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Irlam & Cadishead Leisure Centre PV Panel Installation

April 28 2023

Public Sector Decarbonisation Scheme

Our Story

Salford City Council has been awarded £7.5m government funding through part of the wider Greater Manchester Public Sector Decarbonisation Scheme to deliver a programme of decarbonisation of 37 heating and solar panel installation works on 31 council owned buildings.

The programme includes installations of Air Source Heat Pumps on 12 sites in the city including leisure facilities, park buildings, children’s homes and the town hall. We are also installing Solar PV Panels at 21 buildings which will generate 466,970kWh of energy a year and 540.63kWp of energy generation towards the GM 45MW target.

The installation of the Air Source Heat Pumps will decarbonise the heating for the sites from gas or oil at 12 sites, to being heated by electricity from renewable sources, therefore decarbonising the heat. Additionally, 4 Battery Energy Systems have been installed across different sites.

The Challenge

Decarbonising our public estate will not only reduce our emissions as an organisation but also set an example and promote these technologies to residents and businesses in the city that we are leading the way in decarbonisation. However, we face come challenges along the way.

Firstly, a complex bid submissions process meant there was a short turnaround to apply for funding. The proactive approach by Salford’s Energy team, already having a defined pipeline of buildings we could include, was beneficial and helped us overcome this challenge.

Another challenge we faced was the challenging timescales for project delivery. While this is an ongoing challenge, the Salford programme of installations is well underway and forecast to be completed on time. Working closely with colleagues in other departments such as planning and procurement has helped us overcome this challenge as we were ready to hit the ground running as soon as the funding was secured.

The Solution

The success of our project can be measured in a number of different ways. From a financial perspective, the work on energy efficiency and renewable energy generation on site will bring down energy bills for our residents.

These sort of projects help show that we are leading the way in producing clean energy to meet the wider GM targets. While this looks good on us as an organisation, it allows other businesses and organisations to follow suit, which will help make a larger impact. Solving the climate crisis requires everyone to work together, therefore paving the way for others to follow is crucial.

Additionally, our projects have allowed us to create a resilient portfolio of Council buildings, shielding us from the volatile energy market.

April 28 2023

Greater Manchester Environment Fund (GMEF)

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Our Story

Greater Manchester (GM) faces major environmental challenges that threaten the future health and prosperity of the city-region, with dangerous levels of air pollution, degradation of priority habitats and increasing risks from climate change.

In response, GM launched a 5-Year Environment Plan with an ambitious vision for a clean, carbon-neutral, climate resilient city region with a thriving natural environment and demanded urgent action to achieve this.

Recognising traditional grant and public funding alone will be insufficient to deliver the Mayor’s ambitions, Greater Manchester Combined Authority (GMCA) is pioneering a new approach to these challenges and safeguarding GM’s natural environment.

A partnership between GMCA, Lancashire Wildlife Trust and Finance Earth has developed the Greater Manchester Environment Fund as an independent vehicle to support GM’s ambitions for the restoration and improvement of its natural environment.

Our Solution

The GMEF operates solely as an independent charitable vehicle to help deliver a number of key projects and policies. One of which is to align existing restricted and unrestricted public funding streams for strategic use to benefit the environment as well as mobilise public, private, and philanthropic capital to catalyse further investment into the environment. It also delivers rant funding, capacity building, seed funding and repayable investment for strategic environmental projects and funds.

Building self-sustaining, local environmental-impact investment that’s recognised as best practice is another key pillar for the GMEF as well as delivering consistent and transparent governance framework for funders and delivery bodies to set local priorities, access funds and deliver accountable results.

Our oganisation is managed by an independent charitable body, hosted by Lancashire Wildlife Trust, with representation from public, private and philanthropic sectors.

So far, we’ve secured a number of key funding sources worth a combined £2.1 million. This includes from Defra’s Green Recovery Challenge fund aim to boost environmental recovery, SUEZ community fund, and from Natural Environment Investment Readiness.

FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CLICK HERE.

April 28 2023

SCATTER Emissions Measurement and Modelling Tool

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Our Story

The SCATTER tool was developed by Anthesis as a result of a need from local authorities to easily calculate their GHG emissions baseline and understand possible emissions reduction scenarios as a starting point to their climate emergency response. Local authorities were spending considerable time and money to calculate their baseline emissions and the tool originally sought to reduce the time and effort in this process whilst reporting to internationally agreed standard methods.

