Barry Wyatt

So I'm Barry White, I'm South Gloucestershire council's climate and nature emergency manager. Um, I joined the council in early 2020, just before John left the council, so sorry, John. Um, but interestingly, just after the council declared a climate nature emergency back in June of 2019, I think over 70-80% of authorities have also declared a climate nature emergency around a similar date. What that declaration did was to start the council thinking about how we could deliver services differently, focusing on how we achieve net zero carbon by 2030 and how we support nature's recovery. And one of those early schemes that we did back in early 2020, maybe 2021, was applied to the Environment Agency under the Natural Environment Investment Readiness Fund. Which sought to essentially encourage private sector investment into green infrastructure with that key mechanism that they were trying to to get authorities to take up. And so we, we bid into that fund for one or two projects we're going to talk about, which is ICANN, investing in climate and nature, and then I'm going to move on to a project which we call Greenprint. So firstly, in terms of ICAN. What we're trying to do um is to develop a portfolio of investment ready opportunities. I refer to it as a funnel um where we have defined schemes which are shovel ready and we try and stack and bundle funding to come in to develop those, those shovel ready schemes. However, as we all know, investments in green infrastructure doesn't really have a good commercial return, um, it probably has no commercial return, but it has a really strong social value return, as I think the previous speakers have actually touched upon. So not necessarily looking at commercial investment, but looking at philanthropic investment through ESG environmental social governance responsibility of organizations and individuals who would choose to put money into that upward facing um hopper or funnel. So what we achieved was a grant funding of just under 100,000 pounds from the Environment Agency. And that delivered the, the nerve Funded project up to December 23, so that was a cutoff in funding, so we delivered that and the legacy is still continuing. Interestingly, we commissioned a consultancy, a Bristol-based consultancy from Eunomia who had given the council some pro bono support in terms of working down this direction of travel previously. And the critical piece of what Eunomia did for us is they brought together a number of natural capital evaluation tools and methodologies we now call it the Eunomia tool. And we applied that Eunomia tool to a number of green infrastructure based projects. We're now in the process of, I can never say this word, operation. Anyway, it says it there, and trying to operationalize these projects and trying to actually show the market what we can deliver and seek, uh, investment to, to, to launch them. And as part of that, when you get to the end of this, we want to talk about how much money we've got in and how successful it has or hasn't been. So what does it look like? Um, we're looking across well initially all of council's green assets. Um, at the moment on my desk I've got a list of 988 bits of land which I've been given permission to look at to see how we can better deliver carbon savings, carbon sequestration, and, um, uh, nature improvement opportunities. To identify the site, we designed a scheme for that site. And then we look at a number of different mechanisms where we can try and raise money to turn those paper schemes into real schemes. It's not meant to compete with BNG. BNG will do what BNG's gonna do. Other carbon offsetting programs, Woodland Carbon Code, etc. and other formal ecosystem services based schemes. So it's not designed to be in competition with those other opportunities. It's designed to to be in addition to supplement those. So crucially what we do is we design the scheme on the bit of asset that we've got and we work out the social value calculation using the Eunomia tool over 15 years. We offer that to the market, and once we've received sufficient investment, we turn that paper scheme into a a a an actually scheme that's delivered on the ground. And we offer back to the investors the ability where they can take credit for the social value coming from those schemes. Probably won't be able to see that in the back, but I'm sure the slides will be available. So this is just an example of 3 of the sites that we, we planned out. Um, you, you won't be able to see, but on the left hand side of the metrics that we use to actually measure, so air pollution, flood regulation, climate regulation, which is carbon sequestration, recreation, physical health, mental health, and biodiversity. So we use those we use those metrics to evaluate how successfully the schemes are going to, to, to deliver those elements, and we turn them into a cashable value. So with the scheme on the left there, WarmleyNAZ Warmly Nature Action Zone, which is a combination of eight small sites. We carry out an initial baseline assessment of the natural capital value. So on the warmleyNAZ location, just over 17.5 million is the current value. We then look at if we spend 265,000 pounds on natural capital investment schemes within those eight sites, what that would then generate in terms of the uplift of natural capital value. So we think after we carry out those schemes, it would change that 17 million pounds into 24 million worth of natural capital. So it gives a profit, essentially a profit, although it's a social value profit of 6.5 million pounds based on 265,000 pounds worth of investment, which gives an investment ratio of 25 to 1, which is pretty spectacular in my terms. But as I say, this