海角视频

GMCA Building Energy Decarbonisation Plans

Greater Manchester, UK

Greater Manchester Combined Authority (GMCA) encompasses 14 separate local authorities and partner organisations, which together manage an estate of more than 8,000 buildings 鈥� from town halls to schools, police stations, libraries and office buildings. In 2020, 海角视频 was engaged by GMCA to provide sustainability consultancy to help it achieve its net zero targets.

GMCA has an ambitious plan to be net zero in operational carbon across its entire estate by 2038.

海角视频 was engaged to provide sustainability consultancy to set the authority on the right pathway towards decarbonisation.

The project enabled applications to be made for Public Sector Decarbonisation Funding, which requires heat decarbonisation plans for each building in an authority鈥檚 estate

We developed a bespoke digital toolkit to enable GMCA partners to test their future capital retrofit projects

Challenge

GMCA has an ambitious plan to be net zero carbon in operation across its entire estate by 2038. For all of its stakeholders to understand where they were up to on this journey in relation to the other GMCA partners, a net zero carbon pathway was developed by 海角视频 sustainability experts using a bespoke digital toolkit.

The timing of the required activities was proposed to align with the year-on-year carbon targets set out by the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research. This would require each GMCA partner to have full visibility of the necessary interventions to their building stock over the coming years, as well as the short, medium and long term costs of carrying out the required works. The reports would discharge the requirements of the Government鈥檚 Public Sector Decarbonisation Funding (Round 2) which asked for all applicants to set out their heat decarbonisation plan for their buildings.

The key challenge for our team was the vast number of buildings and the large number of stakeholders involved. Our experts were tasked with finding a way to organise all the available decarbonisation data around all of these assets in a way that would allow it to be easily and effectively interrogated by all parties. This required a careful analysis and optimisation of all the data available, which focused on a very broad set of building typologies.

Solution

Available data provided insight into the types of interventions already being delivered into buildings, the energy savings that were being reported and the capital cost. Our team cleaned up the data and came up with aggregated figures based on each of the building typologies.

A decarbonisation guidebook was handed to each authority which clearly set out how their current portfolio is performing, as well as the capital works required to align with their decarbonisation pathway. The resultant capital cost, operational cost and carbon implications were presented.

The commission required significant engagement with all partners throughout, including holding a number of interactive online workshops in which our experts demonstrated how the estate teams of the GMCA partner organisations could use the reports and guide to greatest advantage.

Our experts also carried out ESOS (Energy Saving Opportunities Scheme) style surveys on more than 50 buildings across Greater Manchester and set out a plan for the decarbonisation of heat for each building. These included a wide range of typologies including town halls, schools, leisure centres and care homes.

We have since been further commissioned by GMCA partners, including Wigan, Manchester City, and Rochdale local authorities to develop separate decarbonisation retrofit plans for individual buildings.

Value

The outputs provided both a snapshot of the performance and condition of existing assets for each partner organisation. This resulted in clarity and direction as to how decarbonisation could be achieved across a significant portfolio of buildings.

Our experts brought a wealth of experience working on climate action plans for a broad range of public and private sector organisations, to support the GMCA agencies in getting on the right pathway to achieve their zero-carbon ambitions.

鈥淚 have found the team to be very professional in their approach and in managing relationships with key stakeholders. They have been very willing to work with us in a collaborative nature and it has been very enjoyable to work with them. They worked efficiently within very challenging timescales and have proactively managed their programme to ensure that key milestones were achieved. We have found their technical ability and quality of output to be of a high standard.鈥�

Programmes and Policy Lead, GMCA