Transcript

I'm sorry I just I'll just give apologies for councillor Dennis August Canling have we have any other apologies Tracy we're all here okay great okay item two urgent items um there aren't there aren't there aren't any um and the order of business is as laid out in the agenda declarations of interest do members have any interest to declare thank you members okay moving on to the substantive um item tonight hackney light and power so investing in measures that improve energy efficiency will have positive effects such as energy and cost savings lower lower utility costs positive environmental impacts and improve supply the use of clean energy sources is also expected to reduce air pollution mitigate climate change and and limit the negative impacts on our ecosystems and health transitioning to cleaner energy will also help to conserve natural resources and decrease our dependence on finite resources hackney light and power is the council's clean energy service and and the team is overseeing a variety of projects that aim to support the council's work towards tackling climate change and achieving net zero in hackney the purpose of this item is to look at hackney light and power's work and the successes and outcomes from the projects to date and understand how these projects are contributing towards hackney's net zero agenda the discussion item will be split into two sections so section one will cover the successes and outcomes from the projects and this section will also involve the input from our guest community energy london fruit energy and stokey and energy and section two will cover heat networks current projects and future plans okay so members want to turn to pages 7 to 39 in the agenda for the presentation um done the welcomes so i think i would now like to invite councillor young to unmute her microphone to introduce the item before we commence the first presentation on hackney light and power which will be by jason powell thank you thank you so i just wanted to give a brief introduction before we hand over to the experts to explain the detail of this really just to say hackney light and power is where the magic is really happening and in order to make hackney a cleaner and greener borough and to reduce bills for people living in hackney and both of those elements are absolutely key to the work of hackney light and power and just to remind us all back in 2019 hackney council declared a climate emergency we were one of the first boroughs to do that and we committed at that point to becoming a net zero carbon borough by 2040 there are lots of other detailed commitments within that and we've actually brought that forwards a bit for some of our um some areas of our work but with our aim is to become a net zero carbon borough by 2040 overall and that involves a huge range of work including looking at energy efficiency across the council taking a strategic approach to how our energy is generated and also to um how we produce and buy energy so it's you both the energy that we make ourselves which is some of which is what we're going to talk about tonight and also how we procure or buy our energy developing clean transport systems looking at our fleet decarbonizing our um promoting low carbon buildings and new buildings which use very little carbon emit very little carbon in their um energy systems so all of this is involved in in hitting those net zero targets that we've set ourselves but as an important part of this we're delivering projects through hackney light and power which is not just a really fabulous logo um for hackney to generate our own energy using the roof space on our top of our schools our leisure centres like britannia like the west reservoir london fields lido but also now our council homes and this is you know this is absolutely groundbreaking the work that we're doing on in residential solar so you'll hear the detail from officers but i just really wanted to emphasize this is the first example of a project like this and so it's really impressive that we have worked with quite a wide range of um partners to carry out this work and to develop it it involves looking at you know how the regulations work it involves um working with desnes um the government department working with the gla um working with stoke energy locally working with emergent um energy um and everybody is watching what we're doing here to see you to to see whether this is something that we can then roll out across all of our our council blocks um and also around the country so it's a really really important project and this scrutiny is an important part of looking at how how we're doing that um so i this will make a huge contribution we hope to meeting our goals under the climate action plan um which we've set out we've got a climate action plan and a climate action implementation plan which comes which we report on each year um at full council and is really worth having a look at to see what we've done so far and you know how long we've stepped along that pathway and the second really impressive area of hackney light and powers work that we're looking at tonight is the development of the district heat networks which are harnessing energy that's already being produced um you know waste heat for example on the tube um or waste heat being produced um by by the incinerator or um which is heat which is already being produced so we're not you know we're not burning coal in order to create heat we're using heat that's already being produced somewhere else so we're not creating we're not emitting additional um additional carbon in order to do that so it's a really important part of that kind of you know we talk about the circular economy but there's also a circular um heat system that we're looking at here so this kind of cutting edge technology and this imaginative work is where hackney light and power i think has been really able to to um you know to push the council's work forward in areas where the private sector has really no interest so it's really important that we are you know that we're looking at this carefully as a scrutiny body um as a council that we're checking that it's you know it's doing what we want it to do and it's achieving um our aims and i think our aims are both creating greener energy and also ensuring that our residents um have you have warm comfortable homes to live in and are paying less for that energy so these are the things that for me that we should be focusing on and i hope that you'll be able to get the information that you need tonight to um to satisfy yourselves that that's the case thank you councillor young um if we can now go over to jason jason powell the head of operations at hackney light and power to do the first presentation thank you thanks very much and also thanks for having us here tonight um it's a great opportunity for us to talk through some of our key initiatives um some of our achievements over the past few years and also also our future plans uh for hackney light and power and so the brand's well developed um and we're operating as an in-house service we've got a board that meets monthly um with relevant lead members uh the group director for finance um strategic director for housing uh strategic property region so we've really got senior officers and uh lead members from across council giving input uh to how we move the deliver of these projects forward um so next slide please so very briefly we've got the key initiatives of hrp here that i'll set out i'll go into more detail in those uh in a second so there are two solar projects um we've got installation of uh solar on our corporate buildings uh which the programs were going on for the past three years and we've got further uh sites that were just um in the final stages of installing solar on uh of our corporate estate and we've also got the residential solar pilot that's recently um had the contract award uh stage approved which is going to delivery phase now as well um the district heat network expansion which jeremy will touch on later we've got a couple of grant programs so a community energy fund supporting local organizations um for energy projects there's a green homes program that's grants for energy efficiency improvements uh in private homes we've uh we're also tied into the ev charging expansion uh branded this acne