SSE wants to help put Manchester on the right road to net zero

THE plan to bring mayors from across the UK to Manchester for a climate change summit was forged over a coffee, appropriately, during COP26 in Glasgow last November.

The two men involved were Greater Manchester’s Mayor Andy Burnham and Neil Kirkby, whose MD role at energy company SSE, affords him the opportunity to help cities decarbonise.

Cheshire-based Neil was inspired to bring this year’s SSE Decarbonisation Summit to Manchester by the collective international goodwill to accelerate to net zero he encountered during his time at COP26.

“Andy and I had a really positive discussion at COP26 last November,” relates Neil Kirkby, Managing Director of SSE Enterprise.

“But I remember sitting with him at the huge COP26 venue in Glasgow thinking how can we convert all this global goodwill into something meaningful for local UK communities? And for those leaders like Andy who can deliver that change, how can we help? Enlightened places like Manchester want to crack on with net zero themselves – they are not waiting to be told what to do.”

“Andy and his team are already taking huge strides towards making Manchester one of the UK’s greenest cities; so it makes perfect sense to bring the summit here,” adds Neil.

“SSE Energy Solutions hosted its first Decarbonisation Summit during COP26 at our SSE Glasgow office which was a huge success. Now we want to ramp up the dialogue and trigger real progress on net zero. If I were to devise a tagline for our summit this year it would be: ‘think national, act local.’”

So, what exactly does Neil hope SSE’s two-day Decarbonisation Summit will achieve?

“I hope we’re going to ignite some innovative conversations between the public and the private sector. I hope the spread of mayors and their

teams coming will encourage some nationwide thinking on how we accelerate net zero,” Neil continues.

“So many places in the UK have declared climate change emergencies and SSE’s distributed energy team has the solutions to deliver the infrastructure that will enable those targets to be met. For example, we’ve got ambitions to build 300 rapid EV charging hubs across the UK in the next five years, and we want to help local authorities with net zero solutions and be their long-term partner of choice.

“Furthermore SSE, which as a group is investing £7m a day in low carbon energy, is also sponsoring the Energy Innovation Agency [EIA] which is based here in Manchester, so we want this city to be a hotbed of blue sky thinking when it comes to net zero solutions.”