The tool was originally piloted with Greater Manchester Combined Authority and later rolled out to all local authorities in the UK. The original version of the tool was developed in collaboration with the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research, an arm of the University of Manchester, who conducted analysis on the UK’s Paris-aligned carbon budget to scale this down to the local authority level.

The tool is now being used by over 300 local authorities in the UK and has fed into over 30 local authorities’ climate strategies and action plans. Anthesis and Nottingham City Council have consulted regularly with these users to understand how they have found the experience and what additional areas could be built upon in further iterations of the tool.

The Challenge

Developing this sort of tool means there are challenges throughout the end-to-end process. Before we even started, it was crucial for us to gather a pool of industry experts that could provide consultation support and help shape the final product. This ensured the tool was useful to to others and robust in its methodology.

Consultation, important at the start, was just as important along the way. Feedback from users was incredibly helpful in identifying issues early on and correcting them before completion. This process allowed us to stage the functionality process; acting on the feedback ensured we could move onto the next stage knowing that sufficient time was spent improving the product.

Having this constant dialogue with local authorities was useful for them in keeping them updated with what’s happening but also for us as it created a small network of supportive authorities, developing strong relationships with them.

However there’s always something that looking back on, we could have improved. There is a strong need for support to local authorities in helping them better quantify the scale of the Net Zero challenge. Also, web based tools can provide an easy and accessible way to support local authorities, but guidance materials and support are essential to ensure the findings are embedded in local authority strategies.

Our Solution

The tool has been through several iterations and is now an online tool, free to access by any local authority in the UK. Anthesis received funding from the Department of Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) to further develop the tool in close collaboration with Nottingham City Council who have provided a local authority perspective and acted as a consultative partner.

The online tool provides two main uses; firstly, a greenhouse gas inventory for area-wide emissions for all local, unitary and county authorities. This enables users to understand their largest emissions sources, download a full emissions inventory for analysis and report directly to international frameworks such as CDP and the Global Covenant of Mayors.

And secondly, a future emissions modelling tool called Pathways which allows users to see how implementing certain emissions reductions measures may impact their area’s trajectory. This functionality allows users to save different emissions scenarios and compare them to support their climate action planning and strategy development. This also helps engage stakeholders such as council officers, residents and businesses with understanding the scale and speed of change needed to meet the net zero ambition many councils have.

In many local authorities, the vision prompted by our work has enabled them to engage other organisations to take action. For example, within Greater Manchester, it prompted a number of social housing providers to better understand the carbon performance of their stock, upon understanding the level of retrofit measures that SCATTER suggested were needed.

FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CLICK HERE.

Volunteers Abdul and Jo fixing QR codes to the Marker Posts

April 28 2023

Princes Park Tree Marker Post Project

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Our Story

Friends of Princes Park (FOPP) is a project funded by the Liverpool City Region Community Environment fund based in the heart of Liverpool 8; a diverse by deprived inner-city area.

FOPP is a group of park user and local people who work in partnership with the council to maintain and improve the park for the benefit of people and wildlife. Over the last 15 years we have planted more than 4,000 trees, and we have increasingly focused on improving biodiversity in the park and encouraging people to better understand it.

We have also made efforts to pass on information about the work we’ve done as easily as possible to stakeholders, especially to young people and school children. We want to encourage young people to better understand the trees and appreciate their value.

Over the last 6 months, FOPP volunteers, nearly all of whom are local residents, have installed oak marker posts by each of the 150 specimen trees, providing accessible information about each tree. We have also produced a tree map which is now displayed on our newly refurbished notice board with more announcements coming soon.

The Challenge

The key thing we considered with this project was to produce easy to access and easy to understand information boards that were engaging and informative. However many external factors came into play which presented obstacles in the project’s development.

We have always been keen to let people know the identity of the trees we have planted. In the past we tried producing a black & white map with a key. However, it caused problems for people who struggled to read maps, which limited the scope of our reach.

We also tried attaching QR codes to individual specimen trees. The QR code for each tree was unique and linked specifically to information about that tree on our website. The codes were printed, laminated and stapled to the relevant tree however they weren’t robust to withstand the typical British weather and general wear and tear.

Following that, we found a much more durable solution, which led to our project to install engraved marker posts. We couldn’t easily engrave a QR code into a wooden post, so instead we gave each tree a three-digit reference number engraved onto each post, alongside the QR code.

We then attached a printed notice to each code explaining how to find out more information about that tree, by scanning the QR code (if you have a smart phone) or by noting the tree’s number and identifying it using the map and key displayed on each of the noticeboards in the park.