light and power which has benefits across the other projects and there's an energy advice service that we're working in partnership with crew energy um who are here today uh who give a little bit more detail around how we're giving advice to residents in the borough next slide please so a little bit more detail on our commercial buildings solar then and this is currently saving 130 tons of carbon a year we're installing solo on council-owned buildings that have got high on-site usage of energy that's because we can make the best economics from those installations by using it on site where it's produced and that repays the cost of the installation by charging the building users albeit a discounted rate for what they would have paid from the grid so it's a good deal for the people using the building be it external organizations like the gll for example in our leisure centers and also some of our community buildings also um so they get discounted rate we pay off the the cost of the solar um and as i say there's 10 sites that have been completed so far um an example site i'll give which is from the photograph there um we installed a 93 and a half kilowatt peak system on west reservoir center which has saved now 58 and a half tons of carbon since it was installed and that's generated revenue of 28 900 pounds including vat uh so far um that excludes any income relating to exports and that's from charging as i say a discounted rate to the users of that building versus what they would have got from the grid next slide please so this is the really exciting project that we're very pleased to say has just got over the line um to be awarded and enter delivery phase and we've gone through a two-year period now of um a business case development with key people from across the council working to have input uh into that uh that was funded by the gla's local energy accelerator and now we've been working to uh finalize a bespoke contract in terms of the works uh and also the concession agreement and so those contracts are finalized and they're just about ready for implementation now um and the work will start next month and that will be installing the solar uh one megawatt of course our residential estates um and doing an intense period of uh resident engagement as well working with our partners emergent energy and so 4 000 solar panels in total uh or roundabouts that number due to be installed on our blocks um that will be a targeted 500 homes to be part of the scheme and they can switch their energy provider to uh this scheme um to be benefits of uh lower energy bills uh it's 800 homes in total but 500 of signups is what we're after uh to get the scheme uh to work well uh it will save 142 tons estimated of carbon per year uh this is a 30-year lifespan of the equipment and the key bit with this project is that the uh cost of installation uh are covered uh by the revenue generated from the scheme um giving it bill saving to residents um the model is scalable and what we hope is this pilot if it's successful and and runs well can be rolled out um not just across hackney but a model that can be used across the uk it's making use of the new off gem regulation um which wasn't possible before to use microbrids in this way um so hackney really leading the way here to uh try something new uh and then be the trailblazers for uh uh you know pushing out nationwide it's had support from off gem um as i say the the gla and and also speaking to colleagues in desnes um about uh how we can better promote this in line with the goals of gb energy this does contribute to hackney's net zero um carbon goals um and also we're uh we'll have apprenticeships um throughout this and specialist jobs within the local economy and an optimization exercise will happen um a year after our go live days we'll be looking at factory storage and other technological efficiencies um to improve the model and and the more efficient that the system can be the more potential revenue it can generate um for uh the council which could potentially be ring ring vents for for further uh projects within hackney light and power next slide please so our community energy fund is also a a nationally significant um investment that we've put into this we launched it in 2002 in november since then we've awarded close to a million pounds um to 39 projects and um round two and three are in the process of delivery now when we we started round one there weren't a lot of bid ready projects to uh to press ahead with um so there's a lot of feasibility work that was funded but then in rounds two and three which are in delivery phase now um there's lots and lots of capital projects um so on summary for that 17 capital projects and 29 feasibility studies have been funded um 160 tons of carbon per year is expected to be saved with the capital projects the technologies have included air source heat pumps solar pv boiler boiler efficiency measures and this is for public buildings and not-for-profits so and schools so purely for those organizations that's a bid for funding for two-thirds of the capital costs um and that maximizes additional funding that can be brought in um through the one-third being found through the organization albeit from fundraising or from their own capital budgets okay next slide please okay the green homes program is another grant program that we've got that launched in february 2022 there's grants for up to 10 000 pounds for energy efficiency measures in private homes phases one and two are complete and 66 carbon reduction measures were implemented in phases one and two phase three is due for completion very soon and that will tie in with an opportunity for for funding from the warm homes local grant and we're speaking to the uh gla uh putting consortium bid um expression of interest so far but that's lucky to go live in april and so that will in turn become the phase uh spore of the green homes program um 28.3 tons of carbon has been saved over rounds one and two um we've distributed 360 000 pounds to residents who are on low income um and meet the criteria we've been prioritizing vulnerable residents through through the scheme but also a further 200 000 pounds of funding uh it's been brought into the borough uh it's been brought into the borough through additional schemes including eco uh the mayor of london's warmer homes program um and various individual uh charitable sources uh through the provider that's been delivering this this work that was sourced also through the the gla's model from a previous warm homes uh funding opportunity uh i think yeah that's it on green homes for now there will be a lot more uh we'll be able to report a lot more on the figures from this once we've completed phase three uh and a lot more detail on the phase four once we've got the work a little bit further down the line with the consortium for the warm homes local farm next please slide please i'll briefly touch on the hackney energy advice team um we have got toby with us today from crew energy who've uh came to us with an opportunity um they identified funding from uk power networks and uh needed a borough to to deliver this piece of work um so really pleased to say that the relationship uh with crews has gone really well in terms of delivering this energy saving advice to residents um over a thousand residents have been engaged with so far through free advice sessions talking to them about you know ways they can reduce energy in their homes and it does have a a direct saving for those residents if they uh you know uh isn't that advice in in uh in line with the distribute kits of uh energy saving measures that we've also been handing out and so led light bulbs um etc and as i say toby will have lots more detail on that but what we would ideally like to do is find ways of integrating this local um the warm home local grant uh application to the for the continuation of the green homes phase four with the really great learnings we've had from the energy advice team and and the work we've been doing with with crew energy um so next slide oh yeah so i'll touch on ev charging points we've all seen these popping up around the borough it's fantastic to see the hlp logo included as part of that and so this stems from the project development and procurement that we've managed as part of the hlp work