Glasgow has swiftly become one of the most talked about cities in the world.
“We have never had this kind of profile before. The Americans are even learning how to pronounce us,” jokes Susan Aitken, leader of Glasgow City Council since 2017.
But Glasgow’s first SNP leader could not be more serious about capitalising on the unprecedented level of global attention brought by being host city to the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP26) this November.
While the summit brings together representatives of some 200 governments with the aim of accelerating action on climate change, Aitken intends to use it to “scale-up and accelerate” Glasgow’s own ambition to deliver the transition to net zero by 2030.
“I know from talking to other city leaders that they would give their eye teeth for an opportunity like this,” she says. Not least because the transition to net zero comes at a price and every city must attract investment to help pay for it.
In Glasgow’s case, a staggering £30bn is required to reach net zero by 2030, according to an initial assessment by the UK Cities Climate Investment Commission.
The commission was launched in July by London councils, the UK’s 11 core cities and the government’s innovation agency Connected Places Catapult. Research it commissioned from environmental consultancy Eunomia suggests this group of councils will need to attract a combined £110bn to £330bn from major players such as sovereign wealth and pension funds to realise their climate plans.
Glasgow is no stranger to attracting big investment, something Aitken is reminded of on her bus route into the city chamber. It takes her past the Barclays Glasgow Campus development going up on former industrial land beside the River Clyde, which will bring more than 2,500 jobs to the city.
“It’s the biggest inward investment in terms of jobs in Scotland since the 2008 crash,” she says.
But something different is needed now.
A shift in thinking
“It’s a shift in thinking and seeking outside investment not just for things like offices and hotels but for core city infrastructure. Whole systems on which a big city like Glasgow depends are having to be rethought and reimagined for the net zero transition – transport, heat, everything,” Aitken explains.
“A lot of this is beyond the capacity of a local authority to deliver on our own. What we need are investment partners. And a lot of the time it is going to be patient capital that we need.”
Conversations have begun with potential investors to support an ambitious list of 10 projects in Glasgow’s “greenprint for investment” (see below), a key strand in its drive to reach net zero. “What we are now getting our heads around is how we create investable propositions out of things like district heat networks for the whole city,” Aitken says.
Initial investment proposals include a district heat network (a system of insulated pipes that takes heat from a central source and delivers it to buildings) using power generated by the new Glasgow Recycling and Renewable Energy Centre in Polmadie. More ambitious proposals are being developed to harness the power of the River Clyde for the city’s heat demands. It is estimated that around half the city could be supplied with heat sourced from the Clyde using heat pump technologies – taking thousands of buildings off the gas network. The city council is looking for investors to own, operate and manage district heat networks for extended periods.
Closely linked is the need to retrofit Glasgow’s existing buildings to make them more energy-efficient.
The cost of improving the insulation of all homes across the city region (eight local authorities with a population of 1.8m) has been put at £10bn. That covers 450,000 homes of all types of tenure.
“So it’s huge. It’s a scale of inward investment that we have really not looked at before,” Aitken says.
Transport infrastructure
A feasibility study is also in progress into new transport provision to improve connectivity within Glasgow and the wider city region, using trams, rapid-transit buses and light rail. Known as Glasgow Metro, this is another multi-billion-pound project.
But perhaps the most eye-catching project is a plan to put a portion of the M8 motorway, built through the city in the late 1960s, into a tunnel.
“It was seen as the way to modernise the city at the time, but Scotland’s busiest motorway was just cut right through the heart of Glasgow. And it’s a scar and a blight, frankly, on the city and on air quality and obviously on emissions,” Aitken says.
The cap would be at Charing Cross – a major road junction which marks the boundary between the city centre and Glasgow’s West End.
“Capping it would create a new public space over the top and a development opportunity on that space, but crucially it would contain those emissions instead of them coming up into the city,” Aitken says. The project value has been put at between £60m and £80m.
“All of this investment needs to deliver multiple benefits for our citizens as well as for the environment and for the planet,” Aitken says.
Armed with a slick investment prospectus, Team Glasgow has clearly done its homework, working closely with its business and academic sectors.
“It’s incredibly exciting. It’s incredibly nerve wracking,” Aitken says. “But there is a real determination among Team Glasgow.”
Barriers
So what are the barriers to moving these projects forward?
Internal capacity and expertise within already over-stretched local authorities is certainly one that Aitken feels keenly. Deep levels of poverty remain in post-industrial Glasgow, which is home to some of Scotland’s most deprived areas. “We need to continue to run our services day-to-day for people, and that has been badly hit by Covid as well,” she says.
She also comes back to this need to approach investors with opportunities of the right scale, something the World Bank is assisting Aitken and her peers across UK cities with.
