South West Net Zero Hub

We're here at Energising Britain's South West today. It's more important than ever to bring people together to talk about climate change, climate resilience and nature recovery. Energising Britain is about celebrating everyone who's part of the clean energy mission, so businesses, trade unions, charities and community groups. We can only win big arguments.

We can only make change happen with a coalition that goes well beyond central government. I might want to give a particular shout out to our brilliant local Net Zero hubs who are helping to build those local coalitions and have done a huge amount to organise Energising Britain events today. The Net Zero hub works with local authorities, the public sector and communities. We work usually at early stage project development for Net Zero energy projects and our key role is bringing people together to try and build partnerships and make some of those projects happen.

Often climate engagement begins with carbon emissions, targets, technical solutions. Our approach here has been different. We've started with people, with place and with community. I want to do all these projects and keep our church open and help the community we lived in and so we finally said the only thing we could do is air source heat pump.

Bottom up initiatives are the only ones that work because they engage with people's hearts. At the Devon Energy Collective we want to see lots of communities owning their own renewable energy generation and then the surplus revenue from those projects can get plowed back into the local area. It is quite a lonely place when you start engaging with people trying to get them on side to support renewable energy generation so it's fantastic to come somewhere here today and meet people who are also facing the same problems and be inspired by them. I'm here talking about the Clean Power Hub which is a WECA funded project.

It is a scheme that is going to enable the adoption of battery technologies within film and TV and events. One of the highlights today was going on a boat ride across the harbour here in Bristol to see the water-based heat network that's being rolled out across the city and that's going to provide a clean heating option to residents and businesses and I think that's just a really tangible example of the clean energy transition in action. I think I've been reminded today at the Energising Britain event here in Bristol that there's a huge range of organisations working really hard to engage more people on the clean energy transition so that's inspiring me and giving me hope for the future. It really feels like the work that we've been kind of bringing about and progressing locally is starting to join up with the regional and even the national effort and really we're starting to see how this transition to a future where we're climate resilient, we've lowered our emissions and we've supported nature recovery can make life better for all of us.

When you invest in communities you don't just deliver climate projects, you tackle inequality, you build resilience, you create leaders and ultimately you make life better.