stream and the fact that there's a discounted resident uh discount sorry there's a discount to residents um who sign up to the scheme so delivery has been overseen by the street scene team but this branding is a really key point on you know when we go to uh deliver the heat networks or the uh residential solar and we're asking residents to switch to sign up to hackney light and power the fact that they've they've got very prominent branding through the ev charging uh is a really positive step and also you know the relationship with the discounted tariff that you get um which is labeled as the hackney light and power tariff and so the plan is to two and a half thousand new electric vehicle charge points by 2026 and the street scene team is on track um to deliver a thousand one thousand uh charge point by january 2025 next slide please so this is the final slide just touching again on the hlp delivery board which has really been crucial in terms of making decisions uh at the right level to progressive these projects and break down the barriers and communicate with different various people throughout the council um we also are tied in with the climate action plan so um we're speaking to the climate team and attending the uh meetings that feed into the the cap there's also a number of uh milestones uh and and targets related to hackney light and power that we report back on through that and that's a real great way of tying into what other teams are doing within the council and making sure that we're on track so an example of that would be we've got one megawatt per year on our residential buildings um that we're committed to and we usually hit that this year with the residential solar but it also puts the pressure on to start developing our plans for the for the next phases of of that scheme um and then finally just to touch on on on funding um so the solar projects are largely funded by capital and we're making very good use of the section 106 carbon offset fund for the grant programs so the community energy funds and the green homes uh and we'll continue to uh loop in with with the section 106 team in in planning to make sure that we're spending that noting that a lot of boroughs anecdotally across london have got unspent carbon offset funds and we're making sure that we're tying in to ensure that as carbon offset funds become available we have a plan to deliver and spend them and the work we've been doing to scale up our community energy and this is probably something inside will touch on um is really building that capacity ready for any future funding that may become available be that through the carbon offset fund or if more national funding becomes available the fact that we've done all this work in hackney and and and built up a really great capacity means that we should be able to make um take advantage of any external fund that comes our ways that includes any national funding that that may come and we're keeping a close ears to the ground on on any potential funding opportunities um so that's it for me i think but thanks for listening thank you jason um can i go over to saeed next i don't know if you want to talk about uh about the london picture and how the work that hackney just fits in if i'm correct with that chair i'm very mindful of a recent speak a recent talk i gave at redbridge council two weeks ago where i witted on a bit too much so would you mind if we uh go with our local groups first and i'll give the national picture perhaps given more of a kind of uh reflection on what's going on hacking so i'd like to kind of do that provide that contribution after colleagues toby and tom have spoken if that's okay yeah yeah that's fine preference with who goes first uh so i go first okay uh uh thank you ever so much uh councillors for giving us this opportunity to present some of the work and uh huge thanks to jason for that really helpful presentation and and uh councillor sarah uh for uh for the work you've been uh you've been doing in terms of uh the investment and uh how you've helped to really stimulate and build the community energy sector in hackney uh sayed and toby can give a perspective in terms of how uh hatney prepares and can be benchmarked to get against other boroughs but certainly our experience has been an incredibly positive one and uh we feel as if we through hatney through the happy community energy fund should i get back a bit sit back sorry i'm not used to this mic sound better sorry about that inflicting that on you uh through the community energy fund in particular it's really uh galvanized some fantastic uh and really you know innovative and and really valuable projects uh i don't know how long i've got if i perhaps just talk through two or three of the kinds of projects to illustrate uh how the fund is working and and do ask any questions at any point uh i think one thing uh one project we're particularly proud of which is just launching this week actually is uh at st paul's church uh on the high street st paul's west and unfortunately supports the cathedral we'll get we'll get to that one but st paul's west uh because jason mentioned the kinds of buildings and projects we work with but of course that does include places of worship and this is the first uh the church we've done uh and i think we should all feel very proud that uh uh that under the inspirational leadership of uh father nyle weir who some of you may know who's who's sat stood down as the uh of the church earlier this summer but his last project was with hatley light and power with stokey energy and we were able to install uh solar panels and batteries so the church is almost entirely off grid now uh and in fact i think everyone should be proud of this uh the church has got 102 solar panels and we have it on good authority that that is the highest number of solar panels of any church in the london diocese so we've had visits actually from uh churches and the london diocese even the bishop from across london to see how the work that's gone on at st paul's could inspire further work across the across all of across the church of england which has its own very ambitious net zero target uh one really interesting thing about that project is that i think jason mentioned that that with the capital projects there's a two-thirds cap in terms of happy light and power puts up to a maximum that puts up two-thirds of the funding for these projects but that's just a maximum amount and there are many cases such as this one where hatley light and power will put a relatively small amount of money but that actually lever is leverages in far more investment in the project so in that case uh the entire project has cost almost just short of two hundred thousand pounds hatley light and power gave us about four thousand for a feasibility study and then 25 000 uh for capital funding and we were able to get all of the rest through the church's own contribution and significantly from the london legacy development corporation something like 120 130 000 pounds so you see how the work that and i i'd love to see the overall figures for all the uh community energy fund but what i think you'll be seeing is that it's not just the spend that the the the borough the council is making in the borough in community energy but the overall spend that it's leveraging and of course many of our contractors and the people we work with are based in hackney and we always try and as far as possible within procurement try and and get local contractors so we're seeing how this program is directly leading to investment and jobs and business within the borough so it's a fantastic story uh and i've just made one other small project at the other end just to show that i think the value of community energy uh hatley light and power funded us to work on uh solar panels and batteries for the hackney play bus i'm not sure people the councillors are aware of happy play bus which is a fantastic charity for young children uh getting to play and educational activities on a bus that bus now has 10 solar panels and a battery and and its activities on the bus are also that are all generate uh driven by solar energy now that's only 10 panels it's a very small scheme i think about four or five kilowatt uh it cost about eight nine thousand pounds but tremendous community value so okay it's not