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.

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