We realise that some people don’t find it easy to navigate their way round our website – so we are in the process of putting together a step-by-step guide on how to get from the QR code on the marker post to detailed information about that tree.

Our Solution

Princes Park is well used by many different communities and during the Covid pandemic has been used by local people to exercise, rest, picnic and enjoy the wildlife.

Our project has received positive feedback from local schools about our next move, which is to make a guide for schools as to how they can use the tree markers for educational purposes, for example by learning about different species or playing guessing games with the trees and then looking up the information.

The headteacher at Belvedere Academy, which is situated just next to the park, spoke of how the pupils have become more climate aware and encouraged them to take more ownership on the difference they can make to the world following the implementation of the tree markers.

Unity Youth Club in Toxteth, recently came on a walk to look at the trees and the various educational elements we’ve added to them. Julie Smith, a youth worker with the club, mentioned how the children increased their awareness of how important the trees are for the park.

In addition to producing the education pack for schools we will be increasing the information on our website about the wildlife associated with the trees and organising a series of walks to look at the trees and wildlife in the park.

FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CLICK HERE.

April 27 2023

Oldham Minewater District Heating

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Our Story

For many years, Oldham’s councillors have had an interest in the town’s industrial heritage and whether it could be used to provide clean energy for the town into the future. Councillors had heard about minewater heating schemes elsewhere in Europe, and asked us (Oldham Council) to look into whether such a scheme could be developed in Oldham.

Minewater district heating works by extracting energy from the floodwater in disused coal mines, which is heated by geothermal processes, and upgrading it using heat pumps to supply a district heat network using insulated pipes conveying hot water around a town centre. Public, commercial and residential buildings can all be supplied with heat from such a system.

The Challenge

Like many towns in Northern England, Oldham has an extensive network of disused coal mines underneath the town centre, dating back to the Industrial Revolution. If the principle of minewater heat can be shown to work in Oldham, it could open up the potential for this clean energy technology to supply town centres anywhere where this industrial heritage exists.

Our Solution

Working together with the UK government’s Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, we commissioned specialist consultants and the UK Coal Authority to carry out feasibility work looking at the potential for a minewater heat network. The feasibility study showed that a 4MW minewater heat network could be feasible, supplying large town centre buildings such as Spindles Shopping Centre, Oldham Leisure Centre, and a wide range of other commercial and residential buildings including homes on the nearby St Mary’s social housing estate, owned by First Choice Homes Oldham.

FCHO already own a district heat network at St Mary’s, and the feasibility work showed that this could be linked up with a new minewater heat network to serve the whole of Oldham town centre plus the St Mary’s social homes. This potential wide-scale heat network could be expanded even further in the future. The existing First Choice Homes energy centre at St Mary’s houses 3.5MW of biomass boilers which could also be used to provide additional heat for the low carbon heat network.

In partnership with First Choice Homes we are now looking to work together on the next stage of technical and economic feasibility to see if they can make the new low carbon heat network a reality. Key to this will be the drilling of test minewater boreholes, which will be the next big step towards the realisation of a low carbon Oldham Town Centre.

For further information, please click here.

IGNITION Living Lab Living Walls with family

April 27 2023

IGNITION project – Nature-based Solutions to the Climate Emergency

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Our Story

Imagine a greener Greater Manchester. A place that works with nature and where the urban landscape is filled with rain gardens, street trees and green roofs, walls and spaces.

Our ground-breaking project, IGNITION aims to do just this by developing innovative financing solutions for investment in Greater Manchester’s green infrastructure. Having started the project back in 2019, the £4 million, EU-funded project is well on its way to providing the tools needed to increase the use of nature-based solutions (NBS) in Greater Manchester.

Nature-based Solutions (NBS), such as rain gardens, street trees, green roofs and walls and parks and green spaces, provide natural ways to cope with the extreme effects of climate change such as flooding events and overheating in urban areas. They can also help to tackle socio-environmental challenges relating to air quality, biodiversity and human health and wellbeing.

The Challenge

The multiple benefits of NBS are increasingly well documented, but currently rely heavily on statutory or philanthropic funding for implementation. The IGNITION partnership set out to build confidence in the benefits of NBS and understand how these could be translated into financial savings or returns. The ultimate aim of the project is to attract investment to deliver NBS projects at the scale needed to ensure the climate resilience of our city region.

Our Solution

The IGNITION project, backed by the EU’s Urban Innovation Actions (UIA) initiative, brings together 12 partners from local government, universities, NGOs and business.

The IGNITION project will, provide an assessment of the amount of greenspace already within Greater Manchester (GM) to provide a baseline against which to measure an increase in urban greenspace, whilst conducting research into the multiple benefits of different types of NBS to inform the development of potential innovative financing models.