it's not going to save the world it's not going to reduce this country's carbon footprint significantly but it does mean that there are a whole group of children and their parents and carers and community members of the community that are directly seeing how green energy is impacting what they do in a very tangible way so i think the fact the specific community value the educational uh participatory shared joy of being involved in these community energy projects is incredibly valuable and shouldn't be lost along with all the all the other work we do around uh savings for schools and and reducing the carbon footprint thanks thank you tom if i could go to toby evening everybody um i'm going to probably talk about a couple of things the scheme we've been running here heat and then i'll probably give a perspective of what we see in the other boroughs because crew has had seven projects with the acne community energy funds three feasibility four capex projects but we also work extensively in southwest london so onesworth richmond merton kingston um so i can give you a little bit of flavor what some of the other councils are looking at and doing and what we're doing with them so just on the heat project it has gone stupendously well um i think we're about to hit 1500 um interventions so far and we only launched this in may the funding is to march um but we've already hit our targets i think by christmas pretty much i think we've got to do a few home a few more home visits but otherwise the main the main part is the one-to-one interventions we've hit those and we're being asked whether we want some stretch funding because some of the other groups in that cohort are a little bit behind so we're going to kind of help boost those which will mean that we will probably get another 400 targets for q1 which is great uh so overall that probably about 80 000 of funding coming into the borough and what we do is we're working very closely with jason's team particularly marcella and then the cost of living team so um uh charles clark um and they've been arranging for us to work in food banks charities civic centers whole range of things and we're we're over there two to three days a week we're trying to switch days every so often so that each charity and each venue gets an opportunity of the service i was the one we did last week where we we had some funding from the council so 18 000 have come from the council for equipment and that's including radiated falls led light bulbs and draft excluders and some of those are then put into a box for a winter warm pack so the winter warm pack typically includes six light bulbs three radiates for which will probably do about five radiators it's a you know for a flat that that's enough uh and then a pack of draft excluded which should do a door and maybe a couple of windows um and so we uh we were working with hackney quest at the baptist church on uh frampton baptist church and it was it was incredibly busy it was amazing and we hand out 100 boxes in 55 minutes so it wasn't our normal service of having a chat with people we have these really good fact sheets uh which initially say so all the savings of kit and things you can do at home like yeah boiling your kettle half stuff that we've kind of learned over the last two three years during the crisis and they've come a bit ingrained but it's just a reminder for people the second and third pages are much more about the discounts available the subsidies the grants the council might have benefits checks those kind of things then on the last page page and a half we have lots of qr codes or links through to videos so people can actually look at how to change your own thermostat how to um if you've got mold and damp what to do so there's videos on those kind of things because we can't obviously get into 1500 people's homes we don't have the funding for that and we don't have the capacity for that but at least this gives people a really good start we've got little tick boxes so we might take four or five boxes they focus on uh and then they can go home they can check the stuff out so they might get a 50 discount on their water there's white good schemes from thames water and british gas so we often in wandsworth we're seeing this quite a lot where we can get people new fridges new new cookers or a new bed so it's really having a big impact on people's lives and i think if we can ingrain a deeper service we can do a whole lot more and i'll give you one case study we had where uh in wandsworth a lady was desperately struggling and she was pretty much suicidal her children moved out and she was in a big flat that she couldn't afford anymore she had lost all of her credits that were supporting that because kids gone off to college and university and she was at wit's end and uh we have this brilliant uh lady sober who does our telephone advice and she gradually sort of talked to them from the edge of the cliff essentially and then started making the changes and we managed to get a rehoused into a council accommodation so a rent from went from two thousand pounds a month to uh seven hundred we got two and a half thousand pounds of debt forgiven on her energy bills we got two and a half thousand pounds of rent arrears they're given uh and then the usual stuff we do so all the additional discounts so it was probably about twenty thousand pounds of saving in year one maybe twenty two thousand and then about fourteen fifteen thousand thousand pounds of saving on our rent subsequently so with that additional funding we could do a whole lot more with this service i think so that that's what we're doing uh here and just as a comparison so in wandsworth last winter we had that four thousand winter warm packs we've found out two hundred here this winter uh this winter we're handing out this wasn't going to be originally two thousand winter warm packs in wandsworth but that's probably going to up to three thousand because we've blown through that that two thousand about six weeks um already this winter so we're going to extend that the other budget that we've had this winter across wandsworth and richmond it's about seventy thousand pounds it's for deeper interventions so if we're seeing households with damp or mold uh we can buy them a dehumidifier and get delivered so we've got a sign service with amazon and it kind of gets delivered their door they sign it and they receive we are um working with a polycarbonate um glazing company so second grade is very expensive polycarbonate is quite a bit cheaper so we might be able to insulate a window for about 100 pounds so we can do two or three windows with with with certain with the budgets that we've got we are looking at air fryers we've had a couple of instances where people have had to discount their cookers have gas leaks and they couldn't afford a new one so they weren't gonna have a christmas dinner now they can they can roast this you know turkey crown or something in an air fryer which is great we're looking at electric throws so if we feel that people are just turning heating off and they're vulnerable they can at least keep their bodies warm uh and then we're buying little infrared heating panels so people might plug in a fan heater but that's two kilowatts of heat these infrared heating panels will heat a similar sized room are only 350 watts so much more affordable people and that's what we have to consider when they're buying these things can they actually afford to turn them on and run them so we've compromised sometimes like the dehumidifier we've gone from a 20 litre one to a 12 litre one because it's about a third of the energy of of the bigger ones so so we're trying to find solutions that work both in solving the issue but not creating a new issue so that gives you an idea on that side of things and if we talk a little bit about the energy uh the delivery of retrofit services and the work we're doing in other boroughs um in kingston we've had funding uh for for the next three years to start a retrofit service and they're discounting retrofit assessments by about about by 50 percent so where they're paying people paying 150 rather than 300 and the idea is that we do around 60 of those a year as a starting point um and that's to really just kick start the retrofit and we know that retrofit is going accordingly