Net Zero: From Ambition to Reality

Dr Sean Field and Dr Mette High describe the work of the new SFC-funded Scottish Research Alliance for Energy, Homes and Livelihoods (SRAEHL) towards making the changes needed for our future net zero society.

Photos (left to right): University of the Highlands and Islands, University of Glasgow, Fife College

The money for Scotland’s net zero ambitions exists, as do the projects needed to achieve them. The problem is that there is no system for putting together these two pieces of the net zero puzzle, and no organisation charged with making it happen. To address this problem, the Financial Pathways theme of SRAEHL recently hosted a one-day ‘sprint’ workshop at the Edinburgh Climate Change Institute (ECCI). The aim was to prepare a proposal for a ‘place-based decarbonisation unit’ – an organisation able to fill the capability and capacity gap currently preventing Scotland from realising more investible place-based net zero projects.  

The workshop emerged from a deepening collaboration between the Alliance, the Scottish National Investment Bank, University of Edinburgh-based ECCI, non-profit Living Places, and the Built Environment – Smarter Transformation (BE-ST) innovation centre. Moreover, it stemmed from months of consultations with local authorities, financial institutions, private sector organisations, communities, and the built environment sector. It followed directly from an earlier Financial Pathways to Net Zero Incubator event which brought together cross-sectoral stakeholders working in the net zero space. 

During the morning session, the Sprint Group developed a draft proposal for a place-based decarbonisation unit. We were joined in the afternoon by a wider Reflection Group of stakeholders who helped test the Sprint Group’s thinking. More than 30 people participated throughout the day. 

It was a really exciting morning, fuelled by the pressure of having a coherent proposal to put to the Reflection Group in the afternoon. Time was limited and we had to stay focused. It was definitely a sprint, but a really fun and collaborative sprint that got us all working together from the word go.  

We believe these kinds of cross-sector, task-focused activities are exactly what’s needed to turn months of discussion and convergent understandings about what stops us achieving net zero in Scotland into actual solutions in which the research community plays a vital role. 

The day concluded with an agreement amongst the participants that a ‘unit’ was indeed needed to overcome the current barriers to realising net zero solutions in Scotland, revolving around the absence of a finance-to-project pipeline. This ‘pipeline’ issue, which describes a lack of connection between sources of capital/funding and scalable net zero projects, encompasses overlapping legal-financial, social equity, and procurement problems, which the proposed unit would work to resolve. The proposal emerging from this workshop continues to be developed among the main collaboration partners, and this work is expected to continue in the coming months. 

In addition, Financial Pathways is collaborating directly with Scottish local authorities to ensure researchers, industry, business, government, and the financial sector work together to realise councils’ local heat and energy efficiency strategies (LHEES). 

A recent collaborative project spearheaded by Perth and Kinross Council, with Financial Pathways seed funding, started to explore the opportunities and challenges of taking a wider, regional approach to the implementation and delivery of LHEES.  

This is a research agenda that is urgent and impactful, encapsulating the cross-sector collaborative ethos of the Scottish Research Alliance for Energy, Homes and Livelihoods. Together, we are looking at issues such as how can we best draw on shared expertise and experience? How can we achieve economies of scale, so our projects become cheaper for the taxpayer? And how can we work with blended finance to aggregate projects, manage risks, and still ensure social equity? 

These are exactly the kinds of questions the Scottish Research Alliance for Energy, Homes and Livelihoods was set up to answer – and the collaborative approaches we’ve described here exemplify the way we want to tackle those questions. Our shared goal is simple; achieving an equitable and sustainable net zero future for Scotland. 

Dr Sean Field and Dr Mette High
Financial Pathways Theme Lead and Alliance Director,
Scottish Research Alliance for Energy, Homes and Livelihoods
13 June 2024  

Financial Pathways in Context 

‘Financial Pathways’ is one of three themes of the Scottish Research Alliance for Energy, Homes and Livelhoods (SRAEHL), alongside ‘Decarbonising Heat’ and ‘Sustainable Households’. The Alliance is directed by Dr Mette High, University of St Andrews.   

Feedback from key collaborators and other stakeholders indicates that Financial Pathways is providing much needed and desired collaborative academic support for this ambitious and impactful net zero work.  

One key partner, for example, suggested there is reluctance to collaborate with academic partners across the net zero space because of how ‘slow’ and ‘unwilling’ academic partners have traditionally been to collaborate with cross-sector partners on urgent issues.     

Key observations that have emerged from our collaborations and the work of Financial Pathways in its first several months include: 

• There is a vital role to be played by the academic sector in providing knowledge exchange and collaborative research leadership on facilitating net zero solutions.  
• There is reluctance among governmental, non-profit, and private sector partners to collaborate with the academic sector. 
• Deepening cross-sectoral collaborations are vital to developing new cross-sectoral impact-oriented research programmes. Financial Pathways has developed two cross-sectoral UKRI research proposals to date.