In addition to developing a feasibility study that identifies reductions in wastewater charging through the installation of sustainable drainage systems (SuDS) and we will establish a Living Lab at the University of Salford that would be the first of its kind to study the functionality of combined systems of NBS.

For further information, click here.

April 27 2023

Homes as Energy Systems

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Our Story

Domestic properties are currently viewed as ‘dumb’ loads on the electricity network as they play little part in the wider electrical energy system other than as a point of consumption.

This classification of homes is outdated and does not reflect the increasing complexity of the electricity network with increasing amounts of small scale renewable generation (150MW solar PV in GM), larger scale intermittent, yet forecastable, renewable generation (such as wind), increasing demand for electricity from the electrification of heat and electric vehicles, constraints of the existing electrical network (at the national transmission and local distribution level) and the reduction in large scale electricity generation capacity.

The Challenge

Given the aggregated and cumulative impact of domestic dwellings on this system, homes need to play a bigger role in the future maintenance and management of the wider electricity system.

Our Solution

The ‘Homes as energy systems’ (HaES) project brings two complementary themes into one holistic, systemic, project and couples ‘energy’ (embedded generation, aggregated grid services, electrification of heat, storage, load shifting) and ‘energy efficiency’ (demand reduction, monitoring and education)

When combined and viewed holistically, these two themes ensure that domestic dwellings with reduced energy demand actively contribute to a dynamic energy system and fulfil a ‘component’ role, benefiting the system as a whole, as opposed to being a load that simply needs managing.

To this end, HaES is:

1. Enabling properties to actively contribute to energy systems through installation of technologies to reduce energy demand, embed generation, offer grid balancing services, electrify heating and store energy.

2. Underlining the capability of aggregated, domestic sized energy storage and controllable load (heat pumps) to contribute to the management of the local and national electrical network through grid balancing and other network services.

3. Supporting development of innovative heating and energy tariffs and financial models for domestic energy demand reduction, on site generation and energy storage.

4. Rebalancing regional energy flows – reduced demand with buffered renewable energy capacity which more closely matches the GM potential renewable energy output.

5. Educating end users to save energy through better use of heating systems, energy generation and storage technologies and user behaviour.

Over 1,000 properties will receive one or more of the following technologies, whole house retrofit, heat pumps, PV & battery, EWI, Control technology – virtual power plant aggregation and control of heat pumps and batteries or energy monitoring.

The project involves Procure Plus, Manchester City Council (and Northwards Housing), Stockport MBC (& Stockport Homes), University of Salford, KrakenFlex and RetrofitWorks. GMCA have supported via Project Board in a strategic advisory capacity.

For further information, click here.

April 27 2023

Greater Manchester Local Energy Market

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Our Story

The Greater Manchester Local Energy Market is an innovative project led by Greater Manchester Combined Authority with 11 partners from community, technology, energy suppliers and network operators.

We will create a more efficient and cost-effective energy market for residents and businesses, exploring opportunities including the production of green hydrogen and use of heat networks to reduce carbon emissions and increase network capacity.

The programme came about due to a small number of key drivers, to support delivery of the region’s five-year environment plan and our ambition to be carbon neutral by 2038. These included providing a region-wide informed view of where the region produces local energy, how we heat our buildings, how we retrofit our buildings, and support the transition away from combustion engines.

Our Solution

Local Area Energy Plans provide an informed view – from the perspective of residents, businesses and network operators – of where Greater Manchester needs to: generate renewable energy; retrofit buildings; place Electric Vehicle charging hubs; and the impact this whole system approach may have on electricity network/grid operators.

An energy trading platform, the Market Maker, will support the region in maximising the benefit of its intermittent energy generation capabilities. The Market Maker will control the recruitment and onboarding of consumers to benefit from revised tariffs and will support the trading of energy between consumers in Greater Manchester. It will also enable network flexibility and unlock new revenue streams.

Value sharing Propositions (Energy Tariffs) will be designed to establish new tariffs that can be used by domestic and non-domestic customers for heat and mobility. Value Sharing Propositions are designed and linked to Local Area Energy plans, supporting targeting and maximising use of local assets.

The Local Energy Market is the first project in the country that will provide local area energy plans for ten Local Authority areas, supporting the energy needs of 1.2m homes and 2.7m residents. The project’s ability to provide such an informed position supports people in all walks of life to make informed decisions.

For further information, click here.

