Supporting the Square Mile achieve net zero

Energy planning is a key area for public-private collaboration. We must find ways to reduce demand for energy; make more efficient use of it and decarbonise via renewable alternatives. The City Corporation's Local Area Energy Plan (LAEP) will provide an understanding of the nature, scale, rate, and timings of changes that need to be made for the Square Mile’s transition to a net zero energy system.

The LAEP aims to: 

• Identify the actions required by different groups, including local and national government, energy providers, regulators, industry, and residents. 
• Consider local and national conditions to determine how local cooperation can promote area-wide decarbonisation. 
• Identify key actions for the City Corporation to support LAEP. 

There are seven priority interventions to be targeted within the Square Mile:

• Maximising the energy-efficiency of buildings
• Maximising rooftop PV
• Decarbonising transport
• Decarbonising heat
• Implementing waste capture and exchange
• Reinforcing the electricity distribution network
• Rolling out energy system flexibility

The City of London is home to many historic and listed buildings, also know as heritage buildings. Adapting these buildings to improve their climate resilience and reduce carbon emissions requires special attention. That is why we partnered with heritage consultants, Purcell in 2023, to design and deliver the Historic Buildings Carbon Reduction and Climate Resilience Challenge.

The Challenge brought together building owners and occupiers to better understand issues or barriers to adapting buildings, opportunities, sharing and promoting knowledge and providing best practice in hard-to-treat historic buildings.

The lessons learned from the Challenge have been consolidated into a toolkit called 'Heritage Buildings Retrofit Toolkit'. You can find an overview of the toolkit at the bottom of this page.

The outcome of the Historic Buildings Carbon Reduction and Climate Resilience Challenge was to create the Heritage Buildings Retrofit Toolkit, which launched in 2024. The toolkit has a nine-step methodology aimed at empowering heritage buildings owners to initiate the adaptations necessary to reduce carbon emissions and build climate resilience in their heritage buildings.

The diversity of heritage buildings across the Square Mile provides considerable challenge and while there is no one-size-fits-all, the toolkit aims to provide a common methodology around eight, core building types or typologies.

You can find the full toolkit at the bottom of this page.

We will consolidate best-practice guidance, to provide high-quality advice, tailored to building owners and operators in the City to deliver refurbishment projects for buildings of all types and ages.

The guidance will be published in Spring 2024.

Carbon Options Guidance Planning Advice Note

The City Corporation has adopted a Carbon Options Guidance Planning Advice Note which encourages applicants to carry out a pre-application stage “optioneering” exercise to consider different development types such as refurbishment, part retention and substantial redevelopment for their site before the detailed design stage commences.

Supplementary Planning Document (SPD)

The City Corporation is also in the process of creating a sustainability Supplementary Planning Document (SPD) which will:

• Provide constructive advice for designing sustainable buildings and spaces that are exemplary and contribute to a high environmental quality of the City environment.
• Set out requirements and expectations for all new buildings and building refurbishments to become climate resilient, energy efficient, healthy and low carbon developments.
• Expect developments to support the pathway to net zero carbon emissions for their whole life-cycle.

The first draft of the SPD has been approved and is out for public consultation until Friday 17 May 2024.

In order to reduce carbon emissions we need to improve the supply chains used by businesses and organisations in the Square Mile.

We are developing a strategy to determine how to do this (and address broader sustainability impacts).

It will:

•  identify key clusters of businesses and organisations and priority intervention areas.
• Increase collaboration between these groups on key decarbonisation challenges.

We aim to combine our financial resources and skills with large businesses to co-invest in low or zero carbon technologies. We are scoping the feasibility of a Climate Action Fund, in which stakeholders will be able to collaborate in designing the fund, which will  be used for projects that reduce or remove residual and hard-to-treat carbon emissions in the Square Mile. 

We are exploring three areas for collaborative investment:

• Innovation:  act as a test-bed for innovative new technologies, providing pilot sites for start-ups in order to prove these technologies and attract further funding.
• Infrastructure: co-finance new infrastructure in line with net zero strategies. The City Corporation would act as a de-risking partner which would attract private investors to develop new low carbon infrastructure.
• Retrofitting: address emissions in older buildings without forcing building owners into debt.

As part of our efforts to decarbonise the Square Mile, our Strategy looks closely at how we can make the City's energy efficient and clean.

We are scoping the first Multi-Offtake Power Purchase Agreement (PPA) in the Square Mile. We say multi-offtake because we are looking at a group of organisations that would sign up together, like a "club".

In May 2023, we hosted the first workshop in partnership with EY consultants and engaged with over 33 organisations in Square Mile, from property owners to tenants interested in procuring 100% renewable energy.

If you would like to get involved and contribute to what a multi-offtake club may look like, please use this information request form to submit your expression of interest. We look forward to hearing from you and any relevant energy consumption data or existing supplier commitments you may have.