Collaborations start with conversations

On the 29th January EP co-hosted the Net Zero Finance Leadership Summit. This unique event, held in the Guildhall, was supported Under our Innovate UK (IUK) funded ‘Shift to Net Zero’ project, and brought together senior people from local authorities, financiers, investors, lenders and other stakeholders focused on increasing investment into local, systemic, place-based net zero projects.

The Shift to Net Zero project consortium is made up of EP, Ibex Earth, Kent County Council, Surrey County Council, Essex County Council, and Brighton & Hove City Council. The ideas behind it are developed from EP’s work over many years reviewing, and in some cases working on, examples from around the world where energy efficiency financing had successfully scaled. The project also builds on the various tools we had developed and deployed to help derisk and enable energy efficiency and net zero investment decisions including: the Investor Confidence Project Europe; the Energy Efficiency Financial Institutions Group’s Underwriting Toolkit; ESCO-in-a-box®; the EU Horizon funded CREATORS project tools for developing community energy projects; and the UNESCWA Toolkit for Energy Efficiency Financing Instruments for Buildings in the Arab Region. The idea for a dedicated Net Zero Delivery Vehicle, the NZDV, started with a small piece of work EP did for IUK at the end of 2021. Through 2022/23 further work on the idea was funded through the Greater South East Net Zero Hub and in 2023 IUK funded phase 1 of the Shift to Net Zero project in which EP, Ibex Earth, and the four local authorities identified potential investments of £46 billion and further developed the concept. That work led to the current project which is about building capacity and advancing the NZDV concept.

The aims of the Summit were:

1. to bring together local authorities and private capital – 2 groups that rarely come together and speak different languages
2. to increase knowledge and understanding of the Shift to Net Zero project
3. to advance EP’s proposed NZDV, a public-private vehicle designed to overcome the barriers to bringing in private capital to local place based NZ projects

Key take aways from the meeting were as follows:

1. the barriers are non-technical and are based around lack of capacity on both sides
2. addressing the problem requires a systems based approach, both technically and organisationally
3. local authorities and financial institutions are both committed to solving the problems to ensure more capital flows into these kind of systemic projects.
4. there is huge gap between what is often called pipeline and well developed bankable projects – much of what is called ‘pipeline’ is more aspiration than real pipeline
5. there is lack of capacity in local authorities to develop projects and access private capital.

The audience of c.80 were highly engaged throughout a packed programme of presentations and panels.

The Net Zero Delivery Vehicle is designed to be an equitable public-private partnership that brings together local authority project opportunities and capabilities, with private sector development expertise and some initial seed capital for development. It’s structure meets the needs of private investors and lenders, ensures good governance, enables the ability to aggregate projects to a scale that is meaningful for institutional investors, and satisfies public sector procurement rules. The next stage is to get seed funding to structure the entity with the initial founder local authorities (and other interested authorities) and start operations.


The Shift to Net Zero project has also launched a knowledge sharing platform which can be found on nzdv.co.uk

Later in the year the project will host a second meeting to move the NZDV forward. Any local authorities interested in participating in the NZDV should contact Leo Bedford at ep – leo.bedford@epgroup.com