Local authorities are on the front line of delivering net zero, yet many struggle with moving from planning to action. This report draws on case studies from the 52 local authorities involved in Innovate UK’s Net Zero Living programme to set out practical steps to ensure local net zero planning delivers real change, rather than gathering dust on the shelf.
At a glance
While local net zero plans have helped shape regional decarbonisation efforts, our research finds that delivery can often be limited. Many councils find that plans, while insightful, do not always translate into tangible projects or investment. This report highlights key barriers and proposes a new approach that prioritises delivery from the outset. By aligning planning efforts with these roles, councils can develop strategies better tailored to their anticipated ambitions, capacity and resources:
- Enable: Where local authorities support others to act, including by providing area leadership, with supportive local policies like spatial planning and by helping to convene or influence key stakeholders.
- Embed: Integrating net zero into existing council functions, ensuring it becomes part of how they do business or deliver services, including integrating net zero considerations into statutory responsibilities like spatial planning and transport.
- Enact: Where local authorities take direct responsibility for project delivery, whether through bodies such as public-private partnerships or direct council-led initiatives on their own estate.
Beyond planning: Building an enabling ecosystem
- A universal need for leadership and governance to support and drive action
- Robust local partnerships to unlock investment and collaboration
- Where local authorities are involved in delivery, sustainable financing models are important to bridge the gap between ambition and delivery
- Local authorities also need to think ahead to commercial delivery structures to ensure projects get built.
The challenge: from vision to implementation
Local authorities are keen to act on net zero. Many have produced net zero plans – such as a Local Area Energy Plan (LAEP) or Local Heat and Energy Efficiency Strategy (LHEES) – which have painted a picture of the scale and pace of change needed to get there.
But while this has been valuable for building consensus and convening decision makers, there is no strong link between the development of net zero plans and tangible action on decarbonisation. Many areas have struggled to move towards delivery after completing a plan, while others are delivering projects without a formalised whole-system energy plan.
As part of Innovate UK’s Net Zero Living programme, we have been exploring the reasons behind this and how the planning processes might evolve to maximise their value for local areas and other stakeholders.
Our research suggests that net zero plans are often developed in isolation from other critical local authority teams and energy system stakeholders. While modelled energy futures identify attractive potential opportunities, progress can stall without a clear definition of the local authority’s role in delivery. Without this clarity, it is difficult to translate plans into action.
Ensuring a delivery focus in the development of local net zero plans will ground them in the material realities that drive action – factors like politics, organisational capacity and local priorities, which cannot be accurately modelled. This shift should help authorities move towards coordinated and collaborative plan development, improving alignment with other strategic priorities and avoiding duplication of effort.
In this report we have developed a high-level framework for conceptualising the local authority’s role in delivery. This can be used to focus resources at the outset of the planning process and determine the depth of analysis needed across sectors, with the aim of keeping plans grounded, pragmatic and deliverable.
The roles a local authority can take are broadly summarised as:
- Enable: The local authority supports others to act, including by providing area leadership, supportive local policies and helping to convene or influence key stakeholders. This is particularly relevant in high-emitting sectors, which are lacking in policy funding and are typically outside the remit of local government.
- Embed: Net zero is integrated into existing council functions, ensuring it becomes part of how the authority does business or delivers services. This includes integrating net zero considerations into statutory responsibilities like spatial planning and transport.
- Enact: Local authorities take direct responsibility for project delivery, whether through bodies such as public-private partnerships or direct council-led initiatives on their own estate.
We propose that each local authority’s mix of delivery roles will differ based on capacity and local priorities. The example ‘prioritisation matrix’ below illustrates the concept. Following this approach, a local authority can identify its potential delivery roles by conducting an initial high-level analysis of the local energy system, working with other council departments and, crucially, engaging with local organisations, communities and individuals to ensure the plan reflects local needs and priorities.
Clarifying local authorities’ roles will help develop a coordinated, collaborative approach to developing net zero plans that set clear expectations with internal and external stakeholders.
It will also provide wider direction on the non-technological factors that need addressing. This ‘enabling ecosystem’ is the mixture of topics that a local authority needs to consider alongside the development of a net zero plan to stand itself in good stead for action.
Where an authority acts as an enabler, it will need clarity of leadership and a skilled workforce capable of convening and guiding the right stakeholders. An authority leading project delivery will also require those elements, but in addition will need to allocate resource to embedding net zero strategy in relevant areas like spatial planning, as well as complex, specific matters like specialist delivery bodies, commercialisation and accessing finance.
As such, we have presented the enabling ecosystem as a hierarchy, with some foundational elements – necessary for all types of local authority-led net zero implementation – and some aspirational elements, better suited to areas where an authority takes a direct enacting role.
Defining the authority’s exact roles and developing the full enabling ecosystem cannot be achieved immediately; iterative development is needed to allow understanding and momentum to grow. However, fundamentally it is pragmatic to allocate effort and resources to the areas where the authority is expected to shoulder the most risk, and to allow the development of net zero plan analysis to complement this. This should enhance the use of modelled insight as a supporting tool, while grounding net zero plan development in tangible, deliverable projects.
Our research draws on the experience of multiple local authorities from the Net Zero Living cohort, energy system experts, policymakers and consultants with experience in the net zero planning space. We will continue to work with these groups over the next few months, particularly developing insight on how authorities can develop tailored, iterative net zero plans alongside the enabling ecosystem required to deliver a rapid and just net zero transition. Download the full report to explore how your local authority can maximise the value of net zero planning and drive real impact.