The Minister for Energy and Clean Growth, Claire Perry, has launched an initiative to create a network of new and extended city climate commissions in Edinburgh, Belfast and Leeds.
The project aims to help the UK meet the requirements of the 2015 Paris Agreement on climate change and the UK Climate Change Act by building local capacities and stimulating the flow of green finance into cities across the UK.
P-CAN was announced at a national green finance conference on ‘Investing in Local Energy’ in Leeds on 31 January 2019. Claire Perry MP, Minister of State for Energy and Clean Growth, delivered the keynote address at the conference, which was organised by UK100 and Leeds Climate Commission (Chaired by Prof Andy Gouldson of the University of Leeds), together with the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy.
The Minister announced the new £3.5m research network, that has been set up to enable cities and towns to build much needed local action on climate change, by building their capacities for action, developing investable projects and accessing finance. The network will include researchers from universities across the UK, and will explore innovative approaches to sustainable finance, renewable energy and low-carbon projects, and also highlight the business opportunities and social and economic benefits of local energy projects to communities.
P-CAN will help to accelerate and sustain the transition to a low-carbon, climate-resilient society through the creation of local energy and climate commissions, following the Leeds model developed in 2017, as well as other broader measures focused on increasing investment in low-carbon, climate-resilient development.
There is a pressing need for cities and towns across the UK to take action on climate change, and a major opportunity for them to do so in ways that also help them deliver on their economic and social ambitions. But to take these opportunities, cities and towns need to build their capacities for action, and find new ways of developing investable projects and programmes and accessing investment. P-CAN will play a key role in this.
The P-CAN project will take forward and extend a model of partnership working with the public, private and third sectors which has been developed by Professor Andy Gouldson with the Leeds Climate Commission. Professor Gouldson, Deputy Director of CCCEP and a speaker at the Leeds conference, has conducted extensive research on the economics of low-carbon cities, and has demonstrated huge opportunities for cutting energy bills and reducing emissions in cities.
Leeds also has another Co-Investigator on the project, Dr Alice Owen, who will be leading the business platform, while Professor Nick Robins of LSE and the Grantham Research Institute heads up the finance platform.