badly uh you know over the last four years i think four and a half percent of households have upgraded at that rate it will take 43 years for us to get all properties to sap c so it's an area that i don't think the councils particularly the gla or the government are focused on and now they are and we're kind of finding these these types of projects we're also working quite closely on retrofit with wandsworth council so we've run a number of events we have further funding from this leave no one behind ukpm funding so we put the bulk of it up here but we've kept about 15 000 for uh south west london to do able to pay retrofit sessions so we're running events that you know church might have a civic use so we've got one called home cafe which is in st andrew's church in ellisville we have 55 people along to that we recorded that so if one would like to see the video of the stuff we're discussing it's good um and it's a well taken video as well so you you do get the messaging quite clearly so we're working with them on that and they're really good at helping promote those those events they come along to events as well and they encourage other people come along and it's really good when we get the councillors come because if they do it tends to drag more people in because they'll tweet about say i'm going to be here tonight and that might take numbers up from 30 up to 50. um the other thing that we're looking at with wandsworth council is how we can accelerate retrofit um but not necessarily from as 2035 which is fabric first because the problem with our current regulations is you take fabric first this is incredibly expensive you know you're looking at probably a 40 000 pound investment to pay back in 40 years and people just glaze over so we're taking an approach which we're calling pathway zero which is encouraging people to change their behavior making small measures elite light bulbs maybe radiated for uh radiator controls smart thermostats and so on and gradually moving up the curve now the mid part of that curve is probably solar and battery storage uh and we're working with a company called one zero and i think the interesting thing about this scheme apart from the fact i think is cost effective is the local the the deeper local benefits so it looks like the council will probably award us jointly a project to deliver retrofit um with solar batteries and how that how we work with with uh one zero is that they provide the skills so the design work the mcs accreditation all of that kind of stuff but we train up local electricians roofers plumbers heating engineers to actually deliver some of these these products now initially it's going to be electricians and roofers but when we start adding heat pumps we're going to start taking gas engineers and training those up so we create a new cohort of workers which we desperately need just as a quick aside um the southwest london boroughs had sterling university do an assessment of skill shortages uh between now and 2030 and in those six boroughs it's 43 000 people in wandsworth alone it was 10 000 we have a population of 330 000 so of the working population probably about one in 15 would need to transition into this work target so um so this scheme would encourage that so i think it's a really interesting opportunity um uh just thinking if there's anything else that we we do differently i think the other thing that i'm always pushing and i'm pushing to all these guys as well is that community energy isn't just about solar it's about other things and we're now seeing you know the heat pumps that the tom's talks about but you know building management systems we're trying to bring innovation uh with heat transfer solutions in radiators we're looking at new forms of insulation they're much cheaper and can be delivered inside so when you think about shared ownership of blocks of flats we need to find solutions for those the other area that's been discussed a little bit recently and this was actually driven by hackney light and power and we've got some of the other councils together is the whole of the sort of warmer homes and eco4 and all the the funding that's happened and maybe that the companies running them at the moment aren't the most heartfelt which means that quite often the most vulnerable don't get chosen because they don't speak english or they've got dementia and it'd be really difficult for them to deliver how do we get involved in that that chain that we act the people that we're already supporting are the ones that get get that first crack at getting that support and also people living in flats rather than people living in houses so that's another area that we're we're looking at and discussing with repowering celsi ourselves and three or four of the councils i think that's it for me thank you thank you toby that was lots of really really good detail um and from tom too so saeed can you bring it all to deck together in terms of the national london and national picture i'll try my best so i'm really glad that uh tom and toby gave you an idea of the the kind of projects they're involved in so um not a very terrible structured way i'll try and give four or five very quick points to take away so an awful lot to be mentioned about retrofits that's making homes and buildings more energy efficient and we all know that the uk has some of the worst energy efficient homes in the uk which is in the in europe and that's why residents felt the impact of high gas bills uh over the last few years so one of the things i want to really take make sure you take away is that this new government has pledged 13.2 billion pounds in retrofit money over this parliament so the really important thing is is that local and the vast majority of that money will be funded through local authorities so when there are real challenges for local authorities accessing funds energy is not one of those areas where you're going to see a shortage of cash coming through there will be vast amounts of money through the government's new warmer homes plans which is scheduled to be published in spring 2025. so getting lined up to make sure that you have the plans in place to make sure you understand your houses stock in your buildings and where the opportunities are and what your residential referencing something that toby said even though we have some of these programs in place at the moment they are not delivering at the pace we need or even effectively at all one of the reasons why is because you're having organizations businesses coming in and they don't really know what those residents need and it can be really minor what type of glazing where do you want the insulation if you don't want external wall do you want internal wall all those kind of things so they will approach it from a very cookie cutter approach each residence needs to be treated individually and that's why you need an intermediary because neither the local authority is great as people like jason and jeremy are all the companies can do that by themselves and you need intermediaries which is where community energy groups come in because you only need one installation to go wrong before the daily mail will highlight this is all absolute waste of money third thing to take away quickly is even if we didn't have some of the issues around climate change and energy security we've got a real change in the way technology is moving you can't turn on the news without something about ai or any other things around technology so 10 years ago there were hardly any solar panels on residential roofs in the country nobody knew about heat pumps nobody talked about evs nobody talks about batteries or smart tariffs or the internet of things with white goods or exporting power from your roof into the grid nobody knew about octopus energy but all of those things have come about in the last 10 years and i guarantee you over the next five to six years the landscaping hackney will completely change you'll have residents with more evs they'll have batteries they'll have solar because why wouldn't you because it's so cheap and electricity prices are staying high you'll have heat networks you'll have homes being built where the energy costs are virtually zero so if you've got two houses in a road one that's been recently refurbished and their energy bill is nearly zero