April 26 2023

TalkTalk: Data Centre Optimisation

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Our Story

According to work TalkTalk has undertaken with the United Nations, up to 80% of the emissions cuts the telecoms sector needs to reach Net Zero can be me through renewable energy and energy efficiency.

Every time you visit a website, our servers need to find the right request to get you to the right place, this is called a DNS request. In May 2021, we hit an average of 61 billion DNS requests per day. That averages out at more than 42 million requests per minute.

Our data traffic has been growing 40% every year, as more and more people use the internet throughout their daily lives. Yet despite this huge growth, we’ve managed to significantly reduce our direct emissions, and optimising our data centres has been instrumental to this.

It could have gone unnoticed, but at TalkTalk we create a work environment where people can challenge the status quo and where smart observations can be made by our colleagues and acted on by the business. This simple change led to a general awareness of energy intensive initiatives across our network, which has since led to further changes and opportunities to find more energy efficient solutions in their place.

The Challenge

It was critical for us to allow our employees to feel like they can challenge decisions from above and allow them to share their ideas on how to solve a problem. Creating a workplace that allows people to be creative and develop new ways of doing things helps you to continue to innovate and creates a healthy atmosphere among the workforce.

For us, technical due diligence is also essential. We were able to continually show and track our progress by using ISO standards, which we would recommend getting to grips with.

Our Solution

Our equipment in exchanges and data centres requires large amounts of electronic equipment, in the form of very large units which emit a lot of heat and require constant cooling by fans. One of the engineers noticed that the fans, which had been installed at the same time, were still on the default setting of 100%. Over time, the older machines were being used less, but the fans were still using a lot of energy. By something as simple as observing this and lowering the output, we were able to significantly improve our energy efficiency.

One such innovation is using external air to cool the rooms instead of the energy-intensive refrigeration-based cooling systems you would usually find in a data centre. These systems typically use around 85% less energy and have been successfully installed in two of our data rooms in the Greater Manchester region.

Another new innovation linked to this initial idea relates to our diesel-powered backup generators. They only tend to get used once primary power has outed, but we’ve since started using vegetable oil in place of the diesel. Smaller ideas such as this, can often snowball into larger ideas, something we like to champion.

FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CLICK HERE.

April 26 2023

Dales Brow

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Our Story

Following heavy rainfall, localised surface water flooding and pollution risk had become a recurring issue near to the junction of Folly Lane and Dales Brow, a highway running alongside a greenspace of the same name in Swinton, Greater Manchester.

Local sewers became overwhelmed, leading to a standing pool of water on the highway and creating the potential for sewers to overflow and release pollutants into the natural water course.

Co-investment in a Sustainable Drainage System (SuDS) scheme between the Environment Agency, Salford City Council, United Utilities and City of Trees has shown how natural solutions can address such an issue, while also providing an enhanced greenspace for local people to enjoy and creating a new habitat for wildlife.

Dales Brow was transformed with the installation of two bio-swales (sunken, marshy channels), the creation of a new 64sqm wetland area, a 40m long beech hedge as well as hundreds of new plants and trees.

The Challenge

This transformed wetland site now enhances biodiversity and provides a high-quality recreation space, which creates an attractive area for people to live and encourages inward investment. The site provides climate change adaptation benefits at a low cost; something that could be easily replicated.

This site had limited community appeal prior to the works. But the new footpath, raised lawn and the wildflower areas has generated a much greater level of community usage which was particular notable during Covid. Local residents have also expressed an interest in wanting to help look after the site.

Our Solution

The project has a number of benefits; not only helping to reduce surface water flooding at a local level but it also eases pressure on the sewer infrastructure as well as providing costs savings with respect to water treatment and reducing the likelihood of pollution incidents in watercourses from overflowing sewers.

The swales and the wetland area contain a variety of vegetation types able to cope with wet conditions. Microbes in the soil and vegetation trap and help to break down any pollutants into harmless compounds.

As well as the nature-based interventions, other measures include a new footpath, tree planting and the creation of low maintenance ‘biodiverse’ planting areas ensuring the space can be benefit both local people and the planet.

Students from The University of Salford will monitor the quantity and quality of surface water entering and exiting the site to determine the amount of water diverted away from the combined sewer and the ability of the SuDS features to remove vehicle-based pollutants.

Dales Brow is a fantastic example of co-financing by finding a nature-based solution to a problem that will financially benefit multiple parties. This shared investment benefits the stakeholders, makes a community more resilient to climate change, cleans up pollution and transforms a disused space so that the local community can engage with nature.

FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CLICK HERE.