Cross-party councillors have welcomed the city council’s decision to team up with a US company on a massive project towards decarbonising Bristol’s energy system. The local authority announced yesterday (Tuesday, March 29) it had chosen renewable energy firm Ameresco Ltd as its City Leap partner, with the two organisations forging a 50/50 joint venture.
The deal commits Ameresco to invest £424million in low-carbon energy infrastructure, such as heat networks and heat pumps, which will remove 140,000 of carbon across the city in the first five years of a 20-year agreement. Bristol City Council will grant access to its estate with the American business retrofitting its social housing by 2030 and paying the authority a guaranteed £4.2million.
The City Leap partnership will work with Sweden’s nationally owned energy company Vattenfall Heat UK which will effectively buy and run all the council’s heat networks that the authority has been building since 2015. City Hall bosses told a council meeting on Tuesday that the agreements, which will need to be finalised over the next few months following approval by cabinet next week, ensured the local authority was not entering into any new financial commitments and that the risks were with the private sector.
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David White, the head of the council's energy service, said Ameresco’s commitments - such as the £424million capital funding, 182 megawatts of zero carbon energy generation and £61million of “social value” including £50million of contracts for local suppliers as a result of their work over the first five years - were the minimum expected and that there would be undisclosed “consequences” if these were not met.
The council's growth and regeneration executive director Stephen Peacock said: “This is primarily about decarbonisation. What the city council has tried to do is partner with a private sector organisation that can bring expertise, focus and investment to help us make a contribution to our decarbonisation objectives.”
He said the joint venture company would accelerate this process and boost the heat network sector’s skills and labour base in the city, which would have spin-off benefits for residents who don’t live in council homes and businesses not directly involved in City Leap. Mr Peacock said the agreement effectively gave Ameresco first refusal on low carbon energy projects on the council’s estate but that this was different from exclusivity and that the authority could also work with other partners.
Mr White said: “We have always been crystal clear that City Leap is not the only answer and it must work with all the fantastic organisations in Bristol that have done great work in this area. City Leap isn’t a closed shop. This isn't the end game. It has to work with a broad range of partners. It has to do so to succeed.”
Mr Peacock said the £1billion figure constantly mentioned over the years for how much investment in clean energy City Leap would attract to Bristol had been an estimate over 20 years and that the £424million commitment was only for the first five years, so much more would follow. "Government takes notice of places that have significant co-investment in their cities, so it’s absolutely explicitly there as an incentive to get Bristol to become even more attractive to draw down national and other sources of money. It gets you noticed, it’s more likely to attract more money,” he said.
Green Cllr Martin Fodor said he welcomed the deal which retained the authority’s ownership of its wind turbines, solar farm and rooftop solar systems, which he had feared would be used as “sweeteners” and handed over to entice a successful bidder. Conservative Cllr Geoff Gollop said City Leap was a “very positive story” but would still not make the city carbon neutral by its 2030 target, which would cost an estimated £10billion.
Mr Peacock replied: “We would all agree there is a vast gulf between what we need to hit our own climate emergency date of 2030 and what is available through government funding and other sources. City Leap was never going to do everything. It’s necessary but not sufficient to close the gap.
“It is a world first but that doesn’t mean it’s going to deliver everything to everybody. But if it does deliver, I suspect that would just be the start.” OSMB chairman Green Cllr Tony Dyer said City Leap would come back to scrutiny twice this year ahead of cabinet decisions to transfer the heat networks, expected in June, and once all the arrangements with Ameresco had been finalised by the autumn.