and somebody else is paying three thousand pounds there are questions can be asked about why there's such differential in the way energy bills are being paid so it's great hackney's at the forefront and you have hackney line power doing this because that's really where you strategically need to be just last quick thing um it's again great that hackney's doing this in the last week alone i've had meetings with enfield redbridge greenwich hounslow westminster and barnair all in relation to what they want to do around community energy why jason mentioned they can't spend their carbon offset funds and they're coming under real scrutiny because they're bringing this money in through planning which is ring offensively spend on carbon uh the mayor produced a survey last month november the 10th um we can pass the link to if you haven't seen it so far boroughs have secured 333 million pounds in carbon offset funds the money in their pockets is 144 million and they've only spent 14 of that so the challenge i'd throw back to councillors is when we're in a cost of living crisis when there's real challenges around money why is it that so many councils are sitting on funds which they have in their pocket which they can spend to actually make their residence lives cheap in terms of reducing their energy bills and just on top of that just to mention not only are the boroughs looking at this london councils has formed a new community energy working group we've just had the third meeting last week we have 18 active boroughs in there and we're looking at a number of different projects we'll be delivering through london councils uh you might know the new deputy mayor for energy a certain previous councillor medic coban uh one of the first things he announced when he joined the gla was to create a community energy task force we've got the second meeting of the task force on thursday and a key role of that is to build on what the gla and boroughs are doing to look to see how they can provide core funding to groups because an awful lot of the money today is around feasibility funding or capital funding it doesn't provide wherewithal to groups to kind of developers organizations bring in the skills and resources they need to make sure that they can really thrive and become bigger and bolder organizations so it's great companies doing this it's really timely don't keep your foot off the pedal because there's a lot more to come over the next couple of months and years thanks thank you very much saeed that's uh yeah really a great range of con contributions from everybody what i'm going to allow now is up to 20 minutes for members questions before we proceed on to the next item so i'm going to look at members and who would like to ask a question first so i'll take i'll take questions in twos or threes um if you could keep your questions concise and then it'd be councillor root i think i said and then councillor martins oh i just want to say can i welcome councillor martins to her first skills economy and growth scrutiny commission meeting um okay over to councillor smith thank you chair my head is frankly spinning um i was on this 15 20 years ago exactly all this all these kind of topics um i was part of hackney energy that put the uh the banister house state solar panels on that's going back at least 10 years i'd say now um so i'm really really really so pleased that there's so much energy and enthusiasm for this work so important and it's why is it important is because we're getting such negative sort of reaction from the right around kind of net zero that we really need to keep our foot on the gas on this stuff because otherwise they'll just win the argument um so uh i suppose the main question really is about hackney light and power ultimately and what it is exactly what exactly is it and what is it to become um and i would like to pose that question to you uh please um it's really just as a as a as a and equal all three of you really um just just so how do you actually see it and how do you see it evolving what do you see it evolving into is it going to be a company because bearing in mind you know lots of different companies have been set up for in the in the country robin hood energy and nottingham a lot of them have failed for various reasons you know why is that what are the learnings from that um you know and and where do we where do we go with this really where are we heading that that that's silly for happening uh to to respond to i suppose so where we are at is that all of the work we've been doing um on happening lights and power has been done as an in-house service uh and that's the way we want to continue to deliver services until we're able to um decide on how we want to proceed with regards to setting up a company i mean the idea of setting up a company was first as part of the manifesto commitment that was made by the by the mayor um or having been looking at options uh in terms of how we take that forward we kind of decided actually the best way for us at the moment is to to continue to deliver service as an in-house operation we've done very well everything we've done so far has been done as an in-house service uh and there is nothing to say that we can't continue to do that uh because i mean everything we've done so far has been successful uh on under that platform but we we're saying that we are not at the stage where we can actually begin to talk about uh whether we develop this as a company or whether we continue to run it as an in-house the one thing we we're sure about is that we will continue to deliver this service um we plan to scale it up all of the work we're talking about here whether it's community energy fund whether it's a solar panel on roof spaces we want to continue to scale that up so for example the residential solar we're talking about tonight it's a one one megawatt pilot and the idea is that we look at how successful that is and then we look at how we can scale that up over the next few years and we are saying that whether that is done as an in-house service or as a company it will still be a success uh because as far as we we we know i mean there's something that stops us from being able to deliver all of this work as we're doing now i'm also going to go to tom because he wants he wants to add to this just just very quickly to read his point something that that i think uh we had to go very very quickly in terms of what how you like power do but something to bear in mind is there's incredible value in terms of what how power do within the council for us in terms of internally so just a couple of examples i mean and jason and his colleague marcella do a fantastic job in this regard we were doing uh solar panels on the empire last last year and we realized with it with five days to go we didn't have a we needed a cherry picker and we didn't have a license to clear the to clear the road for three or four hours jason and marcel are able to at very quick rate able to get us that license and able to do the installation that morning uh you know we we've had problems with uh the some of the schools we've done where the education property team have been unhappy or reluctant for us to proceed with with projects on the roofs uh and again uh jason jason and marcel and the team have done a fantastic job in sort of convening those meetings and reassuring the education team that actually these projects are fine and could go ahead so there's real value in what happened not just in the funding and all the stuff out there but actually in terms of mobilizing and coordinating across the account across the whole council thank you tom um follow-up council smith maybe i should have rephrased that question to be got into the art this whole business about whether it should be a company whether it shouldn't be a company that wasn't really the question it was really how do people like tom and you guys see something like this in an organization like this working yeah thanks for that so i think one of the um it's got to be a facilitator and you need more officers there to make sure you can take advantage so one of the things i mentioned was the amount the quantum of money coming through and those local authorities who have been most successful in securing the funding of the ones who've had the resources within the local authority