The Leeds City Region Mini-Stern report is the product of a year long research project identifying the benefits of reducing energy demand and carbon emissions to the Leeds City Region economy.
The research, undertaken by the Centre for Low Carbon Futures, looks at thousands of possible energy efficiency and low carbon energy generation measures across the transport, housing, commercial and industrial sectors and the potential for their deployment across the Leeds City Region. It identifies the economic benefit of investing in these measures including energy bill savings, jobs created and the knock on effect on the Leeds City Region economy.
You can download the full report and reports for each of the Local Authority areas in the Leeds City Region here.
Headlines from the report:
- By 2022 the Leeds City Region could cut 1990 levels of carbon emissions by 35% by exploiting the profitable opportunities and 40% at no net cost (i.e. the profitable opportunities would pay for this extra 5%).
- Every £1 billion of investment in low carbon options would generate £220 million in energy savings per year – that’s pay back in just over 4 years. Put another way – investing 1% of GDP per year over 10 years, would bring in energy savings worth 1.6% of GDP per year. In addition it would create 1,000 new jobs and wider economic benefits of a further £50 million per year.
- These investments would also protect competitiveness, improve energy security, reduce fuel poverty and improve public health.
- Clearly, initial investment will be required to make any of this happen. The report shows that there are just under £5 billion investment opportunities that would payback within around 4 years. National initiatives such as Green Deal and the Green Investment Bank will provide important sources of funding. But equally these are sound commercial investments and we must lead the charge in promoting these opportunities and encouraging private sector investment.
The funding for the research was provided by the Department for Energy & Climate Change as part of the Local Carbon Framework (LCF) programme. The LCF programme provided funding to develop new data modelling methods to support local action on climate change.