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.