to make sure they can apply them if you don't have somebody in place to fill in the forms liaise with desnes the funds will not come through so i guarantee you over this parliament government will be making an awful lot of money available for the energy transition so as a consequence of that uh you need to make sure that you have the right resource in place to make sure that money can come into the borough the second thing is as i mentioned an awful lot of technology will come to the borough as it will across london and how do you want the residents to make sure that they can get the best benefit of that so you can either step back and let companies come in and sell their products or you can act on a strategic basis to say what products should go where for the benefit of the council uh for for for residents and for the borough as a whole so taking a strategic view over where that infrastructure should be put in and how it can best benefit residents in the long term so there there are two key things there i think actually that uh you need to make sure that that organization reflects in terms of the change that we're going to see i hope that helps thank you say okay i'll go over to council route and it'd be council martin's just in order council deck who's online and council nar cross then council davis okay so council route and then council martin's will take the suit together thank you very much i sort of want to continue in the same theme in a way really because i think there's congratulations on the logo which i love it's the statue on top of shoreditch town hall um and i think it's really effective but but lots and lots of people are actually very confused about what hackney light and power is and it seems to i'm struggling to understand it myself this evening it seems to me that that primarily what it is is a way of branding everything that hackney council is trying to do to meet its its um carbon targets basically it's you know various different initiatives is that is that fair i mean how do we describe it if i was if a resident were to come up to me and say what is hackney light and power how would i drive it and so that's one question i suppose um i think it you know could be a very effective brand but but i am a bit concerned that there are aspects of this which are going to be money making aspects um and what's going to happen to that money is it going to be ring fenced for putting back into hackney light and power which would come to saeed's issue i suppose about having enough staff in place to be able to make the most of the grants which are going to be coming forward or is it in the current economic climate sort of just going to be absorbed generally into the council um so i'm a bit worried about the sort of definition and the lack of structure generally speaking whilst also wanting to be very supportive of everything that you're trying to do and councillor martins thanks chair um my question is kind of twofold but and it broads against two different service areas but bear with me firstly i wanted to ask is there any kind of subsidized support for um leaseholders who may want to kind of retrofit um on their homes just picking up on the point that you made about you may have one home that's basically paying zero on energy bills and then the home right next to it paying up to three thousand pounds a year so and obviously we have mixed tenures on our estates especially so just thinking about that and if there's any support um for leaseholds there um and then also in terms of this retrofit we're talking a lot about retrofit and how we need to upskill people to make sure we've got jobs ready to deliver these things right i think in terms of looking at the future and the development of technology and ai and things like that how are we i guess future proofing in terms of linking this with education so how do we like making sure this is part of the curriculum and making sure that children are understanding these kind of new jobs that are emerging and are basically getting them ready in the next kind of 10 20 years thank you okay who would like to take council route question and then council young do you want so i think the the the the simple definition the simple description of what happening life and life and power does is um is energy services for for the for the council so delivery of energy services for the council is a simple description of what we do i think the the the the challenge really is that if you look back at the uh the manifesto commitment that was put in place for the council in terms of setting up an energy uh company the idea was the the thought was there but i think what we have discovered over the last few years of delivering this service in house is that we have found out that actually the council can deliver quite a lot uh as we've seen in terms of all of the things that have been described here tonight around energy services so the simple definition of what hacking lights and power does is that we deliver energy services um range of energy services on behalf of the council as an arm's length uh service department in the council now where we go in the future like i said earlier we're still there's still a lot of discussion about how we you know develop this work further for example we're we're looking at options whether we continue to deliver some of these services in house whether we uh commission it as an uh um stand organization to the to the council so all of that is still in debate what we're saying is that the narrative for members of the public is that the council has a department in the in the uh within within within the authority within the organization that is responsible for delivering a range of energy services including things like solar panel on rural spaces community energy fund for uh community interest group to actually work with the the council to deliver energy uh services it networks developments all of those range of services is being delivered by hacking lights and power and the reason why it is still a hina service is because we're still looking at options in terms of how we develop this uh going forward now coming back to the funding uh so all of the services the way it's been structured is that we developed it in such a way that there is um return on investment that's that's a given because it's important that we don't leave the council uh under any kind of financial strain so we're very clear that all of the investment in a lot in all of these um energy services would be returned back to the council in terms of paying back all of the whether it's loan uh that we secure for for some of the uh projects we're delivering but we're also saying that we want to deliver those services in such a way that their services that are affordable by the residents and and and members of the public that we're delivering the services so in terms of revenue uh the level of return as as in such that it's not to the extent that you will see if it's if it's run by a private sector organization as an example so the money will be returned back as an invest in as a return to the invest to any investment that is uh put into the organized into the sorry into the project that we're delivering but it's also important to emphasize that it's not being done in such a way that we will make a significant amount of return and that's the difference between delivering it as uh a council operation as opposed to being done by a private sector organization so those are the two points i think you asked uh cancella could i ask a quick follow-up around section 106 just wanted to check whether Kelsey young wanted to speak um i was just going to answer a little bit on councillor martin's point on retrofit which is separate so if you want to follow up on this first yeah if you keep just we have got quite a few questions to get through council route so no no it's just um on the money thing again really um saeed again mentioned that a lot of councils haven't spent their carbon offset section 106 money so the first question is have we spent hours the second question is is that money likely to as developers become more carbon efficient is that revenue stream guaranteed at the same sort of level for the future or is it going to drop off and how much of a problem would that be and the third question about section 106 carbon