isn't a commercial investment, contributors don't get money back, they just get the ability to trade on the social value that they've created. So as I say, not selling financial return to investors, but anybody who's putting money into that hopper can take value from the social value that the scheme generates. So initially we've done 13 um owned council sites and assessed the value. We've worked out that the natural capital uplift over those 13 sites equates to about 13 million pounds. We've soft launched the portfolio to date, so we don't have an active website, but even without an active website, we've already achieved roughly about 400,000 pounds worth of investment into delivering those 13 sites. And crucially as well, we've used the Eunomia tool to use in bid proposals where we've been able to identify the social value coming from those schemes. So from the West of England combined Authority, we got about 1.5 million pounds to pay for the delivery of a nature reserve. But we were able to actually show what the social value was demonstrated or was gonna be delivered from that um that that scheme because we were using the Eunomia tool to do that. So where are we going next? We want to see that online platform, so we can identify the sites on the website, you can see the social value that's gonna come from that and see the return that's gonna stem from that. We want to float it alongside the council's um social value um metric tool, which is TOMs. I'm sure some of you are familiar with TOMS, themes, outcomes and measures, which is what councils use to deliver the social value coming from um the supply of contracts and services. So rather than people using the TOMS network, we want to see suppliers of goods and services to use our ICANN system so they can make that social value contribution through ICANN. We also want to scale up action on delivering net zero, so working with Ernst Young, we know that 92% of the council's emissions come from the suppliers of goods and services. We tend to focus on council's use of electricity and gas and forget about all the scope 3 emissions coming from the suppliers of goods and services. So we will hopefully going to work on a process where if you're going to do business with a council, you've got to show you're doing that from a net zero point of view. And if you can't do it net zero within your own supply chain organizations, then you make a contributions into ICANN's scheme, and we can do some of that carbon sequestration on your behalf. So that's pretty on, on the, on the discussion table at the moment. We haven't quite got there, but I'm hopeful we'll be able to get some money coming into that upward facing hopper for ICAN to start delivering some of those projects. Also, we blatantly lifted from Cornwall County Council their climate and nature decision wheel, which is a bit of donor economics. So Cornwall apply the donut economics to all the decisions they make, they work out the environmental cost, the environmental benefit, and use that in decision making. Where it links in with ICANN, if we use the decision wheel and we can show environmental harm, we can offset some of that harm through investment into some of those projects within the ICANN portfolio. So while the private funding works, we think there's a real market out there for businesses who want to invest in environmental and social governance, but crucially, I, I term it don't plant trees in Patagonia, plant trees in patchway. So actually those local businesses can invest in those are environmental solutions which have resonance to them geographically and to their, their employees geographically as well. And I think there's that rich vein in terms of the way councils use TOMS, themes, outcomes and Measures Network to actually start to move away from TOMs and moving into solutions which use locally derived solutions. And that's it. That was ICA. The second of the projects I'm quickly gonna go through is Greenprint. So this is a partnership project between South Gloucestershire Council and West Sussex County Council, um, supported by Department of Transport. Thank you very much. I should do the relevant thanks for that. Um, uh, routed through Adept and and the label of live laps to. As has previously mentioned, we know there's over 300,000 miles worth of rural network within the UK. We think ourselves in West Sussex as an unlocked asset there to help to reduce CO2 and to achieve that target that we both have of carbon neutrality by 2030. So what it is all about is we think there's a, there's a way to manage grass verges differently. um, we think we can use green waste risings from verge sides to produce energy. We think actually by Reducing the cutting frequency and cutting and collecting or cutting and collecting we can reduce cutting frequency because you reduce the nutrient value going back into the grass, going back into the verge side, which then slows grass growth, which enables you potentially in South Gloucestershire's case, to go from 11 cuts a year potentially down to 2 cuts a year after you reduce that nutrient value. Nice. So reducing that nutrient value reduces the cutting frequency, but crucially, we need to manage the expectations of communities. We've had quite a bit of pushback from residents who want to see their verges scalped within a centimeter of their life 11 times a year. So that's one of the biggest challenges is to get that community acceptance of what good actually looks like. Good isn't bowling green grass, good is actually leaving it a bit raggedy both for the environment and both for carbon. So what does it look like? Slightly complicated flow diagram here, but if you start at the bottom there, the biomass