COP 26 president Alok Sharma has praised the Net Zero initiative launched for Hull and the Humber, as he told how it will play a part in delivering what the Glasgow UN summit agreed.
The minister led the global negotiations on abating climate change late last year, and visited the city as Oh Yes Net Zero was launched at Reckitt.
And he told of the huge economic benefit to come, as a £20 million contract was landed in Hull to help expand the huge blade plant close by.
Read more: Hull and Humber's new Net Zero launch takes plaudits of COP president
A total of 45 businesses and organisations have already signed up to make fundamental reductions of carbon footprints and help model a green economy that can be replicated.
Mr Sharma, back in the region almost two years to the day since overseeing the sale of British Steel in his previous role as Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, said: “The outcome of COP26 was historic. Together in a fractured and pretty fracturious world we got almost 200 countries to agree on the Glasgow Climate Pact; this pact keeps alive action to limit the rise in global temperature to 1.5 degrees centigrade. We also heard thereafter companies and financial institutions commit to clean up vital sectors. “These commitments were historic, but at the moment, these are just words on a page. We now need to collectively deliver on the promises.
“Cities have an absolutely vital role to play. Cities like Hull are leading the way with 2030 carbon neutral targets.
“Businesses and communities play a vital role too. People power pushes local and national governments to act and take action .
“This is an industrial cluster that does generate the single largest level of emissions, but collaboration is creating a clean industrial cluster, as a city, a hub, of offshore wind; helping with the energy transition. Home grown renewables, such as wind, provides us with energy security too. In keeping with the proud tradition of shaping our nation, Hull, beyond this campaign, senses the economic opportunity Net Zero presents.”
Quizzed by students from neighbouring Malet Lambert School, he added: “The energy and commitment young people are showing to this agenda is felt around the world too. We have got to get there, and it is vitally important with campaigns like this.
“I have a huge amount of faith it is going to be young people, civil society, that will drive this forward. That’s the message I have heard around the world.”
Speaking after, ahead of a tour of Hull University Hospital Trust’s Field of Dreams solar park, Mr Sharma said: “The campaign is inspiring, and the fact it brings together the four cross-sections of society in Hull is really important. We’ve heard from schools, we’ve heard from the university, from the NHS and importantly from business as well, of that drive to Net Zero by 2030, and there is a huge amount of enthusiasm to make it work.
“In the UK we have built the second biggest offshore wind sector in the world in a relatively short period of time. We set out in 2020 that we would quadruple this by 2030 and you see the benefit of that offshore in Hull and in other parts of the UK as well. This is about revitalising our industrial heartlands, and that's what our Net Zero strategy is about.
“If you look over the last 30 years, the UK has managed to grow GDP, our economy, by about 80 per cent, and yet cut emissions by 40 per cent as well.
“This is about the environment, but also about economic growth, that’s why in the Net Zero strategy we set out the plan to create another 440,000 jobs by 2030, another £90 billion of inward investment coming in to the UK from the private sector and we’re seeing that happening across the whole of the UK.”
Host, Reckitt chief executive Laxman Narasimhan, described Mr Sharma as “totally committed to making change happen” and an “authentic leader” who “carried the weight of the world in getting us all together to get better” at COP 26.
And event host David Shukman was full of praise for the initiative.
He said: “I have been covering climate change for the BBC for the best part of 20 years and if someone had said to me a movement like this, with so many different companies, organisations and institutions, that people would come together for an ambition focused on 2030, I would have thought I would have been crazy. It is amazing, this didn’t seem possible even a few years ago.
“It is remarkable what is going on, not only in front of a former Deputy Prime Minister, Lord Prescott, who worked so hard on the climate agenda, but with a government minister, the COP 26 president. The world only has one set of climate negotiations a year, and Alok Sharma has been the man in charge of this.”
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