Oldham Council
Oldham’s Green New Deal
Sevice Area:
energy
Sevice Area:
energy
Background
Councils have an important role in achieving net zero by coordinating place-based solutions in conjunction with local communities. The Oldham Green New Deal (OGND) was born in 2020, when Oldham Council had the opportunity to refresh its climate change strategy.
Local Action
The OGND was the UK’s first local authority GND strategy to be adopted and, like other GND-style programmes and proposals that have emerged over the last few years, it seeks to bring together climate change mitigation and economic planning. Investment in low carbon infrastructure and growing the local green economy supply base are important pillars of the programme. In addition, the OGND takes up the challenge of addressing the local economy more comprehensively, to encompass ways of meeting residents’ basic needs and how people shape the places where they live. Here are two relevant projects within the OGND:
Oldham Energy Futures
Oldham Energy Futures is a collaboration between Oldham Council and Carbon Co-op, a Manchester-based energy services and advocacy co-operative. In 2021 and 2022, residents of two Oldham neighbourhoods, Sholver and Westwood, worked with Carbon Co-op to explore how transforming power, heat and transport might benefit local people. Throughout the 20-month process, residents were upskilled in order to be able to engage confidently with the technical aspects of decarbonisation and energy systems change. Together the group developed, shaped and tested plans and projects designed to transform their neighbourhood and energy system. A Community Led Energy Plan was produced for each of the two areas with recommendations to various key stakeholders, including the council, the local housing association, Transport for Greater Manchester, and Oldham Community Power (a local community energy group). Recommendations included the energy efficiency upgrading of homes and turning disused areas of land into green space.
Local energy market
The OGND seeks to address fuel poverty by reshaping the local energy market. Oldham Council has invested in two local community energy co-operatives: Saddleworth Community Hydro and Oldham Community Power. It has supported their expansion by enabling solar panel installation on local schools. At the same time, the council has been exploring the potential to implement a technology-enabled platform for peer-to-peer energy trading. This would allow individuals or organisations with the capability to generate renewable energy – for example, Oldham Community Power – to set up contracts directly with local consumers. While the supplier would receive more for their generated electricity than they would by selling it to the grid, it would still be significantly cheaper for the consumer than it would be from a large supplier. The system would thus disrupt the traditional energy company model, simultaneously tackling fuel poverty and promoting renewable energy use.
Disruptions and financial pressures brought about by Covid-19 and its aftermath continue to seriously challenge Oldham Council along with most other local authorities, but the OGND agenda is surviving these difficulties. Oldham has recently been awarded £1.3m in grant funding from the DESNZ Local Net Zero Accelerator programme, £150,000 from the Innovate UK Net Zero Living Pathfinder Places programme and £8.7m from the Green Heat Network Fund to implement an Oldham Green New Deal Delivery Partnership – an initiative to demonstrate a delivery model for the full spectrum decarbonisation of the borough, which places residents and businesses at the heart of energy planning for the low carbon transition.
Part of the credit for this success can be given to firm political support by council leaders. Locating the GND project lead in the Economy Directorate’s PMO team (rather than within a policy team, as is common in other local authorities) has helped to ensure it is more consistently and systematically reflected in council action (particularly capital programme delivery areas), rather than remaining as a policy principle not always realised in practice.
Impact on local residents
The OGND seeks to address fuel poverty (by increasing energy efficiency of homes and turning to community-based energy providers) alongside local efforts to improve air quality – both measures are likely to improve residents’ wellbeing. Specifically, Oldham has recently developed an approach to area-based retrofit, working with Carbon Co-op and Connected Places Catapult. There is not yet data published on the numbers of residents who have benefited.
An important part of the GND is to empower and engage local residents, which has helped to generate the kind of collective ethos that’s required to deliver needs-oriented, sustainable services. In particular, bringing citizens’ perspectives and priorities for decarbonisation into the heart of the Oldham Energy Futures project has prevented the OGND from becoming merely a top-down infrastructure programme. Rather, its stated aim is to create a space for co-production between citizens, the council and other key stakeholders. It also aims to enhance local social and economic value by involving and contracting with community-based organisations and actors. Who is involved in these projects – and how – critically affects the way benefits are distributed among the local population.
Environmental Impact
A GND programme is of course designed to protect the environment. The combined authority has committed to carbon neutrality by 2038. Local Area Energy Plans conducted in each Greater Manchester district detail the local transformations needed to meet the 2038 target. Oldham’s Local Area Energy Plan specifies that £5.6bn of low-carbon infrastructure is needed to reach net zero locally. The GND programme is the council’s vehicle for achieving this goal. The latest data shows that within Greater Manchester Oldham is the borough with the lowest per capita emissions and total carbon footprint.
A review of the OGND thus far by Carbon Co-op highlights the importance of citizen and community engagement for decarbonisation efforts. Without it, local opposition is more likely. Additionally, failing to work with local communities means missing out on projects and innovations developed at ground level through local knowledge.
What's next?
The OGND is geared towards achieving carbon neutrality locally and in the wider combined authority. Oldham Council hopes its approach will encourage other local authorities in Greater Manchester and beyond to work with their own communities and develop the locally led collective measures required to drive a just green transition.