This collaboration involved assessing investor appetite for the proposed projects and developing strategies to attract both public and private capital. It also advanced potential new innovative investment models, such as community-owned equity shares and Pay-As-You-Save (PAYS) retrofit programmes.

The project identified not only technology solutions, but also just transition opportunities, considering place-based opportunities for investment in local climate transitions that could enable local climate and economic impact, creation of good jobs, community participation and regional equality.

The project also partnered with the University of Edinburgh to quantify the social value that could be derived from the proposed interventions by the two councils, through a combination of co-benefit modelling and estimations of gross value added (GVA) and job creation.

This analysis found that the deployment of Westminster’s low-carbon interventions could create nearly 50,000 direct, local jobs lasting 20 years on average, and an estimated £1.3 billion of direct and indirect GVA from all interventions in the borough, equating to an increase of 32% of value (compared with investment) to be spent within the UK. In Cumberland, the estimated direct and indirect GVA from all interventions was £25.6 billion.