A local partnership group, led by City of York Council, has confirmed an award of £3,371,806 from Innovate UK’s Net Zero Living programme.
The York project will create a Retrofit One-Stop-Shop to facilitate retrofitting homes with low-carbon measures, improve the householder experience and contribute to better energy efficiency standards across the city.
The programme – a £25 million package of support from Innovate UK to help councils tackle the barriers to climate action projects, speed up their progress to net zero, share expertise and unlock investment opportunities worth up to £500 billon – is designed to help local authorities across the UK to accelerate net zero in local communities.
As part of Innovate UK’s Net Zero Living programme seven local authorities will receive Innovate UK funding of between £2 million and £5 million to run practical demonstrator projects.
The project, which aims to eliminate barriers to retrofitting properties with carbon reduction measures will involve engagement with residents, creating ‘deep retrofit’ demonstrator homes, developing supply chain skills and ways to match approved suppliers and products to needs, and exploring innovative financing methods.
City of York Council’s partners are Brightsparks Agency, Energy Systems Catapult, the University of York, York Community Energy CBS, Wrapt Homes, Abundance Investment and North Yorkshire Council
The Future Ready programme will focus particularly on five areas most important for net zero progress:
- visioning and citizen engagement
- planning
- finance and investment
- data
- policy and regulation
Beyond technical help, it will create a strong community of practice across the UK as the councils work together, generating insights, sharing learning, helping each other and coming up with new solutions.