offset is can it be used for the kinds of things that saeed is talking about ie employing the staff to be able to allow you to to do the grant applications or is it just out of order to do that because if we're not careful we're going to be in that cycle of we can't afford the staff to make the applications and then we can't get the money which is really sad i think when it comes to carbon offset fund uh i think it's it's got to be linked to carbon reduction and that's the challenge uh it's strictly linked to carbon reduction so what we've been able to do is we're looking at other ways of how we can bring in funding to be able to have you know at least put stuff in place i think the the good thing as is that we've got good staff uh and they do quite a lot of work in terms of looking at externally to be able to bring in additional funding for all of the projects we're doing uh we're delivering here i think what we need to really emphasize is that carbon offset fund will not give us all the money we need to be able to deliver this at the work the range of what we're doing i think the good thing is that as we deliver this project like i said earlier the plan is to mix return all be it's marginal and and the idea is to use the the this revenue to continue to create additional uh you know resources that we may need to continue to attract external funding but i think if you go back to your original question in terms of carbon offset fund it is strictly linked to carbon reduction and there's very little we can do in terms of using it to bring resources in uh for uh some other work we might want to do unfortunately um side very quickly and i realize we've only got through two men members quest questions so we're trying to get through everybody go on side i'm um so this is an issue uh that i've asked the gla to provide greater clarity so there is guidance from the gla to local authorities about carbs and offset funding luckily my phone is working and what it says is if an lpa determines additional funds are needed to pay for staff to develop and manage identified offsetting projects we reckon a maximum of 10 of the fund be allocated to this so i've always been of the view because i'm completely aware that local authorities are challenged by having this money but not necessarily having the internal resources to develop the projects to get the money out the door and certain quite clearly the guidance it says you have this ability to spend up to 10 percent and i would argue and i think your point council is really well made that that wouldn't only uh that that 10 i would argue would extend to also if you're providing carbon offset funds for a community energy fund to allow a certain amount of money for actually those community groups to buy and start so if you were looking to evolve the fund that's something i would recommend you having a look at thank you thank you saeed so council young you're going to come in response to council martin i just wanted to briefly respond to councillor martin on retrofit so practically lightning power is not focused on retrofit it's focused on energy um but the council is already engaged in um one retrofit program and is part of which which is street level properties um and is part of a um a wide bid that london councils is coordinating um for the next wave of um social housing decarbonization funding which has got a new name now um so we are part of two sets of retrofit funding one that we've just bid for one that we've already got um and then the green homes program is also looking at um providing funds for energy efficiency in private homes and some of that would be i think that's actually linked to those who are vulnerable and on low income isn't it um so that i think focuses on the people that you're thinking about in terms of you know people who live in a home that they may well own or have insured ownership um they just don't have the money to to make those changes i think what's important about the hackney light and power work that that's being described this evening is um whether it it's been assumed that you start off with the fabric of a home but you can make significant improvements both to the cost of that home to heat and yeah for your ability to heat it and to the carbon emissions through renewable energy whether or not you've retrofit did that home so i think the two things sort of run side by side and can run in parallel and it's not essential that you have to do one and then the other and you know some of this work is really kind of tackling that that difficult question i mean can i just add to that there is a lot of mixed messaging out out there there's still a lot of people assume that you need to do the kind of retrofit work i mean i think the landscape seems to me that it's changed some more of a lighter retrofit approach with you know um energy you know installing heat and pumps etc i don't i don't think it's completely separate just um from the view that i can see anyway um sorry council smith you've had your question we must move on and we need to go now to council deck your second question sorry who wants to answer was it the skills question council martins yeah education skills so we're we're looking at um three areas i guess one is getting to primary schools and getting children infused so um part of the pot were primary scheme that we did which from solar on the roof and building management systems control heating we sent someone in a few weeks ago and they gave a presentation to the whole of the school and then did a workshop with the eco club and we've got a similar thing where we put solar on school in three catholic schools in wandsworth where every year we get i think about 300 pounds of dividend out of that scheme for us to go into those schools and develop those conversations the second one is we're working quite closely with south clemens college in wandsworth uh and the idea from january will be that they will come and shadow us so a day a week when we're working in the office they'll be with us there when we're running energy advice sessions in libraries of food banks whatever they can come along and shadow us there so the next step up from that will be we've we've written quite a lot of bids in the last couple of months if those bids come through part of our tendering process for server installers or heapam installers whatever it might be the various schemes is that they take on these students to shadow them on those projects they get that work experience and then the third thing is there is a national lottery fund uh that launched this while ago which i think is called our shared future and we're writing a bid on that where it's it's mainly about access and accessibility we we don't feel at the moment that um look at us apart from say it's very white and it's certain age and it's a certain class and we're not really getting the engagement that we want to get with the other communities and that ones was a good example similar to here probably number twice 33 of the population are non-white so we want to get into those communities and work with them this the second part of that that fund if we're successful in receiving it is youth so we're really looking at probably 16 to 18 year olds because yeah they're guarding issues i think it's easier but also they've got the capacity to kind of understand the projects but within that we do not want to be prescriptive we want to be able to fund them get them in a room get them thinking about it give them the resources they need and they come to us and tell us what their ideas are and then we see how we can help them indicate uh um indicate not indicate them um what's the word i'm looking for um to use that yeah yeah to use those ideas and and develop those projects and if we can't develop them explain why and then get them back in that room right we're going to workshop this and we're going to kind of improve it and come up with a different idea so there are two ideas for the next round of funding we're looking at of how we're going to get get the youth involved in those projects thank you um i'll go to council sodeck now for your question thanks chair there are a couple i'll try and keep it brief um we've heard a lot about incorporation the question of incorporation and funding so you you you you you you you you you