’s hugely to the benefit of the city going forward that we are now looking at the scale of that challenge in the eye.”

Three other local area energy plans have been produced for the rest of North Yorkshire – the A1 corridor, the Vale, Moors and Coast area and Harrogate and the Dales.

Read York’s energy area plan here (PDF).