harvester, also known as a sit down mower, um, that's out on the verge side, cutting the grass, it's taking that grass, it's commingling it with food waste, so we're looking at our highway responsibilities, we're looking at our food waste collection responsibilities. We're bringing those waste streams together, putting them through anaerobic digestion. The anaerobic digestion process produces digestate liquor, which goes back into agriculture, clean water. Produces biogas, which has CO2 for industry, biomethane which goes back into vehicles. After the material's been through the anaerobic digester, we take that digestate coming out the back end, put it through a pyrolysis process, and pyrolysis essentially burns the waste in a, in a, in a low oxygen environment and produces biochar. You're probably familiar with biochar, and we want to start thinking about using that biochar as an aggregate replacement material. The harvesting at verge-side also includes highway hedge and tree pruning, and that can go straight into pyrolysis to produce the biochar, which goes back into highway surfacing solutions. So that's where we want to get to, and we've implemented parts of those process and we're experimenting with parts of those processes as as I speak today. So clearly we want to achieve net zero as part of that. We want to get that integrated ecosystem approach where we're looking at council responsibilities both in terms of highway maintenance, but in terms of waste collection and disposal as well. We want to share that knowledge around scalability, not just scalability within South Cross and West Sussex, but scalability across highway and waste collection and disposable authorities in the UK. Clearly do the financial savings, council's got a target budget of saving £50 million over the next medium term financial plan, so we're up against it in terms of it not being able to cost us any more money. But clearly if you're gonna go down from 11 cuts a year to 2 cuts a year, then that's, that's less crews needed to actually do that, that cutting work. Um, we want to collaborate across that sector, particularly the integration between highway responsibilities and um waste collection disposal authorities, and that customer satisfaction piece is crucial within that, taking communities on that journey. And fundamentally, it does increase biodiversity. Even the, the, the, the, the two year experiment we've been running, we've seen a dramatic uplift in biodiversity within the verge sides. So what we're doing now, we're taking core samples. So as you reduce that cutting frequency, more carbon is sequestered within the verge side. We're into our, our second year of um measuring those core samples at verge side. We're using the FHRG approach to measuring carbon emissions and we're calculating the outcome of the trials on a, on a regular basis. So the Future Highways Research Group, they have a tool for measuring carbon emissions. We've carried out a baseline both ourselves in West Sussex across the whole of highways and green space management. So we know how much carbon is coming from our operations currently. And that's had some challenges within itself in terms of the relatively poor level of detailed data we have in terms of what those emissions look like. We've carried out innovation assessments and prioritizations across those component parts of that flow diagram. We're doing a baseline program analysis about how all those component parts work. And moving to a waypoint performance assessments where we start to make those decisions, is it costing us more carbon than it's saving, and when do we actually stop doing things or, or, or invest further time and effort in increasing doing those, those beneficial things. We know early on that actually the the biggest carbon saving we're making is just simply collecting those verge side risings. If you leave them on the verge, they produce CO2, they produce methane as they protress at verge side. So simply by collecting those arisings and sticking them through AD, you have a massive carbon benefit. And then finally, at the end of the FHRG approach, close out impact assessments, do we continue, do we scale up or do we call it a day because we haven't been able to prove the case. So progress so far, we have trialed small scale urban cut and collect equipment, um, we're doing smaller scale plant. West Sussex's doing a larger scale plant. We've increased the utilization of the existing ride on mower team, so they're working in a different way to how they historically have done. We've established new cut and collect for large scale trial layers for year 2, and we're scaling up for year 3. And we're still testing that most appropriate machinery to do that cut and collect operation. And interestingly, that, that public reaction, which was starting off to be quite negatively negative because they wanted that that scalping within an inch stuff. But actually now we've got parishes and boroughs coming to talk to us to say, can you include us in the trial because we're now recognizing the benefits that cut and collect is producing. So where we want to get to is confirming technically it works, commercially it works, and we can develop it and scale up to become a business as usual um method. We want to replicate it within other local authority areas, there's a standard way of treating green waste biomass um across the UK. As we get towards project end, we want to test some of the stuff that we've learned with other authorities to see if we can trial it up within particular target authorities and share that knowledge in communicating to a, to a wider audience as we move forward, hence I I'm here today. And that's it, thank you very much.