“The feedback we get from the investment community is that what they are looking for is not opportunities in the millions, it’s the billions that they are looking for. It is large-scale investment in the public sector. They are asking, ‘How do we invest in municipalities?’ Because that is not something that really happens very often.”
That means local authorities must work together, sometimes across the city, sometimes with other cities, and across the city region.
She is also calling for greater financial support from government.
“Every investment has a revenue cost. And that, I think, is crucially where national government has to stand behind cities. National government needs cities to be at the forefront of this because they are not going to hit their own targets otherwise,” Aitken says.
She leads a council with more borrowing powers than the Scottish government – “an egregious thing” in her eyes. So while she believes vehemently that the Scottish government should have the fiscal powers to play this role, she is calling on Westminster to step up.
“That may need to be over a long period, allowing us to make those investments over a 50-year period rather than a 25-year period,” Aitken says.
She stands with those calling for the same scale of government intervention to tackle climate change as was prompted by Covid 19.
“Keeping people in jobs was the right thing to do. Government needs to keep doing the right thing, using public money and the ability to literally print money to get this done. And it needs to be front-loaded into the next decade. This needs to be seen as an investment, not a cost. Ultimately the long-term gains are far greater than the cost,” Aitken says.
Greater devolution
Lack of progress towards greater devolution to local councils clearly frustrates her, echoing continued calls from the Local Government Association for greater powers, as well as funding, to meet the challenges and opportunities facing their communities.
“Most UK cities, in fact all of us really, don’t have powers anything like comparable to our European or American counterparts – for example, in terms of being able to realise value from land sales.
“We need national government to take the foot off the brakes when it comes to the ability of local government to deliver and create investment platforms as well as investment opportunities that allow local government to [reduce carbon emissions] at pace while protecting our own statutory services,” Aitken says.
“We cannot be in a situation where we are shifting capital and investment from schools to heat networks.”
But despite these barriers and challenges, she is steadfastly optimistic about what can be achieved and the potential to deliver multiple benefits for Glasgow’s citizens as well as for the environment and for the planet.
With the eyes of the world on Glasgow this autumn, Aitken is hopeful that the summit will succeed in accelerating action towards achieving the goals of the Paris Agreement. From her “whirlwind introduction to the world of COP”, she knows that the 2009 Copenhagen summit was considered a disaster and is referred to in the climate community as “Flopenhagen”.
“I do not want any pun-based nicknames for Glasgow along those lines. We want a good Glasgow agreement that people will think of as having been a success,” Aitken says.
Glasgow’s greenprint for investment
1. Glasgow Metro
New transport provision to improve connectivity within Glasgow and the city region – think trams, rapid transit buses and light rail.
Project value: Multi-billion-pound
Investment type: Design and build, franchise partner, development partner(s)
2. Glasgow City Region Home Energy Retrofit Programme
10-year, £10bn programme to upgrade insulation of all 450,000 homes in the city region and explore use of renewable technologies to deliver clean energy. Seen as a huge potential boost for skills and jobs.
Project value: £10bn
Investment type: Public infrastructure/private investment
3. Charing Cross – M8 Green Infrastructure Cap
Putting a cap or tunnel over the motorway junction at Charing Cross, close to the city centre. Think new public realm and walking routes.
Project value: £60m-£80m
Investment type: Public infrastructure/private investment
4. Scottish Event Campus expansion
Aims to turn the SEC into one of the world’s most sustainable campuses
Project value: £180m
Investment type: Grant funding, development partner
5. District heating network
A series of projects to build out into a wider strategic district heating network across Glasgow – including harnessing heat from the Clyde using heat pump technologies.
Project value: £40m (phase 1)
Investment type: Public/private infrastructure investment
6. Climate-neutral Innovation District
Project led by University of Strathclyde to make this district 100% renewable, climate-neutral and climate-resilient.
Project value: £500m
Investment type: Public/private infrastructure investment
7. Micro Park Apparel Project
Aims to play a major role in bringing fashion and apparel manufacturing back to the UK at scale. Phase 1 will support up to 20 manufacturing facilities with 4,000 jobs.
Project value: £120m
Investment type: Public/private investment, foreign direct investment
8. Advanced Manufacturing Innovation District
Scotland’s new home of advanced manufacturing in Renfrewshire. Masterplan has outline consent.
Project value: £100m-£150m
Investment type: Public infrastructure/private (developer, occupier) investment
9. Green Regeneration and Innovation District
Clyde Gateway – ambitious mixed-use regeneration project.
Project value: Up to £200m
Investment type: Capital, Equity Co-Development, Development Funder, Construction Partner
10. Clyde Climate Forest
Aims to plant 18m trees in the city region over the next decade, starting in November. Think 9,000 hectares of new woodlands, increasing cover by 3%. Benefits to investors include carbon credits which can be traded or used to attain net zero targets.
Project value: £107m
Investment type: Development and capital
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