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) provides 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

We are part of the UK Government's Advanced Zoning Programme on Heat Networks and have been participating in feasibility studies for the North East of the City and a cross-boundary network with Hackney. We are preparing for heat zoning within the Square Mile. Heat network zoning is a cost effective way to decarbonise heat locally and provide an opportunity for residents and businesses to access low carbon and low cost heat.

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 Autumn 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 SPD will be published in Autumn 2024.

The built environment is recognised as the largest contributor of direct carbon emissions within the Square Mile and contributes significantly to the overall carbon footprint. The emissions associated with materials and construction processes during building design, construction, operation and end-of-life are known as embodied carbon.

We have been working with Arup and Dark Matter Labs to develop an Embodied Carbon Action Plan (ECAP). It will support the achievement of net zero by supporting businesses to build circular, low carbon and resilient supply chains and reduce carbon intensity throughout the Square Mile.

In July 2024, we held a workshop with leading actors from across the built environment industry to discuss the ECAP and provide an opportunity to:

• Share key findings from evidence gathered on embodied carbon emissions in the Square Mile.
• Generate feedback on the proposed action areas for reducing embodied carbon.
• Map key stakeholder groups against action areas and identify opportunities and gaps for collaborative action.
• Set out next steps and how key stakeholders will be engaged with the development of the ECAP.

The ECAP will be finalised and published in Autumn 2024.

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.